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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference
+by Emile Joseph Dillon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference
+
+Author: Emile Joseph Dillon
+
+Release Date: December 26, 2004 [EBook #14477]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PEACE CONFERENCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Martin Pettit and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_The Inside Story of
+
+The Peace Conference_
+
+
+_by
+
+Dr. E.J. Dillon_
+
+
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+
+_NEW YORK AND LONDON_
+
+THE INSIDE STORY OF THE PEACE CONFERENCE
+
+Copyright 1920, by Harper & Brothers
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+Published February, 1920
+
+_To
+C.W. BARRON
+
+in memory of interesting conversations
+
+on historic occasions
+
+These pages are inscribed._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAP.                                   PAGE
+
+FOREWORD                                  ix
+
+I.    THE CITY OF THE CONFERENCE           1
+
+II.   SIGNS OF THE TIMES                  45
+
+III.  THE DELEGATES                       58
+
+IV.   CENSORSHIP AND SECRECY             117
+
+V.    AIMS AND METHODS                   136
+
+VI.   THE LESSER STATES                  184
+
+VII.  POLAND'S OUTLOOK IN THE FUTURE     264
+
+VIII. ITALY                              272
+
+IX.   JAPAN                              322
+
+X.    ATTITUDE TOWARD RUSSIA             344
+
+XI.   BOLSHEVISM                         376
+
+XII.  HOW BOLSHEVISM WAS FOSTERED        399
+
+XIII. SIDELIGHTS ON THE TREATY           407
+
+XIV.  THE TREATY WITH GERMANY            455
+
+XV.   THE TREATY WITH BULGARIA           464
+
+XVI.  THE COVENANT AND MINORITIES        469
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+It is almost superfluous to say that this book does not claim to be a
+history, however summary, of the Peace Conference, seeing that such a
+work was made sheer impossible now and forever by the chief delegates
+themselves when they decided to dispense with records of their
+conversations and debates. It is only a sketch--a sketch of the problems
+which the war created or rendered pressing--of the conditions under
+which they cropped up; of the simplicist ways in which they were
+conceived by the distinguished politicians who volunteered to solve
+them; of the delegates' natural limitations and electioneering
+commitments and of the secret influences by which they were swayed; of
+the peoples' needs and expectations; of the unwonted procedure adopted
+by the Conference and of the fateful consequences of its decisions to
+the world.
+
+In dealing with all those matters I aimed at impartiality, which is an
+unattainable ideal, but I trust that sincerity and detachment have
+brought me reasonably close to it. Having no pet theories of my own to
+champion, my principal standard of judgment is derived from the law of
+causality and the rules of historical criticism.
+
+The fatal tactical mistake chargeable to the Conference lay in its
+making the charter of the League of Nations and the treaty of peace with
+the Central Powers interdependent. For the maxims that underlie the
+former are irreconcilable with those that should determine the latter,
+and the efforts to combine them must, among other untoward results,
+create a sharp opposition between the vital interests of the people of
+the United States and the apparent or transient interests of their
+associates. The outcome of this unnatural union will be to damage the
+cause of stable peace which it was devised to further.
+
+But the surest touchstone by which to test the capacity and the
+achievements of the world-legislators is their attitude toward Russia in
+the political domain and toward the labor problem in the economic
+sphere. And in neither case does their action or inaction appear to have
+been the outcome of statesman-like ideas, or, indeed, of any higher
+consideration than that of evading the central issue and transmitting
+the problem to the League of Nations. The results are manifest to all.
+
+The continuity of human progress depends at bottom upon labor, and it is
+becoming more and more doubtful whether the civilized races of mankind
+can be reckoned on to supply it for long on conditions akin to those
+which have in various forms prevailed ever since the institutions of
+ancient times and which alone render the present social structure
+viable. If this forecast should prove correct, the only alternative to a
+break disastrous in the continuity of civilization is the frank
+recognition of the principle that certain inferior races are destined to
+serve the cause of mankind in those capacities for which alone they are
+qualified and to readjust social institutions to this axiom.
+
+In the meanwhile the Conference which ignored this problem of problems
+has transformed Europe into a seething mass of mutually hostile states
+powerless to face the economic competition of their overseas rivals and
+has set the very elements of society in flux.
+
+E.J. DILLON.
+
+
+
+
+THE INSIDE STORY OF THE PEACE CONFERENCE
+
+I
+
+THE CITY OF THE CONFERENCE
+
+
+The choice of Paris for the historic Peace Conference was an
+afterthought. The Anglo-Saxon governments first favored a neutral
+country as the most appropriate meeting-ground for the world's
+peace-makers. Holland was mentioned only to be eliminated without
+discussion, so obvious and decisive were the objections. French
+Switzerland came next in order, was actually fixed upon, and for a time
+held the field. Lausanne was the city first suggested and nearly chosen.
+There was a good deal to be said for it on its own merits, and in its
+suburb, Ouchy, the treaty had been drawn up which terminated the war
+between Italy and Turkey. But misgivings were expressed as to its
+capacity to receive and entertain the formidable peace armies without
+whose co-operation the machinery for stopping all wars could not well be
+fabricated. At last Geneva was fixed upon, and so certain were
+influential delegates of the ratification of their choice by all the
+Allies, that I felt justified in telegraphing to Geneva to have a house
+hired for six months in that picturesque city.
+
+But the influential delegates had reckoned without the French, who in
+these matters were far and away the most influential. Was it not in the
+Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, they asked, that Teuton militarism had
+received its most powerful impulse? And did not poetic justice, which
+was never so needed as in these evil days, ordain that the chartered
+destroyer who had first seen the light of day in that hall should also
+be destroyed there? Was this not in accordance with the eternal fitness
+of things? Whereupon the matter-of-fact Anglo-Saxon mind, unable to
+withstand the force of this argument and accustomed to give way on
+secondary matters, assented, and Paris was accordingly fixed upon....
+
+"Paris herself again," tourists remarked, who had not been there since
+the fateful month when hostilities began--meaning that something of the
+wealth and luxury of bygone days was venturing to display itself anew as
+an afterglow of the epoch whose sun was setting behind banks of
+thunder-clouds. And there was a grain of truth in the remark. The Ville
+Lumière was crowded as it never had been before. But it was mostly
+strangers who were within her gates. In the throng of Anglo-Saxon
+warriors and cosmopolitan peace-lovers following the trailing skirts of
+destiny, one might with an effort discover a Parisian now and again. But
+they were few and far between.
+
+They and their principal European guests made some feeble attempts to
+vie with the Vienna of 1814-15 in elegance and taste if not in pomp and
+splendor. But the general effect was marred by the element of the
+_nouveaux-riches_ and _nouveaux-pauvres_ which was prominent, if not
+predominant. A few of the great and would-be great ladies outbade one
+another in the effort to renew the luxury and revive the grace of the
+past. But the atmosphere was numbing, their exertions half-hearted, and
+the smile of youth and beauty was cold like the sheen of winter ice.
+The shadow of death hung over the institutions and survivals of the
+various civilizations and epochs which were being dissolved in the
+common melting-pot, and even the man in the street was conscious of its
+chilling influence. Life in the capital grew agitated, fitful,
+superficial, unsatisfying. Its gaiety was forced--something between a
+challenge to the destroyer and a sad farewell to the past and present.
+Men were instinctively aware that the morrow was fraught with bitter
+surprises, and they deliberately adopted the maxim, "Let us eat and
+drink, for to-morrow we die." None of these people bore on their
+physiognomies the dignified impress of the olden time, barring a few
+aristocratic figures from the Faubourg St.-Germain, who looked as though
+they had only to don the perukes and the distinctive garb of the
+eighteenth century to sit down to table with Voltaire and the Marquise
+du Châtelet. Here and there, indeed, a coiffure, a toilet, the bearing,
+the gait, or the peculiar grace with which a robe was worn reminded one
+that this or that fair lady came of a family whose life-story in the
+days of yore was one of the tributaries to the broad stream of European
+history. But on closer acquaintanceship, especially at conversational
+tournaments, one discovered that Nature, constant in her methods,
+distributes more gifts of beauty than of intellect.
+
+Festive banquets, sinful suppers, long-spun-out lunches were as frequent
+and at times as Lucullan as in the days of the Regency. The outer,
+coarser attributes of luxury abounded in palatial restaurants, hotels,
+and private mansions; but the refinement, the grace, the brilliant
+conversation even of the Paris of the Third Empire were seen to be
+subtle branches of a lost art. The people of the armistice were weary
+and apprehensive--weary of the war, weary of politics, weary of the
+worn-out framework of existence, and filled with a vague, nameless
+apprehension of the unknown. They feared that in the chaotic slough into
+which they had fallen they had not yet touched bottom. None the less,
+with the exception of fervent Catholics and a number of earnest
+sectarians, there were few genuine seekers after anything essentially
+better.
+
+Not only did the general atmosphere of Paris undergo radical changes,
+together with its population, but the thoroughfares, many of them,
+officially changed their names since the outbreak of the war.
+
+The Paris of the Conference ceased to be the capital of France. It
+became a vast cosmopolitan caravanserai teeming with unwonted aspects of
+life and turmoil, filled with curious samples of the races, tribes, and
+tongues of four continents who came to watch and wait for the mysterious
+to-morrow. The intensity of life there was sheer oppressive; to the
+tumultuous striving of the living were added the silent influences of
+the dead. For it was also a trysting-place for the ghosts of
+sovereignties and states, militarisms and racial ambitions, which were
+permitted to wander at large until their brief twilight should be
+swallowed up in night. The dignified Turk passionately pleaded for
+Constantinople, and cast an imploring look on the lone Armenian whose
+relatives he had massacred, and who was then waiting for political
+resurrection. Persian delegates wandered about like souls in pain,
+waiting to be admitted through the portals of the Conference Paradise.
+Beggared Croesus passed famishing Lucullus in the street, and once
+mighty viziers shivered under threadbare garments in the biting frost as
+they hurried over the crisp February snow. Waning and waxing Powers,
+vacant thrones, decaying dominations had, each of them, their accusers,
+special pleaders, and judges, in this multitudinous world-center on
+which tragedy, romance, and comedy rained down potent spells. For the
+Conference city was also the clearing-house of the Fates, where the
+accounts of a whole epoch, the deeds and misdeeds of an exhausted
+civilization, were to be balanced and squared.
+
+Here strange yet familiar figures, survivals from the past, started up
+at every hand's turn and greeted one with smiles or sighs. Men on whom I
+last set eyes when we were boys at school, playing football together in
+the field or preparing lessons in the school-room, would stop me in the
+street on their way to represent nations or peoples whose lives were out
+of chime, or to inaugurate the existence of new republics. One face I
+shall never forget. It was that of the self-made temporary dictator of a
+little country whose importance was dwindling to the dimensions of a
+footnote in the history of the century. I had been acquainted with him
+personally in the halcyon day of his transient glory. Like his
+picturesque land, he won the immortality of a day, was courted and
+subsidized by competing states in turn, and then suddenly cast aside
+like a sucked orange. Then he sank into the depths of squalor. He was
+eloquent, resourceful, imaginative, and brimful of the poetry of
+untruth. One day through the asphalt streets of Paris he shuffled along
+in the procession of the doomed, with wan face and sunken eyes, wearing
+a tragically mean garb. And soon after I learned that he had vanished
+unwept into eternal oblivion.
+
+An Arabian Nights touch was imparted to the dissolving panorama by
+strange visitants from Tartary and Kurdistan, Korea and Aderbeijan,
+Armenia, Persia, and the Hedjaz--men with patriarchal beards and
+scimitar-shaped noses, and others from desert and oasis, from Samarkand
+and Bokhara. Turbans and fezzes, sugar-loaf hats and headgear resembling
+episcopal miters, old military uniforms devised for the embryonic armies
+of new states on the eve of perpetual peace, snowy-white burnooses,
+flowing mantles, and graceful garments like the Roman toga, contributed
+to create an atmosphere of dreamy unreality in the city where the
+grimmest of realities were being faced and coped with.
+
+Then came the men of wealth, of intellect, of industrial enterprise, and
+the seed-bearers of the ethical new ordering, members of economic
+committees from the United States, Britain, Italy, Poland, Russia,
+India, and Japan, representatives of naphtha industries and far-off coal
+mines, pilgrims, fanatics, and charlatans from all climes, priests of
+all religions, preachers of every doctrine, who mingled with princes,
+field-marshals, statesmen, anarchists, builders-up, and pullers-down.
+All of them burned with desire to be near to the crucible in which the
+political and social systems of the world were to be melted and recast.
+Every day, in my walks, in my apartment, or at restaurants, I met
+emissaries from lands and peoples whose very names had seldom been heard
+of before in the West. A delegation from the Pont-Euxine Greeks called
+on me, and discoursed of their ancient cities of Trebizond, Samsoun,
+Tripoli, Kerassund, in which I resided many years ago, and informed me
+that they, too, desired to become welded into an independent Greek
+republic, and had come to have their claims allowed. The Albanians were
+represented by my old friend Turkhan Pasha, on the one hand, and by my
+friend Essad Pasha, on the other--the former desirous of Italy's
+protection, the latter demanding complete independence. Chinamen,
+Japanese, Koreans, Hindus, Kirghizes, Lesghiens, Circassians,
+Mingrelians, Buryats, Malays, and Negroes and Negroids from Africa and
+America were among the tribes and tongues forgathered in Paris to watch
+the rebuilding of the political world system and to see where they "came
+in."
+
+One day I received a visit from an Armenian deputation; its chief was
+described on his visiting-card as President of the Armenian Republic of
+the Caucasus. When he was shown into my apartment in the Hôtel Vendôme,
+I recognized two of its members as old acquaintances with whom I had
+occasional intercourse in Erzerum, Kipri Keui, and other places during
+the Armenian massacres of the year 1895. We had not met since then. They
+revived old memories, completed for me the life-stories of several of
+our common friends and acquaintances, and narrated interesting episodes
+of local history. And having requested my co-operation, the President
+and his colleagues left me and once more passed out of my life.
+
+Another actor on the world-stage whom I had encountered more than once
+before was the "heroic" King of Montenegro. He often crossed my path
+during the Conference, and set me musing on the marvelous ups and downs
+of human existence. This potentate's life offers a rich field of
+research to the psychologist. I had watched it myself at various times
+and with curious results. For I had met him in various European capitals
+during the past thirty years, and before the time when Tsar Alexander
+III publicly spoke of him as Russia's only friend. King Nikita owes such
+success in life as he can look back on with satisfaction to his
+adaptation of St. Paul's maxim of being all things to all men. Thus in
+St. Petersburg he was a good Russian, in Vienna a patriotic Austrian, in
+Rome a sentimental Italian. He was also a warrior, a poet after his own
+fashion, a money-getter, and a speculator on 'Change. His alleged
+martial feats and his wily, diplomatic moves ever since the first Balkan
+war abound in surprises, and would repay close investigation. The ease
+with which the Austrians captured Mount Lovtchen and his capital made a
+lasting impression on those of his allies who were acquainted with the
+story, the consequences of which he could not foresee. What everybody
+seemed to know was that if the Teutons had defeated the Entente, King
+Nikita's son Mirko, who had settled down for the purpose in Vienna,
+would have been set on the throne in place of his father by the
+Austrians; whereas if the Allies should win, the worldly-wise monarch
+would have retained his crown as their champion. But these well-laid
+plans went all agley. Prince Mirko died and King Nikita was deposed. For
+a time he resided at a hotel, a few houses from me, and I passed him now
+and again as he was on his way to plead his lost cause before the
+distinguished wreckers of thrones and régimes.
+
+It seemed as though, in order to provide Paris with a cosmopolitan
+population, the world was drained of its rulers, of its prosperous and
+luckless financiers, of its high and low adventurers, of its tribe of
+fortune-seekers, and its pushing men and women of every description. And
+the result was an odd blend of classes and individuals worthy, it may
+be, of the new democratic era, but unprecedented. It was welcomed as of
+good augury, for instance, that in the stately Hôtel Majestic, where the
+spokesmen of the British Empire had their residence, monocled
+diplomatists mingled with spry typewriters, smart amanuenses, and even
+with bright-eyed chambermaids at the evening dances.[1] The British
+Premier himself occasionally witnessed the cheering spectacle with
+manifest pleasure. Self-made statesmen, scions of fallen dynasties,
+ex-premiers, and ministers, who formerly swayed the fortunes of the
+world, whom one might have imagined _capaces imperii nisi imperassent_,
+were now the unnoticed inmates of unpretending hotels. Ambassadors whose
+most trivial utterances had once been listened to with concentrated
+attention, sued days and weeks for an audience of the greater
+plenipotentiaries, and some of them sued in vain. Russian diplomatists
+were refused permission to travel in France or were compelled to
+undergo more than average discomfort and delay there. More than once I
+sat down to lunch or dinner with brilliant commensals, one of whom was
+understood to have made away with a well-known personage in order to rid
+the state of a bad administrator, and another had, at a secret
+_Vehmgericht_ in Turkey, condemned a friend of mine, now a friend of
+his, to be assassinated.
+
+In Paris, this temporary capital of the world, one felt the repercussion
+of every event, every incident of moment wheresoever it might have
+occurred. To reside there while the Conference was sitting was to occupy
+a comfortable box in the vastest theater the mind of men has ever
+conceived. From this rare coign of vantage one could witness
+soul-gripping dramas of human history, the happenings of years being
+compressed within the limits of days. The revolution in Portugal, the
+massacre of Armenians, Bulgaria's atrocities, the slaughter of the
+inhabitants of Saratoff and Odessa, the revolt of the Koreans--all
+produced their effect in Paris, where official and unofficial exponents
+of the aims and ambitions, religions and interests that unite or divide
+mankind were continually coming or going, working aboveground or
+burrowing beneath the surface.
+
+It was within a few miles of the place where I sat at table with the
+brilliant company alluded to above that a few individuals of two
+different nationalities, one of them bearing, it was said, a well-known
+name, hatched the plot that sent Portugal's strong man, President
+Sidonio Paes, to his last account and plunged that ill-starred land into
+chaotic confusion. The plan was discovered by the Portuguese military
+attaché, who warned the President himself and the War Minister. But
+Sidonio Paes, quixotic and foolhardy, refused to take or brook
+precautions. A few weeks later the assassin, firing three shots, had no
+difficulty in taking aim, but none of them took effect. The reason was
+interesting: so determined were the conspirators to leave nothing to
+chance, they had steeped the cartridges in a poisonous preparation,
+whereby they injured the mechanism of the revolver, which, in
+consequence, hung fire. But the adversaries of the reform movement which
+the President had inaugurated again tried and planned another attempt,
+and Sidonio Paes, who would not be taught prudence, was duly shot, and
+his admirable work undone[2] by a band of semi-Bolshevists.
+
+Less than six months later it was rumored that a number of specially
+prepared bombs from a certain European town had been sent to Moscow for
+the speedy removal of Lenin. The casual way in which these and kindred
+matters were talked of gave one the measure of the change that had come
+over the world since the outbreak of the war. There was nobody left in
+Europe whose death, violent or peaceful, would have made much of an
+impression on the dulled sensibilities of the reading public. All values
+had changed, and that of human life had fallen low.
+
+To follow these swiftly passing episodes, occasionally glancing behind
+the scenes, during the pauses of the acts, and watch the unfolding of
+the world-drama, was thrillingly interesting. To note the dubious
+source, the chance occasion of a grandiose project of world policy, and
+to see it started on its shuffling course, was a revelation in politics
+and psychology, and reminded one of the saying mistakenly attributed to
+the Swedish Chancellor Oxenstjern, "_Quam parva sapientia regitur
+mundus_."[3]
+
+The wire-pullers were not always the plenipotentiaries. Among those were
+also outsiders of various conditions, sometimes of singular ambitions,
+who were generally free from conventional prejudices and conscientious
+scruples. As traveling to Paris was greatly restricted by the
+governments of the world, many of these unofficial delegates had come in
+capacities widely differing from those in which they intended to act. I
+confess I was myself taken in by more than one of these secret
+emissaries, whom I was innocently instrumental in bringing into close
+touch with the human levers they had come to press. I actually went to
+the trouble of obtaining for one of them valuable data on a subject
+which did not interest him in the least, but which he pretended he had
+traveled several thousand miles to study. A zealous prelate, whose
+business was believed to have something to do with the future of a
+certain branch of the Christian Church in the East, in reality held a
+brief for a wholly different set of interests in the West. Some of these
+envoys hoped to influence decisions of the Conference, and they
+considered they had succeeded when they got their points of view brought
+to the favorable notice of certain of its delegates. What surprised me
+was the ease with which several of these interlopers moved about,
+although few of them spoke any language but their own.
+
+Collectivities and religious and political associations, including that
+of the Bolshevists, were represented in Paris during the Conference. I
+met one of the Bolshevists, a bright youth, who was a veritable apostle.
+He occupied a post which, despite its apparent insignificance, put him
+occasionally in possession of useful information withheld from the
+public, which he was wont to communicate to his political friends. His
+knowledge of languages and his remarkable intelligence had probably
+attracted the notice of his superiors, who can have had no suspicion of
+his leanings, much less of his proselytizing activity. However this may
+have been, he knew a good deal of what was going on at the Conference,
+and he occasionally had insight into documents of a certain interest. He
+was a seemingly honest and enthusiastic Bolshevik, who spread the
+doctrine with apostolic zeal guided by the wisdom of the serpent. He was
+ever ready to comment on events, but before opening his mind fully to a
+stranger on the subject next to his heart, he usually felt his way, and
+only when he had grounds for believing that the fortress was not
+impregnable did he open his batteries. Even among the initiated, few
+would suspect the rôle played by this young proselytizer within one of
+the strongholds of the Conference, so naturally and unobtrusively was
+the work done. I may add that luckily he had no direct intercourse with
+the delegates.
+
+Of all the collectivities whose interests were furthered at the
+Conference, the Jews had perhaps the most resourceful and certainly the
+most influential exponents. There were Jews from Palestine, from Poland,
+Russia, the Ukraine, Rumania, Greece, Britain, Holland, and Belgium; but
+the largest and most brilliant contingent was sent by the United States.
+Their principal mission, with which every fair-minded man sympathized
+heartily, was to secure for their kindred in eastern Europe rights equal
+to those of the populations in whose midst they reside.[4] And to the
+credit of the Poles, Rumanians, and Russians, who were to be constrained
+to remove all the existing disabilities, they enfranchised the Hebrew
+elements spontaneously. But the Western Jews, who championed their
+Eastern brothers, proceeded to demand a further concession which many of
+their own co-religionists hastened to disclaim as dangerous--a kind of
+autonomy which Rumanian, Polish, and Russian statesmen, as well as many
+of their Jewish fellow-subjects, regarded as tantamount to the creation
+of a state within the state. Whether this estimate is true or erroneous,
+the concessions asked for were given, but the supplementary treaties
+insuring the protection of minorities are believed to have little chance
+of being executed, and may, it is feared, provoke manifestations of
+elemental passions in the countries in which they are to be applied.
+
+Twice every day, before and after lunch, one met the "autocrats," the
+world's statesmen whose names were in every mouth--the wise men who
+would have been much wiser than they were if only they had credited
+their friends and opponents with a reasonable measure of political
+wisdom. These individuals, in bowler hats, sweeping past in sumptuous
+motors, as rarely seen on foot as Roman cardinals, were the destroyers
+of thrones, the carvers of continents, the arbiters of empires, the
+fashioners of the new heaven and the new earth--or were they only the
+flies on the wheel of circumstance, to whom the world was unaccountably
+becoming a riddle?
+
+This commingling of civilizations and types brought together in Paris by
+a set of unprecedented conditions was full of interest and instruction
+to the observer privileged to meet them at close quarters. The average
+observer, however, had little chance of conversing with them, for, as
+these foreigners had no common meeting-place, they kept mostly among
+their own folk. Only now and again did three or four members of
+different races, when they chanced to speak some common language, get
+an opportunity of enjoying their leisure together. A friend of mine, a
+highly gifted Frenchman of the fine old type, a descendant of
+Talleyrand, who was born a hundred and fifty years too late, opened his
+hospitable house once a week to the élite of the world, and partially
+met the pressing demand.
+
+To the gaping tourist the Ville Lumière resembled nothing so much as a
+huge world fair, with enormous caravanserais, gigantic booths, gaudy
+merry-go-rounds, squalid taverns, and huge inns. Every place of
+entertainment was crowded, and congregations patiently awaited their
+turn in the street, undeterred by rain or wind or snow, offering
+absurdly high prices for scant accommodation and disheartened at having
+their offers refused. Extortion was rampant and profiteering went
+unpunished. Foreigners, mainly American and British, could be seen
+wandering, portmanteau in hand, from post to pillar, anxiously seeking
+where to lay their heads, and made desperate by failure, fatigue, and
+nightfall. The cost of living which harassed the bulk of the people was
+fast becoming the stumbling-block of governments and the most powerful
+lever of revolutionaries. The chief of the peace armies resided in
+sumptuous hotels, furnished luxuriously in dubious taste, flooded after
+sundown with dazzling light, and filled by day with the buzz of idle
+chatter, the shuffling of feet, the banging of doors, and the ringing of
+bells. Music and dancing enlivened the inmates when their day's toil was
+over and time had to be killed. Thus, within, one could find anxious
+deliberation and warm debate; without, noisy revel and vulgar brawl.
+"Fate's a fiddler; life's a dance."
+
+To few of those visitors did Paris seem what it really was--a nest of
+golden dreams, a mist of memories, a seed-plot of hopes, a storehouse of
+time's menaces.
+
+
+THE PARIS CONFERENCE AND THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA
+
+There were no solemn pageants, no impressive ceremonies, such as those
+that rejoiced the hearts of the Viennese in 1814-15 until the triumphal
+march of the Allied troops.
+
+The Vienna of Congress days was transformed into a paradise of delights
+by a brilliant court which pushed hospitality to the point of
+lavishness. In the burg alone were two emperors, two empresses, four
+kings, one queen, two crown-princes, two archduchesses, and three
+princes. Every day the Emperor's table cost fifty thousand gulden--every
+Congress day cost him ten times that sum. Galaxies of Europe's eminent
+personages flocked to the Austrian capital, taking with them their
+ministers, secretaries, favorites, and "confidential agents." So eager
+were these world-reformers to enjoy themselves that the court did not go
+into mourning for Queen Marie Caroline of Naples, the last of Marie
+Theresa's daughters. Her death was not even announced officially lest it
+should trouble the festivities of the jovial peace-makers!
+
+The Paris of the Conference, on the other hand, was democratic, with a
+strong infusion of plutocracy. It attempted no such brilliant display as
+that which flattered the senses or fired the imagination of the
+Viennese. In 1919 mankind was simpler in its tastes and perhaps less
+esthetic. It is certain that the froth of contemporary frivolity had
+lost its sparkling whiteness and was grown turbid. In Vienna, balls,
+banquets, theatricals, military reviews, followed one another in dizzy
+succession and enabled politicians and adventurers to carry on their
+intrigues and machinations unnoticed by all except the secret police.
+And, as the Congress marked the close of one bloody campaign and ushered
+in another, one might aptly term it the interval between two tragedies.
+For a time it seemed as though this part of the likeness might become
+applicable to the Conference of Paris.
+
+Moving from pleasure to politics, one found strong contrasts as well as
+surprising resemblances between the two peace-making assemblies, and, it
+was assumed, to the advantage of the Paris Conference. Thus, at the
+Austrian Congress, the members, while seemingly united, were pulling
+hard against one another, each individual or group tugging in a
+different direction. The Powers had been compelled by necessity to unite
+against a common enemy and, having worsted him on the battlefield, fell
+to squabbling among themselves in the Council Chamber as soon as they
+set about dividing the booty. In this respect the Paris Conference--the
+world was assured in the beginning--towered aloft above its historic
+predecessor. Men who knew the facts declared repeatedly that the
+delegates to the Quai d'Orsay were just as unanimous, disinterested, and
+single-minded during the armistice as they were through the war.
+Probably they were.
+
+Another interesting point of comparison was supplied by the _dramatis
+personæ_? of both illustrious companies. They were nearly all
+representatives of old states, but there was one exception.
+
+
+THE CONGRESS CHIEF
+
+_Mistrusted, Feared, Humored, and Obeyed_
+
+A relatively new Power took part in the deliberations of the Vienna
+Congress, and, perhaps, because of its loftier intentions, introduced a
+jarring note into the concert of nations. Russia was then a newcomer
+into the European councils; indeed she was hardly yet recognized as
+European. Her gifted Tsar, Alexander I, was an idealist who wanted, not
+so much peace with the vanquished enemy as a complete reform of the
+ordering of the whole world, so that wars should thenceforward be
+abolished and the welfare of mankind be set developing like a sort of
+pacific _perpetuum mobile_. This blessed change, however, was to be
+compassed, not by the peoples or their representatives, but by the
+governments, led by himself and deliberating in secret. At the Paris
+Conference it was even so.
+
+This curious type of public worker--a mixture of the mystical and the
+practical--was the terror of the Vienna delegates. He put spokes in
+everybody's wheel, behaved as the autocrat of the Congress and felt as
+self-complacent as a saint. Countess von Thurheim wrote of him: "He
+mistrusted his environment and let himself be led by others. But he was
+thoroughly good and high-minded and sought after the weal, not merely of
+his own country, but of the whole world. _Son coeur eût embrassé le
+bonheur du monde_." He realized in himself the dreams of the
+philosophers about love for mankind, but their Utopias of human
+happiness were based upon the perfection both of subjects and of
+princes, and, as Alexander could fulfil only one-half of these
+conditions, his work remained unfinished and the poor Emperor died, a
+victim of his high-minded illusions.[5]
+
+The other personages, Metternich in particular, were greatly put out by
+Alexander's presence. They labeled him a marplot who could not and would
+not enter into the spirit of their game, but they dared not offend him.
+Without his brave troops they could not have been victorious and they
+did not know how soon they might need him again, for he represented a
+numerous and powerful people whose economic and military resources
+promised it in time the hegemony of the world. So, while they heartily
+disliked the chief of this new great country, they also feared and,
+therefore, humored him. They all felt that the enemy, although defeated
+and humbled, was not, perhaps, permanently disabled, and might, at any
+moment, rise, phoenix-like and soar aloft again. The great visionary was
+therefore fêted and lauded and raised to a dizzy pedestal by men who, in
+their hearts, set him down as a crank. His words were reverently
+repeated and his smiles recorded and remembered. Hardly any one had the
+bad taste to remark that even this millennial philosopher in the
+statesman's armchair left unsightly flaws in his system for the welfare
+of man. Thus, while favoring equality generally, he obstinately refused
+to concede it to one race, in fact, he would not hear of common fairness
+being meted out to that race. It was the Polish people which was treated
+thus at the Vienna Congress, and, owing to him, Poland's just claims
+were ignored, her indefeasible rights were violated, and the work of the
+peace-makers was botched....
+
+Happily, optimists said, the Paris Conference was organized on a wholly
+different basis. Its members considered themselves mere servants of the
+public--stewards, who had to render an account of their stewardship and
+who therefore went in salutary fear of the electorate at home. This
+check was not felt by the plenipotentiaries in Vienna. Again, everything
+the Paris delegates did was for the benefit of the masses, although most
+of it was done by stealth and unappreciated by them.
+
+The remarkable document which will forever be associated with the name
+of President Wilson was the _clou_ of the Conference. The League of
+Nations scheme seemed destined to change fundamentally the relations of
+peoples toward one another, and the change was expected to begin
+immediately after the Covenant had been voted, signed, and ratified. But
+it was not relished by any government except that of the United States,
+and it was in order to enable the delegates to devise such a wording of
+the Covenant as would not bind them to an obnoxious principle or commit
+their electorates to any irksome sacrifice, that the peace treaty with
+Germany and the liquidation of the war were postponed. This delay caused
+profound dissatisfaction in continental Europe, but it had the
+incidental advantage of bringing home to the victorious nations the
+marvelous recuperative powers of the German race. It also gave time for
+the drafting of a compact so admirably tempered to the human weaknesses
+of the rival signatory nations, whose passions were curbed only by sheer
+exhaustion, that all their spokesmen saw their way to sign it. There was
+something almost genial in the simplicity of the means by which the
+eminent promoter of the Covenant intended to reform the peoples of the
+world. He gave them credit for virtues which would have rendered the
+League unnecessary and displayed indulgence for passions which made its
+speedy realization hopeless, thus affording a _superfluous_ illustration
+of the truth that the one deadly evil to be shunned by those who would
+remain philanthropists is a practical knowledge of men, and of the
+truism that the statesman's bane is an inordinate fondness for abstract
+ideas.
+
+One of the decided triumphs of the Paris Peace Conference over the
+Vienna Congress lay in the amazing speed with which it got through the
+difficult task of solving offhandedly some of the most formidable
+problems that ever exercised the wit of man. One of the Paris journals
+contained the following remarkable announcement: "The actual time
+consumed in constituting the League of Nations, which it is hoped will
+be the means of keeping peace in the world, was thirty hours. This
+doesn't seem possible, but it is true."[6]
+
+How provokingly slowly the dawdlers of Vienna moved in comparison may
+be read in the chronicles of that time. The peoples hoped and believed
+that the Congress would perform its tasks in a short period, but it was
+only after nine months' gestation and sore travail that it finally
+brought forth its offspring--a mountain of Acts which have been
+moldering in dust ever since.
+
+The Wilsonian Covenant, which bound together thirty-two states--a league
+intended to be incomparably more powerful than was the Holy
+Alliance--will take rank as the most rapid improvisation of its kind in
+diplomatic history.
+
+A comparison between the features common to the two international
+legislatures struck many observers as even more reassuring than the
+contrast between their differences. Both were placed in like
+circumstances, faced with bewildering and fateful problems to which an
+exhausting war, just ended, had imparted sharp actuality. One of the
+delegates to the Vienna Congress wrote:
+
+"Everything had to be recast and made new, the destinies of Germany,
+Italy, and Poland settled, a solid groundwork laid for the future, and a
+commercial system to be outlined."[7] Might not those very words have
+been penned at any moment during the Paris Conference with equal
+relevance to its undertakings?
+
+Or these: "However easily and gracefully the fine old French wit might
+turn the topics of the day, people felt vaguely beneath it all that
+these latter times were very far removed from the departed era and, in
+many respects, differed from it to an incomprehensible degree."[8] And
+the veteran Prince de Ligne remarked to the Comte de la Garde: "From
+every side come cries of Peace, Justice, Equilibrium, Indemnity.... Who
+will evolve order from this chaos and set a dam to the stream of
+claims?" How often have the same cries and queries been uttered in
+Paris?
+
+When the first confidential talks began at the Vienna Congress, the same
+difficulties arose as were encountered over a century later in Paris
+about the number of states that were entitled to have representatives
+there. At the outset, the four Cabinet Ministers of Austria, Russia,
+England, and Prussia kept things to themselves, excluding vanquished
+France and the lesser Powers. Some time afterward, however, Talleyrand,
+the spokesman of the worsted nation, accompanied by the Portuguese
+Minister, Labrador, protested vehemently against the form and results of
+the deliberations. At one sitting passion rose to white heat and
+Talleyrand spoke of quitting the Congress altogether, whereupon a
+compromise was struck and eight nations received the right to be
+represented. In this way the Committee of Eight was formed.[9] In Paris
+discussion became to the full as lively, and on the first Saturday, when
+the representatives of Belgium, Greece, Poland, and the other small
+states delivered impassioned speeches against the attitude of the Big
+Five they were maladroitly answered by M. Clemenceau, who relied, as the
+source from which emanated the superior right of the Great Powers, upon
+the twelve million soldiers they had placed in the field. It was
+unfortunate that force should thus confer privileges at a Peace
+Conference which was convoked to end the reign of force and privilege.
+In Vienna it was different, but so were the times.
+
+Many of the entries and comments of the chroniclers of 1815 read like
+extracts from newspapers of the first three months of 1919. "About
+Poland, they are fighting fiercely and, down to the present, with no
+decisive result," writes Count Carl von Nostitz, a Russian military
+observer.... "Concerning Germany and her future federative constitution,
+nothing has yet been done, absolutely nothing."[10] Here is a gloss
+written by Countess Elise von Bernstorff, wife of the Danish Minister:
+"Most comical was the mixture of the very different individuals who all
+fancied they had work to do at the Congress ... One noticed noblemen and
+scholars who had never transacted any business before, but now looked
+extremely consequential and took on an imposing bearing, and professors
+who mentally set down their university chairs in the center of a
+listening Congress, but soon turned peevish and wandered hither and
+thither, complaining that they could not, for the life of them, make out
+what was going on." Again: "It would have been to the interest of all
+Europe--rightly understood--to restore Poland. This matter may be
+regarded as the most important of all. None other could touch so nearly
+the policy of all the Powers represented,"[11] wrote the Bavarian
+Premier, Graf von Montgelas, just as the Entente press was writing in
+the year 1919.
+
+The plenipotentiaries of the Paris Conference had for a short period
+what is termed a good press, and a rigorous censorship which never erred
+on the side of laxity, whereas those of the Vienna Congress were
+criticized without truth. For example, the population of Vienna, we are
+told by Bavaria's chief delegate, was disappointed when it discerned in
+those whom it was wont to worship as demigods, only mortals. "The
+condition of state affairs," writes Von Gentz, one of the clearest heads
+at the Congress, "is weird, but it is not, as formerly, in consequence
+of the crushing weight that is hung around our necks, but by reason of
+the mediocrity and clumsiness of nearly all the workers."[12] One
+consequence of this state of things was the constant upspringing of new
+and unforeseen problems, until, as time went on, the bewildered
+delegates were literally overwhelmed. "So many interests cross each
+other here," comments Count Carl von Nostitz, "which the peoples want to
+have mooted at the long-wished-for League of Nations, that they fall
+into the oddest shapes.... Look wheresoever you will, you are faced with
+incongruity and confusion.... Daily the claims increase as though more
+and more evil spirits were issuing forth from hell at the invocation of
+a sorcerer who has forgotten the spell by which to lay them."[13] It was
+of the Vienna Congress that those words were written.
+
+In certain trivial details, too, the likeness between the two great
+peace assemblies is remarkable. For example, Lord Castlereagh, who
+represented England at Vienna, had to return to London to meet
+Parliament, thus inconveniencing the august assembly, as Mr. Wilson and
+Mr. George were obliged to quit Paris, with a like effect. Before
+Castlereagh left the scene of his labors, uncharitable judgments were
+passed on him for allowing home interests to predominate over his
+international activities.
+
+The destinies of Poland and of Germany, which were then about to become
+a confederation, occupied the forefront of interest at the Congress as
+they did at the Conference. A similarity is noticeable also in the state
+of Europe generally, then and now. "The uncertain condition of all
+Europe," writes a close observer in 1815, "is appalling for the peoples:
+every country has mobilized ... and the luckless inhabitants are crushed
+by taxation. On every side people complain that this state of peace is
+worse than war ... individuals who despised Napoleon say that under him
+the suffering was not greater ... every country is sapping its own
+prosperity, so that financial conditions, in lieu of improving since
+Napoleon's collapse, are deteriorating every where."[14]
+
+In 1815, as in 1919, the world pacifiers had their court painters, and
+Isabey, the French portraitist, was as much run after as was Sir William
+Orpen in 1919. In some respects, however, there was a difference.
+"Isabey," said the Prince de Ligne, "is the Congress become painter.
+Come! His talk is as clever as his brush." But Sir William Orpen was so
+absorbed by his work that he never uttered a word during a sitting. The
+contemporaries of the Paris Conference were luckier than their forebears
+of the Vienna Congress--for they could behold the lifelike features of
+their benefactors in a cinema. "It is understood," wrote a Paris
+journal, "that the necessity of preserving a permanent record of the
+personalities and proceedings at the Peace Conference has not been lost
+sight of. Very shortly a series of cinematographic films of the
+principal delegates and of the commissions is to be made on behalf of
+the British government, so that, side by side with the Treaty of Paris,
+posterity will be able to study the physiognomy of the men who made
+it."[15] In no case is it likely to forget them.
+
+So the great heart of Paris, even to a greater degree than that of
+Vienna over a hundred years ago, beat and throbbed to cosmic measures
+while its brain worked busily at national, provincial, and economic
+questions.
+
+Side by side with the good cheer prevalent that kept the eminent
+lawgivers of the Vienna Congress in buoyant spirits went the cost of
+living, prohibitive outside the charmed circle in consequence of the
+high and rising prices.
+
+"Every article," writes the Comte de la Garde, one of the chroniclers
+of the Vienna Congress, "but more especially fuel, soared to incredible
+heights. The Austrian government found it necessary, in consequence, to
+allow all its officials supplements to their salaries and
+indemnities."[16] In Paris things were worse. Greed and disorganization
+combined to make of the French capital a vast fleecing-machine. The sums
+of money expended by foreigners in France during all that time and a
+much longer period is said to have exceeded the revenue from foreign
+trade. There was hardly any coal, and even the wood fuel gave out now
+and again. Butter was unknown. Wine was bad and terribly dear. A public
+conveyance could not be obtained unless one paid "double, treble, and
+quintuple fares and a gratuity." The demand was great and the supply
+sometimes abundant, but the authorities contrived to keep the two apart
+systematically.
+
+THE COST OF LIVING
+
+In no European country did the cost of living attain the height it
+reached in France in the year 1919. Not only luxuries and comforts, but
+some of life's necessaries, were beyond the reach of home-coming
+soldiers, and this was currently ascribed to the greed of merchants, the
+disorganization of transports, the strikes of workmen, and the
+supineness of the authorities, whose main care was to keep the nation
+tranquil by suppressing one kind of news, spreading another, and giving
+way to demands which could no longer be denied. There was another and
+more effectual cause: the war had deprived the world of twelve million
+workmen and a thousand milliard francs' worth of goods. But of this
+people took no account. The demobilized soldiers who for years had been
+well fed and relieved of solicitude for the morrow returned home,
+flushed with victory, proud of the commanding position which they had
+won in the state, and eager to reap the rewards of their sacrifices. But
+they were bitterly disillusioned. They expected a country fit for heroes
+to live in, and what awaited them was a condition of things to which
+only a defeated people could be asked to resign itself. The food to
+which the poilu had, for nearly five years, been accustomed at the front
+was become, since the armistice, the exclusive monopoly of the
+capitalist or the _nouveau-riche_ in the rear. To obtain a ration of
+sugar he or his wife had to stand in a long queue for hours, perhaps go
+away empty-handed and return on the following morning. When his
+sugar-card was eventually handed to him he had again to stand in line
+outside the grocer's door and, when his turn came to enter it, was
+frequently told that the supply was exhausted and would not be
+replenished for a week or longer. Yet his newspaper informed him that
+there was plenty of colonial sugar, ready for shipment, but forbidden by
+the authorities to be imported into France. I met many poor people from
+the provinces and some resident in Paris who for four years had not once
+eaten a morsel of sugar, although the well-to-do were always amply
+supplied. In many places even bread was lacking, while biscuits,
+shortbread, and fancy cakes, available at exorbitant prices, were
+exhibited in the shop windows. Tokens of unbridled luxury and glaring
+evidences of wanton waste were flaunted daily and hourly in the faces of
+the humbled men who had saved the nation and wanted the nation to
+realize the fact. Lucullan banquets, opulent lunches, all-night dances,
+high revels of an exotic character testified to the peculiar psychic
+temper as well as to the material prosperity of the passive elements of
+the community and stung the poilus to the quick. "But what justice,"
+these asked, "can the living hope for, when the glorious dead are so
+soon forgotten?" For one ghastly detail remains to complete a picture to
+which Boccaccio could hardly have done justice. "While all this wild
+dissipation was going on among the moneyed class in the capital the
+corpses of many gallant soldiers lay unburied and uncovered on the
+shell-plowed fields of battle near Rheims, on the road to
+Neuville-sur-Margival and other places--sights pointed out to visitors
+to tickle their interest in the grim spectacle of war. In vain
+individuals expostulated and the press protested. As recently as May
+persons known to me--my English secretary was one--looked with the
+fascination of horror on the bodies of men who, when they breathed, were
+heroes. They lay there where they had fallen and agonized, and now, in
+the heat of the May sun, were moldering in dust away--a couple of hours'
+motor drive from Paris...."[17]
+
+The soldiers mused and brooded. Since the war began they had undergone a
+great psychic transformation. Stationed at the very center of a
+sustained fiery crisis, they lost their feeling of acquiescence in the
+established order and in the place of their own class therein. In the
+sight of death they had been stirred to their depths and volcanic fires
+were found burning there. Resignation had thereupon made way for a
+rebellious mood and rebellion found sustenance everywhere. The poilu
+demobilized retained his military spirit, nay, he carried about with him
+the very atmosphere of the trenches. He had rid himself of the sentiment
+of fear and the faculty of reverence went with it. His outlook on the
+world had changed completely and his inner sense reversed the social
+order which he beheld, as the eye reverses the object it apprehends.
+Respect for persons and institutions survived in relatively few
+instances the sacredness of life and the fear of death. He was
+impressed, too, with the all-importance of his class, which he had
+learned during the war to look upon as the Atlas on whose shoulders rest
+the Republic and its empire overseas. He had saved the state in war and
+he remained in peace-time its principal mainstay. With his value as
+measured by these priceless services he compared the low estimate put
+upon him by those who continued to identify themselves with the
+state--the over-fed, lazy, self-seeking money-getters who reserved to
+themselves the fruits of his toil.
+
+One can well imagine--I have actually heard--the poilus putting their
+case somewhat as follows: "So long as we filled the gap between the
+death-dealing Teutons and our privileged compatriots we were well fed,
+warmly clad, made much of. During the war we were raised to the rank of
+pillars of the state, saviors of the nation, arbiters of the world's
+destinies. So long as we faced the enemy's guns nothing was too good for
+us. We had meat, white bread, eggs, wine, sugar in plenty. But, now that
+we have accomplished our task, we have fallen from our high estate and
+are expected to become pariahs anew. We are to work on for the old gang
+and the class from which it comes, until they plunge us into another
+war. For what? What is the reward for what we have achieved, what the
+incentive for what we are expected to accomplish? We cannot afford as
+much food as before the war, nor of the same quality. We are in want
+even of necessaries. Is it for this that we have fought? A thousand
+times no. If we saved our nation we can also save our class. We have the
+will and the power. Why should we not exert them?" The purpose of the
+section of the community to which these demobilized soldiers mainly
+belonged grew visibly definite as consciousness of their collective
+force grew and became keener. Occasionally it manifested itself openly
+in symptomatic spurts.
+
+One dismal night, at a brilliant ball in a private mansion, a select
+company of both sexes, representatives of the world of rank and fashion,
+were enjoying themselves to their hearts' content, while their
+chauffeurs watched and waited outside in the cold, dark streets, chewing
+the cud of bitter reflections. Between the hours of three and four in
+the morning the latter held an open-air meeting, and adopted a
+resolution which they carried out forthwith. A delegation was sent
+upstairs to give notice to the light-hearted guests that they must be
+down in their respective motors within ten minutes on pain of not
+finding any conveyances to take them home. The mutineers were nearly all
+private chauffeurs in the employ of the personages to whom they sent
+this indelicate ultimatum. The resourceful host, however, warded off the
+danger and placated the rebellious drivers by inviting them to an
+improvised little banquet of _pâtés de foie gras_, dry champagne, and
+other delicacies. The general temper of the proletariat remained
+unchanged. Tales of rebellion still more disquieting were current in
+Paris, which, whether true or false, were aids to a correct diagnosis of
+the situation.
+
+A dancing mania broke out during the armistice, which was not confined
+to the French capital. In Berlin, Rome, London, it aroused the
+indignation of those whose sympathy with the spiritual life of their
+respective nations was still a living force. It would seem, however, to
+be the natural reaction produced by a tremendous national calamity,
+under which the mainspring of the collective mind temporarily gives way
+and the psychical equilibrium is upset. Disillusion, despondency, and
+contempt for the passions that lately stirred them drive the people to
+seek relief in the distractions of pleasures, among which dancing is
+perhaps one of the mildest. It was so in Paris at the close of the long
+period of stress which ended with the rise of Napoleon. Dancing then
+went on uninterruptedly despite national calamities and private
+hardships. "Luxury," said Victor Hugo, "is a necessity of great states
+and great civilizations, but there are moments when it must not be
+exhibited to the masses." There was never a conjuncture when the danger
+of such an exhibition was greater or more imminent than during the
+armistice on the Continent--for it was the period of incubation
+preceding the outbreak of the most malignant social disease to which
+civilized communities are subject.
+
+The festivities and amusements in the higher circles of Paris recall the
+glowing descriptions of the fret and fever of existence in the Austrian
+capital during the historic Vienna Congress a hundred years ago. Dancing
+became epidemic and shameless. In some salons the forms it took were
+repellent. One of my friends, the Marquis X., invited to a dance at the
+house of a plutocrat, was so shocked by what he saw there that he left
+almost at once in disgust. Madame Machin, the favorite teacher of the
+choreographic art, gave lessons in the new modes of dancing, and her fee
+was three hundred francs a lesson. In a few weeks she netted, it is
+said, over one hundred thousand francs.
+
+The Prince de Ligne said of the Vienna Congress: "Le Congrès danse mais
+il ne marche pas." The French press uttered similar criticisms of the
+Paris Conference, when its delegates were leisurely picking up
+information about the countries whose affairs they were forgathered to
+settle. The following paragraph from a Paris journal--one of many
+such--describes a characteristic scene:
+
+     The domestic staff at the Hôtel Majestic, the headquarters of the
+     British Delegation at the Peace Conference, held a very successful
+     dance on Monday evening, attended by many members of the British
+     Mission and Staff. The ballroom was a medley of plenipotentiaries
+     and chambermaids, generals and orderlies, Foreign Office attachés
+     and waitresses. All the latest forms of dancing were to be seen,
+     including the jazz and the hesitation waltz, and, according to the
+     opinion of experts, the dancing reached an unusually high standard
+     of excellence. Major Lloyd George, one of the Prime Minister's
+     sons, was among the dancers. Mr. G.H. Roberts, the Food Controller,
+     made a very happy little speech to the hotel staff.[18]
+
+The following extract is also worth quoting:
+
+     A packed house applauded 'Hullo, Paris!' from the rise of the
+     curtain to the finale at the new Palace Theater (in the rue
+     Mogador), Paris, last night.... President Wilson, Mr. A.J. Balfour,
+     and Lord Derby all remained until the fall of the curtain at 12.15
+     ... and ... were given cordial cheers from the dispersing audience
+     as they passed through the line of Municipal Guards, who presented
+     arms as the distinguished visitors made their way to their
+     motor-cars.[19]
+
+Juxtaposed with the grief, discontent, and physical hardships prevailing
+among large sections of the population which had provided most of the
+holocausts for the Moloch of War, the ostentatious gaiety of the
+prosperous few might well seem a challenge. And so it was construed by
+the sullen lack-alls who prowled about the streets of Paris and told one
+another that their turn would come soon.
+
+When the masses stare at the wealthy with the eyes one so often noticed
+during the eventful days of the armistice one may safely conclude, in
+the words of Victor Hugo, that "it is not thoughts that are harbored by
+those brains; it is events."
+
+By the laboring classes the round of festivities, the theatrical
+representations, the various negro and other foreign dances, and the
+less-refined pleasures of the world's blithest capital were watched with
+ill-concealed resentment. One often witnessed long lines of motor-cars
+driving up to a theater, fashionable restaurant, or concert-hall,
+through the opening portals of which could be caught a glimpse of the
+dazzling illumination within, while, a few yards farther off, queues of
+anemic men and women were waiting to be admitted to the shop where milk
+or eggs or fuel could be had at the relatively low prices fixed by the
+state. The scraps of conversation that reached one's ears were far from
+reassuring.
+
+I have met on the same afternoon the international world-regenerators,
+smiling, self-complacent, or preoccupied, flitting by in their motors to
+the Quai d'Orsay, and also quiet, determined-looking men, trudging along
+in the snow and slush, wending their way toward their labor
+conventicles, where they, too, were drafting laws for a new and strange
+era, and I voluntarily fell to gaging the distance that sundered the two
+movements, and asked myself which of the inchoate legislations would
+ultimately be accepted by the world. The question since then has been
+partially answered. As time passed, the high cost of living was
+universally ascribed, as we saw, to the insatiable greed of the
+middlemen and the sluggishness of the authorities, whose incapacity to
+organize and unwillingness to take responsibility increased and augured
+ill of the future of the country unless men of different type should in
+the meanwhile take the reins. Practically nothing was done to ameliorate
+the carrying power of the railways, to utilize the waterways, to employ
+the countless lorries and motor-vans that were lying unused, to
+purchase, convey, and distribute the provisions which were at the
+disposal of the government. Various ministerial departments would
+dispute as to which should take over consignments of meat or vegetables,
+and while reports, notes, and replies were being leisurely written and
+despatched, weeks or months rolled by, during which the foodstuffs
+became unfit for human consumption. In the middle of May, to take but
+one typical instance, 2,401 eases of lard and 1,418 cases of salt meat
+were left rotting in the docks at Marseilles. In the storage magazines
+at Murumas, 6,000 tons of salt meat were spoiled because it was nobody's
+business to remove and distribute them. Eighteen refrigerator-cars
+loaded with chilled meat arrived in Paris from Havre in the month of
+June. When they were examined at the cold-storage station it was
+discovered that, the doors having been negligently left open, the
+contents of the cases had to be destroyed.[20] From Belgium 108,000
+kilos of potatoes were received and allowed to lie so long at one of the
+stations that they went bad and had to be thrown away. When these and
+kindred facts were published, the authorities, who had long been silent,
+became apologetic, but remained throughout inactive. In other countries
+the conditions, if less accentuated, were similar.
+
+One of the dodges to which unscrupulous dealers resorted with impunity
+and profit was particularly ingenious. At the central markets, whenever
+any food is condemned, the public-health authorities seize it and pay
+the owner full value at the current market rates. The marketmen often
+turned this equitable arrangement to account by keeping back large
+quantities of excellent vegetables, for which the population was
+yearning, and when they rotted and had to be carted away, received their
+money value from the Public Health Department, thus attaining their
+object, which was to lessen the supply and raise the prices on what they
+kept for sale.[21] The consequence was that Paris suffered from a
+continual dearth of vegetables and fruits. Statistics published by the
+United States government showed the maximum increase in the cost of
+living in four countries as follows: France, 235 per cent.; Britain, 135
+per cent.; Canada, 115 per cent.; and the United States, 107 per
+cent.[22] But since these data were published prices continued to rise
+until, at the beginning of July, they had attained the same level as
+those of Russia on the eve of the revolution there. In Paris, Lyons,
+Marseilles, the prices of various kinds of fish, shell-fish, jams,
+apples, had gone up 500 per cent., cabbage over 900 per cent., and
+celeriac 2,000 per cent. Anthracite coal, which in the year 1914 cost 56
+francs a ton, could not be purchased in 1919 for less than 360 francs.
+
+The restaurants and hotels waged a veritable war of plunder on their
+guests, most of whom, besides the scandalous prices, which bore no
+reasonable relation to the cost of production, had to pay the government
+luxury tax of 10 per cent, over and above. A well-known press
+correspondent, who entertained seven friends to a simple dinner in a
+modest restaurant, was charged 500 francs, 90 francs being set down for
+one chicken, and 28 for three cocktails. The _maître d'hotel_, in
+response to the pressman's expostulations, assured him that these
+charges left the proprietor hardly any profit. As it chanced, however,
+the journalist had just been professionally investigating the cost of
+living, and had the data at his finger-ends. As he displayed his
+intimate knowledge to his host, and obviously knew where to look for
+redress, he had the satisfaction of obtaining a rebate of 150
+francs.[23]
+
+Nothing could well be more illuminating than the following curious
+picture contributed by a journal whose representative made a special
+inquiry into the whole question of the cost of living.[24] "I was dining
+the other day at a restaurant of the Bois de Boulogne. There was a long
+queue of people waiting at the door, some sixty persons all told, mostly
+ladies, who pressed one another closely. From time to time a voice
+cried: 'Two places,' whereupon a door was held opened, two patients
+entered, and then it was loudly slammed, smiting some of those who stood
+next to it. At last my turn came, and I went in. The guests were sitting
+so close to one another that they could not move their elbows. Only the
+hands and fingers were free. There sat women half naked, and men whose
+voices and dress betrayed newly acquired wealth. Not one of them
+questioned the bills which were presented. And what bills! The _hors
+d'oeuvre_, 20 francs. Fish, 90 francs. A chicken, 150 francs. Three
+cigars, 45 francs. The repast came to 250 francs a person at the very
+lowest." Another journalist commented upon this story as follows: "Since
+the end of last June," he said, "445,000 quintals of vegetables, the
+superfluous output of the Palatinate, were offered to France at nominal
+prices. And the cost of vegetables here at home is painfully notorious.
+Well, the deal was accepted by the competent Commission in Paris.
+Everything was ready for despatching the consignment. The necessary
+trains were secured. All that was wanting was the approval of the French
+authorities, who were notified. Their answer has not yet been given and
+already the vegetables are rotting in the magazines."
+
+The authorities pleaded the insufficiency of rolling stock, but the
+press revealed the hollowness of the excuse and the responsibility of
+those who put it forward, and showed that thousands of wagons, lorries,
+and motor-vans were idle, deteriorating in the open air. For instance,
+between Cognac and Jarnac the state railways had left about one
+thousand wagons unused, which were fast becoming unusable.[25] And this
+was but one of many similar instances.
+
+It would be hard to find a parallel in history for the rapacity combined
+with unscrupulousness and ingenuity displayed during that fateful period
+by dishonest individuals, and left unpunished by the state. Doubtless
+France was not the only country in which greed was insatiable and its
+manifestations disastrous. From other parts of the Continent there also
+came bitter complaints of the ruthlessness of profiteers, and in Italy
+their heartless vampirism contributed materially to the revolutionary
+outbreaks throughout that country in July. Even Britain was not exempt
+from the scourge. But the presence of whole armies of well-paid,
+easy-going foreign troops and officials on French soil stimulated greed
+by feeding it, and also their complaints occasionally bared it to the
+world. The impression it left on certain units of the American forces
+was deplorable. When United States soldiers who had long been stationed
+in a French town were transferred to Germany, where charges were low,
+the revulsion of feeling among the straightforward, honest Yankees was
+complete and embarrassing. And by way of keeping it within the bounds of
+political orthodoxy, they were informed that the Germans had conspired
+to hoodwink them by selling at undercost prices, in order to turn them
+against the French. It was an insidious form of German propaganda!
+
+On the other hand, the experience of British and American warriors in
+France sometimes happened to be so unfortunate that many of them gave
+credence to the absurd and mischievous legend that their governments
+were made to pay rent for the trenches in which their troops fought and
+died, and even for the graves in which the slain were buried.
+
+An acquaintance of mine, an American delegate, wanted an abode to
+himself during the Conference, and, having found one suitable for which
+fifteen to twenty-five thousand francs a year were deemed a fair rent,
+he inquired the price, and the proprietor, knowing that he had to do
+with a really wealthy American, answered, "A quarter of a million
+francs." Subsequently the landlord sent to ask whether the distinguished
+visitor would take the place; but the answer he received ran, "No, I
+have too much self-respect."
+
+Hotel prices in Paris, beginning from December, 1918, were prohibitive
+to all but the wealthy. Yet they were raised several times during the
+Conference. Again, despite the high level they had reached by the
+beginning of July, they were actually quintupled in some hotels and
+doubled in many for about a week at the time of the peace celebrations.
+Rents for flats and houses soared proportionately.
+
+One explanation of the fantastic rise in rents is characteristic. During
+the war and the armistice, the government--and not only the French
+government--proclaimed a moratorium, and no rents at all were paid, in
+consequence of which many house-owners were impoverished and others
+actually beggared. And it was with a view to recoup themselves for these
+losses that they fleeced their tenants, French and foreign, as soon as
+the opportunity presented itself. An amusing incident arising out of the
+moratorium came to light in the course of a lawsuit. An ingenious
+tenant, smitten with the passion of greed, not content with occupying
+his flat without paying rent, sublet it at a high figure to a man who
+paid him well and in advance, but by mischance set fire to the place and
+died. Thereupon the _tenant_ demanded and received a considerable sum
+from the insurance company in which the defunct occupant had had to
+insure the flat and its contents. He then entered an action at law
+against the proprietor of the house for the value of the damage caused
+by the fire, and he won his case. The unfortunate owner was condemned to
+pay the sum claimed, and also the costs of the action.[26] But he could
+not recover his rent.
+
+Disorganization throughout France, and particularly in Paris, verged on
+the border of chaos. Every one felt its effects, but none so severely as
+the men who had won the war. The work of demobilization, which began
+soon after the armistice, but was early interrupted, proceeded at
+snail-pace. The homecoming soldiers sent hundreds of letters to the
+newspapers, complaining of the wearisome delays on the journey and the
+sharp privations which they were needlessly forced to endure. Thus,
+whereas they took but twenty-eight hours to travel from Hanover to
+Cologne--the lines being German, and therefore relatively well
+organized--they were no less than a fortnight on the way between Cologne
+and Marseilles.[27] During the German section of the journey they were
+kept warm, supplied with hot soup and coffee twice daily; but during the
+second half, which lasted fourteen days, they received no beverage, hot
+or cold. "The men were cared for much less than horses." That these
+poilus turned against the government and the class responsible for this
+gross neglect was hardly surprising. One of them wrote: "They [the
+authorities] are frightened of Bolshevism. But we who have not got home,
+we all await its coming. I don't, of course, mean the real Bolshevism,
+but even that kind which they paint in such repellent hues."[28] The
+conditions of telegraphic and postal communications were on a par with
+everything else. There was no guarantee that a message paid for would
+even be sent by the telegraph-operators, or, if withheld, that the
+sender would be apprised of its suppression. The war arrangements were
+retained during the armistice. And they were superlatively bad. A
+committee appointed by the Chamber of Deputies to inquire into the
+matter officially, reported that,[29] at the Paris Telegraph Bureau
+alone, 40,000 despatches were held back every day--40,000 a day, or
+58,400,000 in four years! And from the capital alone. The majority of
+them were never delivered, and the others were distributed after great
+delay. The despatches which were retained were, in the main, thrown into
+a basket, and, when the accumulation had become too great, were
+destroyed. The Control Section never made any inquiry, and neither the
+senders nor those to whom the despatches were addressed were ever
+informed.[30] Even important messages of neutral ambassadors in Rome and
+London fell under the ban. The recklessness of these censors, who ceased
+even to read what they destroyed, was such that they held up and made
+away with state orders transmitted by the great munitions factories, and
+one of these was constrained to close down because it was unable to
+obtain certain materials in time.
+
+The French Ambassador in Switzerland reported that, owing to these
+holocausts, important messages from that country, containing orders for
+the French national loan, never reached their destination, in
+consequence of which the French nation lost from ten to twenty million
+francs. And even the letters and telegrams that were actually passed
+were so carelessly handled that many of them were lost on the way or
+delayed until they became meaningless to the addressee. So, for
+instance, an official letter despatched by the Minister of Commerce to
+the Minister of Finance in Paris was sent to Calcutta, where the French
+Consul-General came across it, and had it directed back to Paris. The
+correspondent of the _Echo de Paris_, who was sent to Switzerland by his
+journal, was forbidden by law to carry more than one thousand francs
+over the frontier, nor was the management of the journal permitted to
+forward to him more than two hundred francs at a time. And when a
+telegram was given up in Paris, crediting him with two hundred francs,
+it was stopped by the censor. Eleven days were let go by without
+informing the persons concerned. When the administrator of the journal
+questioned the chief censor, he declined responsibility, having had
+nothing to do with the matter, but he indicated the Central Telegraph
+Control as the competent department. There, too, however, they were
+innocent, having never heard of the suppression. It took another day to
+elicit the fact that the economic section of the War Ministry was alone
+answerable for the decision. The indefatigable manager of the _Echo de
+Paris_ applied to the department in question, but only to learn that it,
+too, was without any knowledge of what had happened, but it promised to
+find out. Soon afterward it informed the zealous manager that the
+department which had given the order could only be the Exchange
+Commission of the Ministry of Finances. And during all the time the
+correspondent was in Zurich without money to pay for telegrams or to
+settle his hotel and restaurant bills.[31]
+
+The Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself, in a report on the whole
+subject, characterized the section of Telegraphic Control as "an organ
+of confusion and disorder which has engendered extraordinary abuses, and
+risked compromising the government seriously."[32] It did not merely
+risk, it actually went far to compromise the government and the entire
+governing class as well.
+
+It looked as though the rulers of France were still unconsciously guided
+by the maxim of Richelieu, who wrote in his testament, "If the peoples
+were too comfortable there would be no keeping them to the rules of
+duty." The more urgent the need of resourcefulness and guidance, the
+greater were the listlessness and confusion. "There is neither unity of
+conduct," wrote a press organ of the masses, "nor co-ordination of the
+Departments of War, Public Works, Revictualing, Transports. All these
+services commingle, overlap, clash, and paralyze one another. There is
+no method. Thus, whereas France has coffee enough to last her a
+twelvemonth, she has not sufficient fuel for a week. Scruples, too, are
+wanting, as are punishments; everywhere there is a speculator who offers
+his purse, and an official, a station-master, or a subaltern to stretch
+out his hand.... Shortsightedness, disorder, waste, the frittering away
+of public moneys and irresponsibility: that is the balance...."[33]
+
+That the spectacle of the country sinking in this administrative
+quagmire was not conducive to the maintenance of confidence in its
+ruling classes can well be imagined. On all sides voices were uplifted,
+not merely against the Cabinet, whose members were assumed to be
+actuated by patriotic motives and guided by their own lights, but
+against the whole class from which they sprang, and not in France only,
+but throughout Europe. Nothing, it was argued, could be worse than what
+these leaders had brought upon the country, and a change from the
+bourgeoisie to the proletariat could not well be inaugurated at a more
+favorable conjuncture.
+
+In truth the bourgeoisie were often as impatient of the restraints and
+abuses as the homecoming poilu. The middle class during the armistice
+was subjected to some of the most galling restraints that only the war
+could justify. They were practically bereft of communications. To use
+the telegraph, the post, the cable, or the telephone was for the most
+part an exhibition of childish faith, which generally ended in the loss
+of time and money.
+
+This state of affairs called for an immediate and drastic remedy, for,
+so long as it persisted, it irritated those whom it condemned to
+avoidable hardship, and their name was legion. It was also part of an
+almost imperceptible revolutionary process similar to that which was
+going on in several other countries for transferring wealth and
+competency from one class to another and for goading into rebellion
+those who had nothing to lose by "violent change in the politico-social
+ordering." The government, whose powers were concentrated in the hands
+of M. Clemenceau, had little time to attend to these grievances. For its
+main business was the re-establishment of peace. What it did not fully
+realize was the gravity of the risks involved. For it was on the cards
+that the utmost it could achieve at the Conference toward the
+restoration of peace might be outweighed and nullified by the
+consequences of what it was leaving undone and unattempted at home. At
+no time during the armistice was any constructive policy elaborated in
+any of the Allied countries. Rhetorical exhortations to keep down
+expenditure marked the high-water level of ministerial endeavor there.
+
+The strikes called by the revolutionary organizations whose aim was the
+subversion of the regime under which those monstrosities flourished at
+last produced an effect on the parliament. One day in July the French
+Chamber left the Cabinet in a minority by proposing the following
+resolution: "The Chamber, noting that the cost of living in Belgium has
+diminished by a half and in England by a fourth since the armistice,
+while it has continually increased in France since that date, judges the
+government's economic policy by the results obtained and passes to the
+order of the day."[34]
+
+Shortly afterward the same Chamber recanted and gave the Cabinet a
+majority. In Great Britain, too, the House of Commons put pressure on
+the government, which at last was forced to act.
+
+On the other hand, extravagance was systematically encouraged everywhere
+by the shortsighted measures which the authorities adopted and
+maintained as well as by the wanton waste promoted or tolerated by the
+incapacity of their representatives. In France the moratorium and
+immunity from taxation gave a fillip to recklessness. People who had
+hoarded their earnings before the war, now that they were dispensed from
+paying rent and relieved of fair taxes, paid out money ungrudgingly for
+luxuries and then struck for higher salaries and wages.
+
+Even the Deputies of the Chamber, which did nothing to mitigate the evil
+complained of, manifested a desire to have their own salaries--six
+hundred pounds a year--augmented proportionately to the increased cost
+of living; but in view of the headstrong current of popular opinion
+against parliamentarism the government deemed it impolitic to raise the
+point at that conjuncture.
+
+Most of the working-men's demands in France as in Britain were granted,
+but the relief they promised was illusory, for prices still went up,
+leaving the recipients of the relief no better off. And as the wages
+payable for labor are limited, whereas prices may ascend to any height,
+the embittered laborer fancied he could better his lot by an appeal to
+the force which his organization wielded. The only complete solution of
+the problem, he was assured, was to be found in the supersession of the
+governing classes and the complete reconstruction of the social fabric
+on wholly new foundations.[35] And some of the leaders rashly declared
+that they were unable to discern the elements of any other.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Cf. _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), March 12,1919.
+
+[2] On December 18, 1918.
+
+[3] "With what little wisdom the world is governed."
+
+[4] "Mr. Bernard Richards, Secretary of the delegation from the American
+Jewish Congress to the Peace Conference, expressed much satisfaction
+with the work done in Paris for the protection of Jewish rights and the
+furtherance of the interests of other minorities involved in the peace
+settlement." (_The New York Herald_, July 20, 1919.) How successful was
+the influence of the Jewish community at the Peace Conference may be
+inferred from the following: "Mr. Henry H. Rosenfelt, Director of the
+American Jewish Relief Committee, announces that all New York agencies
+engaged in Jewish relief work will join in a united drive in New York in
+December to raise $7,500,000 (£1,500,000) to provide clothing, food, and
+medicines for the six million Jews throughout Eastern Europe _as well as
+to make possible a comprehensive programme for their complete
+rehabilitation_.--American Radio News Service." Cf. _The Daily Mail_,
+August 19, 1919.
+
+[5] Countess Lulu von Thurheim, _My Life_, 1788-1852. German edition,
+Munich, 1913-14.
+
+[6] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), February 23, 1919.
+
+[7] Grafen von Montgelas, _Denwürdigkeiten des bayrischen
+Staatsministers Maximilian._ See also Dr. Karl Soll, _Der Wiener
+Kongress_.
+
+[8] Varnhagen von Ense.
+
+[9] Friedrich von Gentz.
+
+[10] Dr. Karl Soll, _Count Carl von Nostitz_.
+
+[11] Cf. Dr. Karl Soll, _Der Wiener Kongress_.
+
+[12] Dr. Karl Soll, _Friedrich von Gentz_.
+
+[13] Dr. Karl Soll, _Count Carl von Nostitz_, p. 109.
+
+[14] Jean Gabriel Eynard--the representative of Geneva.
+
+[15] _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), March 22, 1919.
+
+[16] Count de la Garde.
+
+[17] Cf. _Le Matin_, May 31, 1919. A noteworthy example of the
+negligence of the authorities was narrated by this journal on the same
+day. To a wooden cross with an inscription recording that the grave was
+tenanted by "an unknown Frenchman" was hung a disk containing his name
+and regiment! And here and there the skulls of heroes protruded from the
+grass, but the German tombs were piously looked after by Boche
+prisoners.
+
+[18] _The Daily Mail_ (Continental edition), March 12, 1919.
+
+[19] _Ibid._, April 23, 1919.
+
+[20] Cf. _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), June 8, 1919.
+
+[21] Cf. _The New York Herald_, June 2, 1919.
+
+[22] Cf. _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), April 20, 1919.
+
+[23] _Le Figaro_, June 8, 1919.
+
+[24] _L'Humanité_, July 10, 1919.
+
+[25] _La Democratie Nouvelle_, June 14, 1919.
+
+[26] _Le Figaro_, March 6, 1919.
+
+[27] _L'Humanité_, May 23, 1919.
+
+[28] _3 Ibid._
+
+[29] _Le Gaulois_, March 23, 1919. _The New York Herald_ (Paris
+edition), March 22, 1919. _L'Echo de Paris_, June 12, 1919.
+
+[30] _The New York Herald_, March 22, 1919.
+
+[31] _L'Echo de Paris_, June 12, 1919.
+
+[32] _The New York Herald_, March 22, 1919.
+
+[33] _L'Humanité_, May 23, 1919.
+
+[34] on July 18, 1919. Cf. _Matin, Echo de Paris, Figaro_, July 10,
+1919.
+
+[35] Cf. _L'Humanité_ (French Syndicalist organ), July 11, 1919.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+SIGNS OF THEIR TIMES
+
+
+Society during the transitional stage through which it has for some
+years been passing underwent an unprecedented change the extent and
+intensity of which are as yet but imperfectly realized. Its more
+striking characteristics were determined by the gradual decomposition of
+empires and kingdoms, the twilight of their gods, the drying up of their
+sources of spiritual energy, and the psychic derangement of communities
+and individuals by a long and fearful war. Political principles, respect
+for authority and tradition, esteem for high moral worth, to say nothing
+of altruism and public spirit, either vanished or shrank to shadowy
+simulacra. In contemporary history currents and cross-currents, eddies
+and whirlpools, became so numerous and bewildering that it is not easy
+to determine the direction of the main stream. Unsocial tendencies
+coexisted with collectivity of effort, both being used as weapons
+against the larger community and each being set down as a manifestation
+of democracy. Against every kind of authority the world, or some of its
+influential sections, was up in revolt, and the emergence of the
+passions and aims of classes and individuals had freer play than ever
+before.
+
+To this consummation conservative governments, and later on their chiefs
+at the Peace Conference, systematically contributed with excellent
+intentions and efficacious measures. They implicitly denied, and acted
+on the denial, that a nation or a race, like an individual, has
+something distinctive, inherent, and enduring that may aptly be termed
+soul or character. They ignored the fact that all nations and races are
+not of the same age nor endowed with like faculties, some being young
+and helpless, others robust and virile, and a third category senescent
+and decrepit, and that there are some races which Nature has wholly and
+permanently unfitted for service among the pioneers of progress. In
+consequence of these views, which I venture to think erroneous, they
+applied the same treatment to all states. Just as President Wilson, by
+striving to impose his pinched conception of democracy and his lofty
+ideas of political morality on Mexico, had thrown that country into
+anarchy, the two Anglo-Saxon governments by enforcing their theories
+about the protection of minorities and other political conceptions in
+various states of Europe helped to loosen the cement of the
+politico-social structure there.
+
+Through these as well as other channels virulent poison penetrated to
+the marrow of the social organism. Language itself, on which all human
+intercourse hinges, was twisted to suit unwholesome ambitions, further
+selfish interests, and obscure the vision of all those who wanted real
+reforms and unvarnished truth. During the war the armies were never told
+plainly what they were struggling for; officially they were said to be
+combating for justice, right, self-determination, the sacredness of
+treaties, and other abstract nouns to which the heroic soldiers never
+gave a thought and which a section of the civil population
+misinterpreted. Indeed, so little were these shibboleths understood even
+by the most intelligent among the politicians who launched them that one
+half of the world still more or less conscientiously labors to establish
+their contraries and is anathematizing the other half for championing
+injustice, might, and unveracity--under various misnomers.
+
+Anglo-Saxondom, taking the lead of humanity, imitated the Catholic
+states of by-past days, and began to impose on other peoples its own
+ideas, as well as its practices and institutions, as the best fitted to
+awaken their dormant energies and contribute to the social
+reconstruction of the world. In the interval, language, whether applied
+to history, journalism, or diplomacy, was perverted and words lost their
+former relations to the things connoted, and solemn promises were
+solemnly broken in the name of truth, right, or equity. For the new era
+of good faith, justice and morality was inaugurated, oddly enough, by a
+general tearing up of obligatory treaties and an ethical violation of
+the most binding compacts known to social man. This happened
+coincidently to be in keeping with the general insurgence against all
+checks and restraints, moral and social, for which the war is mainly
+answerable, and to be also in harmony with the regular supersession of
+right by might which characterizes the present epoch and with the
+disappearance of the sense of law. In a word, under the auspices of the
+amateur world-reformers, the tendency of Bolshevism throve and
+spread--an instructive case of people serving the devil at the bidding
+of God's best friends.
+
+As in the days of the Italian despots, every individual has the chance
+of rising to the highest position in many of the states, irrespective of
+his antecedents and no matter what blots may have tarnished his
+'scutcheon. Neither aristocratic descent, nor public spirit nor even a
+blameless past is now an indispensable condition of advancement. In
+Germany the head of the Republic is an honest saddler. In Austria the
+chief of the government until recently was the assassin of a prime
+minister. The chief of the Ukraine state was an ex-inmate of an asylum.
+Trotzky, one of the Russian duumvirs, is said to have a record which
+might of itself have justified his change of name from Braunstein. Bela
+Kuhn, the Semitic Dictator of Hungary, had the reputation of a thief
+before rising to the height of ruler of the Magyars.... In a word,
+Napoleon's ideal is at last realized, "La carrière est ouverte aux
+talents."
+
+Among the peculiar traits of this evanescent epoch may be mentioned
+inaccessibility to the teaching of facts which run counter to cherished
+prejudices, aims, and interests. People draw from facts which they
+cannot dispute only the inferences which they desire. An amusing
+instance of this occurred in Paris, where a Syndicalist organ[36]
+published an interesting and on the whole truthful account of the
+chaotic confusion, misery, and discontent prevailing in Russia and of
+the brutal violence and foxy wiles of Lenin. The dreary picture included
+the cost of living; the disorganization of transports; the terrible
+mortality caused by the after-effects of the war; the crowding of
+prisons, theaters, cinemas, and dancing-saloons; the eagerness of
+employers to keep their war prisoners employed while thousands of
+demobilized soldiers were roaming about the cities and villages vainly
+looking for work; the absence of personal liberty; the numerous arrests,
+and the relative popularity withal of the Dictator. This popularity, it
+was explained, the press contributed to keep alive, especially since the
+abortive attempt made on his life, when the journals declared that he
+was indispensable for the time being to his country.
+
+He himself was described as a hard despot, ruthless as a tiger who
+strikes his fellow-workers numb and dumb with fear. "But he is under no
+illusions as to the real sentiments of the members of the Soviet who
+back him, nor does he deign to conceal those which he entertains toward
+them.... Whenever Lenin himself is concerned justice is expeditious.
+Some men will be delivered from prison after many years of preventive
+confinement without having been brought to trial, others who fired on
+Kerensky will be kept untried for an indefinite period, whereas the
+brave Russian patriot who aimed his revolver at Lenin, and whom the
+French press so justly applauded, had only three weeks to wait for his
+condemnation to death."
+
+This article appearing in a Syndicalist organ seemed an event. Some
+journals summarized and commented it approvingly, until it was
+discovered to be a skit on the transient conditions in France, whereupon
+the "admirable _exposé_ based upon convincing evidence" and the
+"forcible arguments" became worthless.[37]
+
+An object-lesson in the difficulty of legislating in Anglo-Saxon fashion
+for foreign countries and comprehending their psychology was furnished
+by two political trials which, taking place in Paris during the
+Conference, enabled the delegates to estimate the distance that
+separates the Anglo-Saxon from the Continental mode of thought and
+action in such a fundamental problem as the administration of justice.
+Raoul Villain, the murderer of Jean Jaurès--France's most eminent
+statesman--was kept in prison for nearly five years without a trial. He
+had assassinated his victim in cold blood. He had confessed and
+justified the act. The eye-witnesses all agreed as to the facts. Before
+the court, however, a long procession of ministers of state,
+politicians, historians, and professors defiled, narrating in detail the
+life-story, opinions, and strivings of the victim, who, in the eyes of a
+stranger, unacquainted with its methods, might have seemed to be the
+real culprit. The jury acquitted the prisoner.
+
+The other accused man was a flighty youth who had fired on the French
+Premier and wounded him. He, however, had not long to wait for his
+trial. He was taken before the tribunal within three weeks of his arrest
+and was promptly condemned to die.[38] Thus the assassin was justified
+by the jury and the would-be assassin condemned to be shot. "Suppose
+these trials had taken place in my country," remarked a delegate of an
+Eastern state, "and that of the two condemned men one had been a member
+of the privileged minority, what an uproar the incident would have
+created in the United States and England! As it happened in western
+Europe, it passed muster."
+
+How far removed some continental nations are from the Anglo-Saxons in
+their mode of contemplating and treating another momentous category of
+social problems may be seen from the circumstance that the Great Council
+in Basel adopted a bill brought in by the Socialist Welti, authorizing
+the practice of abortion down to the third month, provided that the
+husband and wife are agreed, and in cases where there is no marriage
+provided it is the desire of the woman and that the operation is
+performed by a regular physician.[39]
+
+Another striking instance of the difference of conceptions between the
+Anglo-Saxon and continental peoples is contained in the following
+unsavory document, which the historian, whose business it is to flash
+the light of criticism upon the dark nooks of civilization, can neither
+ignore nor render into English. It embodies a significant decision taken
+by the General Staff of the 256th Brigade of the Army of Occupation[40]
+and was issued on June 21, 1919.[41]
+
+
+
+
+     SIGNS OF THE TIMES
+
+     EXPLOITATION ET POLICE DE LA MAISON PUBLIQUE DE MÜNCHEN-GLADBACH
+
+     (1.) Les deux femmes composant l'unique personnel de la maison
+     publique de Gladbach (2, Gasthausstrasse), sont venues en
+     délégation déclarer qu'elles ne pouvaient suffire à la nombreuse
+     clientèle, qui envahit leur maison, devant laquelle stationneraient
+     en permanence de nombreux groupes de clients affamés.
+
+     Elles déclarent que défalcation faite du service qu'elles doivent
+     assurer à leurs abonnés belges et allemands, elles ne peuvent
+     fournir à la division qu'un total de vingt entrées par jour (10
+     pour chacune d'elle).
+
+     L'établissement d'ailleurs ne travaille pas la nuit et observe
+     strictement le repos dominical. D'autre part les ressources de la
+     ville ne permettent pas, paraît-il, d'augmenter le personnel. Dans
+     ces conditions, en vue d'éviter tout désordre et de ne pas demander
+     à ces femmes un travail audessus de leurs forces, les mesures
+     suivantes seront prises:
+
+     (2.) JOURS DE TRAVAIL: Tous les jours de la semaine, sauf le
+     dimanche.
+
+     RENDEMENT MAXIMUM: Chaque jour chaque femme reçoit 10 hommes, soit
+     20 pour les deux personnes, 120 par semaine.
+
+     HEURES D'OUVERTURE: 17 heures à 21 heures. Aucune réception n'aura
+     lieu en dehors de ces heures.
+
+     TARIF: Pour un séjour d'un quart heure (entrée et sortie de
+     l'établissement comprises) ... 5 marks.
+
+     CONSOMMATIONS: La maison ne vend aucune boisson. Il n'y a pas de
+     salle d'attente. Les clients doivent donc se présenter par deux.
+
+     (3.) RÉPARTITION: Les 6 jours de la semaine sont donnés: Le
+     lundi--1er bat. du 164 et C.H.R. Le mardi--1er bat. du 169 et
+     C.H.R. Le mercredi--2e bat. du 164 et C.H.R. Le jeudi--2e bat. du
+     169 et C.H.R. Le vendredi--3e bat. du 164. Le samedi--3e bat. du
+     169.
+
+     (4.) Dans chaque bataillon il sera établi le jour qui leur est
+     fixé, 20 tickets déposés aux bureaux des sergents-majeur à raison
+     de 5 par compagnie. Les hommes désireux de rendre visite à
+     l'établissement réclamerout au bureau de leur sergent-majeur, 1
+     ticket qui leur donnera driot de priorité.
+
+
+The value of that document derives from its having been issued as an
+ordinary regulation, from its having been reproduced in a widely
+circulated journal of the capital without evolving comment, and from the
+strong light which it projects upon one of the darkest corners of the
+civilization which has been so often and so eloquently eulogized.
+
+Manifestly the currents of the new moral life which the Conference was
+to have set flowing are as yet somewhat weak, the new ideals are still
+remote and the foreshadowings of a nobler future are faint. Another
+token of the change which is going forward in the world was reported
+from the Far East, but passed almost unnoticed in Europe. The Chinese
+Ministry of Public Instruction, by an edict of November 3, 1919,
+officially introduced in all secondary schools a phonetic system of
+writing in place of the ideograms theretofore employed. This is
+undoubtedly an event of the highest importance in the history of
+culture, little though it may interest the Western world to-day. At the
+same time, as a philologist by profession, I agree with a continental
+authority[42] who holds that, owing to the monosyllabic character of the
+Chinese language and to the further disadvantage that it lacks wholly or
+partly several consonants,[43] it will be practically impossible, as the
+Japanese have already found, to apply the new alphabet to the
+traditional literary idiom. Neither can it be employed for the needs of
+education, journalism, of the administration, or for telegraphing. It
+will, however, be of great value for elementary instruction and for
+postal correspondence. It is also certain to develop and extend. But its
+main significance is twofold: as a sign of China's awakening and as an
+innovation, the certain effect of which will be to weaken national unity
+and extend regionalism at its expense. From this point of view the
+reform is portentous.
+
+Another of the signs of the new times which calls for mention is the
+spread and militancy of the labor movement, to which the war and its
+concomitants gave a potent impulse. It is differentiated from all
+previous ferments by this, that it constitutes merely an episode in the
+universal insurgency of the masses, who are fast breaking through the
+thin social crust formed by the upper classes and are emerging rapidly
+above the surface. One of the most impressive illustrations of this
+general phenomenon is the rise of wages, which in Paris has set the
+municipal street-sweepers above university professors, the former
+receiving from 7,600 to 8,000 francs a year, whereas the salary of the
+latter is some 500 francs less.[44]
+
+This general disturbance is the outcome of many causes, among which are
+the over-population of the world, the spread of education and of equal
+opportunity, the anonymity of industrial enterprises, scientific and
+unscientific theories, the specialization of labor and its depressing
+influence.[45] These factors produced a labor organization which the
+railways, newspapers, and telegraph contributed to perfect and transform
+into a proletarian league, and now all progressive humanity is tending
+steadily and painfully to become one vast collectivity for producing and
+sharing on more equitable lines the means of living decently. This
+consummation is coming about with the fatality of a natural law, and the
+utmost the wisest of governments can do is to direct it through pacific
+channels and dislodge artificial obstacles in its course.
+
+One of the first reforms toward which labor is tending with more or
+less conscious effort is the abolition of the hereditary principle in
+the possession of wealth and influence and of the means of obtaining
+them. The division of labor in the past caused the dissociation of the
+so-called nobler avocations from manual work, and gradually those who
+followed higher pursuits grew into a sort of hereditary caste which
+bestowed relative immunity from the worst hardships of life's struggle
+and formed a ruling class. To-day the masses have their hands on the
+principal levers for shattering this top crust of the social sphere and
+seem resolved to press them.
+
+The problem for the solution of which they now menacingly clamor is the
+establishment of an approximately equitable principle for the
+redistribution of the world's resources--land, capital, industries,
+monopolies, mines, transports, and colonies. Whether
+socialization--their favorite prescription--is the most effectual way of
+achieving this object may well be doubted, but must be thoroughly
+examined and discussed. The end once achieved, it is expected that
+mankind will have become one gigantic living entity, endowed with
+senses, nerves, heart, arteries, and all the organs necessary to operate
+and employ the forces and wealth of the planet. The process will be
+complex because the factors are numerous and of various orders, and for
+this reason few political thinkers have realized that its many phases
+are aspects of one phenomenon. That is also a partial explanation of the
+circumstance that at the Conference the political questions were
+separated from the economic and treated by politicians as paramount, the
+others being relegated to the background. The labor legislation passed
+in Paris reduced itself, therefore, to counsels of perfection.
+
+That the Conference was incapable of solving a problem of this magnitude
+is self-evident. But the delegates could and should have referred it to
+an international parliament, fully representative of all the interests
+concerned. For the best way of distributing the necessaries and comforts
+of life, which have been acquired or created by manual toil, is a
+problem that can neither be ignored nor reasoned away. So long as it
+remains a problem it will be a source of intermittent trouble and
+disorder throughout the civilized world. The titles, which the classes
+heretofore privileged could invoke in favor of possession, are now being
+rapidly acquired by the workers, who in addition dispose of the force
+conferred by organization, numbers, and resolve. At the same time most
+of the stimuli and inventives to individual enterprise are being
+gradually weakened by legislation, which it would be absurd to condemn
+and dangerous to regard as a settlement. In the meanwhile productivity
+is falling off, while the demand for the products of labor is growing
+proportionately to the increase of population and culture.
+
+Hitherto the laws of distribution were framed by the strong, who were
+few and utilized the many. To-day their relative positions have shifted;
+the many have waxed strong and are no longer minded to serve as
+instruments in the hands of a class, hereditary or selected. But the
+division of mankind into producers and utilizers has ever been the solid
+and durable mainstay of that type of civilization from which progressive
+nations are now fast moving away, and the laws and usages against which
+the proletariat is up in arms are but its organic expression.
+
+From the days of the building of the Pyramids down to those of the
+digging of the Panama Canal the chasm between the two social orders
+remained open. The abolition of slavery changed but little in the
+arrangement--was, indeed, effected more in the interests of the old
+economics than in deference to any strong religious or moral sentiment.
+In substance the traditional ordering continued to exist in a form
+better adapted to the modified conditions. But the filling up of that
+chasm, which is now going forward, involves the overthrow of the system
+in its entirety, and the necessity of either rearing a wholly new
+structure, of which even the keen-sighted are unable to discern the
+outlines, or else the restoration of the old one on a somewhat different
+basis. And the only basis conceivable to-day is that which would start
+from the postulate that some races of men come into the world devoid of
+the capacity for any more useful part in the progress of mankind than
+that which was heretofore allotted to the proletariat. It cannot be
+gainsaid that there are races on the globe which are incapable of
+assimilating the higher forms of civilization, but which might well be
+made to render valuable services in the lower without either suffering
+injustice themselves or demoralizing others. And it seems nowise
+impossible that one day these reserves may be mobilized and
+systematically employed in virtue of the principle that the weal of the
+great progressive community necessitates such a distribution of parts as
+will set each organ to perform the functions for which it is best
+qualified.
+
+Since the close of the war internationalism was in the air, and the
+labor movement intensified it. It stirred the thought and warmed the
+imagination alike of exploiters and exploited. Reformers and pacifists
+yearned for it as a means of establishing a well-knit society of
+progressive and pacific peoples and setting a term to sanguinary wars.
+Some financiers may have longed for it in a spirit analogous to that in
+which Nero wished that the Roman people had but one neck. And the
+Conference chiefs seemed to have pictured it to themselves--if, indeed,
+they meditated such an abstract matter--in the guise of a _pax
+Anglo-Saxonica_, the distinctive feature of which would lie in the
+transfer to the two principal peoples--and not to a board representing
+all nations--of those attributes of sovereignty which the other states
+would be constrained to give up. Of these three currents flowing in the
+direction of internationalism only one--that of finance--appears for the
+moment likely to reach its goal....
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[36] _L'Humanité,_ March 6 and 18, 1919.
+
+[37] Cf. _L'Humanité_, April 10,1919.
+
+[38] The sentence was subsequently commuted.
+
+[39] _La Gazette de Lausanne_, May 26, 1919.
+
+[40] 128th Division.
+
+[41] It was reproduced by the French Syndicalist organ, _L'Humanité_ of
+July 7, 1919.
+
+[42] R. de Saussure. Cf. _Journal de Genève_, August 18, and also May
+26, 1919.
+
+[43] d, r, t, l, g (partly) and p, except at the beginning of a word.
+
+[44] Cf. the French papers generally for the month of May--also
+_Bonsoir_, July 26, 1919.
+
+[45] Walther Rathenau has dealt with this question in several of his
+recent pamphlets, which are not before me at the moment.
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE DELEGATES
+
+
+The plenipotentiaries, who became the world's arbiters for a while, were
+truly representative men. But they mirrored forth not so much the souls
+of their respective peoples as the surface spirit that flitted over an
+evanescent epoch. They stood for national grandeur, territorial
+expansion, party interests, and even abstract ideas. Exponents of a
+narrow section of the old order at its lowest ebb, they were in no sense
+heralds of the new. Amid a labyrinth of ruins they had no clue to guide
+their footsteps, in which the peoples of the world were told to follow.
+Only true political vision, breadth of judgment, thorough mastery of the
+elements of the situation, an instinct for discerning central issues,
+genuine concern for high principles of governance, and the rare moral
+courage that disregards popularity as a mainspring of action--could have
+fitted any set of legislators to tackle the complex and thorny problems
+that pressed for settlement and to effect the necessary preliminary
+changes. That the delegates of the principal Powers were devoid of many
+of these qualities cannot fairly be made a subject of reproach. It was
+merely an accident. But it was as unfortunate as their honest conviction
+that they could accomplish the grandiose enterprise of remodeling the
+communities of the world without becoming conversant with their
+interests, acquainted with their needs, or even aware of their
+whereabouts. For their failure, which was inevitable, was also bound to
+be tragic, inasmuch as it must involve, not merely their own ambition to
+live in history as the makers of a new and regenerate era, but also the
+destinies of the nations and races which confidently looked up to them
+for the conditions of future pacific progress, nay, of normal existence.
+
+During the Conference it was the fashion in most European countries to
+question the motives as well as to belittle the qualifications of the
+delegates. Now that political passion has somewhat abated and the
+atmosphere is becoming lighter and clearer, one may without provoking
+contradiction pay a well-deserved tribute to their sincerity, high
+purpose, and quick response to the calls of public duty and moral
+sentiment. They were animated with the best intentions, not only for
+their respective countries, but for humanity as a whole. One and all
+they burned with the desire to go as far as feasible toward ending the
+era of destructive wars. Steady, uninterrupted, pacific development was
+their common ideal, and they were prepared to give up all that they
+reasonably could to achieve it. It is my belief, for example, that if
+Mr. Wilson had persisted in making his League project the cornerstone of
+the new world structure and in applying his principles without favor,
+the Italians would have accepted it almost without discussion, and the
+other states would have followed their example. All the delegates must
+have felt that the old order of things, having been shaken to pieces by
+the war and its concomitants, could not possibly survive, and they
+naturally desired to keep within evolutionary bounds the process of
+transition to the new system, thus accomplishing by policy what
+revolution would fain accomplish by violence. It was only when they came
+to define that policy with a view to its application that their
+unanimity was broken up and they split into two camps, the pacifists and
+the militarists, or the democrats and imperialists, as they have been
+roughly labeled. Here, too, each member of the assembly worked with
+commendable single-mindedness, and under a sense of high responsibility,
+for that solution of the problem which to him seemed the most conducive
+to the general weal. And they wrestled heroically one with the other for
+what they held to be right and true relatively to the prevalent
+conditions. The circumstance that the cause and effects of this clash of
+opinions and sentiments were so widely at variance with early
+anticipations had its roots partly in their limited survey of the
+complex problem, and partly, too, in its overwhelming vastness and their
+own unfitness to cope with it.
+
+The delegates who aimed at disarmament and a society of pacific peoples
+made out as good a case--once their premises were admitted--as those who
+insisted upon guarantees, economic and territorial. Everything depended,
+for the theory adopted, upon each individual's breadth of view, and for
+its realization upon the temper of the peoples and that of their
+neighbors. As under the given circumstances either solution was sure to
+encounter formidable opposition, which only a doughty spirit would dare
+to affront, compromise, offering a side-exit out of the quandary, was
+avidly taken. In this way the collective sagacities, working in
+materials the nature of which they hardly understood, brought forth
+strange products. Some of the incongruities of the details, such, for
+instance, as the invitation to Prinkipo, despatched anonymously,
+occasionally surpass satire, but their bewildered authors are entitled
+to the benefit of extenuating circumstances.
+
+On the momentous issue of a permanent peace based on Mr. Wilson's
+pristine concept of a league of nations, and in accordance with rigid
+principles applied equally to all the states, there was no discussion.
+In other words, it was tacitly agreed that the fourteen points should
+not form a bar to the vital postulates of any of the Great Powers. It
+was only on the subject of the lesser states and the equality of nations
+that the debates were intense, protracted, and for a long while
+fruitless. At times words flamed perilously high. For months the
+solutions of the Adriatic, the Austrian, Turkish, and Thracian problems
+hung in poignant suspense, the public looking on with diminishing
+interest and waxing dissatisfaction. The usual optimistic assurances
+that all would soon run smoothly and swiftly fell upon deaf ears. Faith
+in the Conference was melting away.
+
+The plight of the Supreme Council and the vain exhortations to believe
+in its efficiency reminded me of the following story.
+
+A French parish priest was once spiritually comforting a member of his
+flock who was tormented by doubts about the goodness of God as measured
+by the imperfection of His creation. Having listened to a vivid account
+of the troubled soul's high expectation of its Maker and of its deep
+disappointment at His work, the pious old curé said: "Yes, my child. The
+world is indeed bad, as you say, and you are right to deplore it. But
+don't you think you may have formed to yourself an exaggerated idea of
+God?" An analogous reflection would not be out of place when passing
+judgment on the Conference which implicitly arrogated to itself some of
+the highest attributes of the Deity, and thus heightened the contrast
+between promise and achievement. Certainly people expected much more
+from it than it could possibly give. But it was the delegates themselves
+who had aroused these expectations announcing the coming of a new epoch
+at their fiat. The peoples were publicly told by Mr. Lloyd George and
+several of his colleagues that the war of 1914-18 would be the last. His
+"Never again" became a winged phrase, and the more buoyant optimists
+expected to see over the palace of arbitration which was to be
+substituted for the battlefield, the inspiring inscription: "A la
+dernière des guerres, l'humanité reconnaissante."[46] Mr. Wilson's vast
+project was still more attractive.
+
+Mr. Lloyd George is too well known in his capacity of British
+parliamentarian to need to be characterized. The splendid services he
+rendered the Empire during the war, when even his defects proved
+occasionally helpful, will never be forgotten. Typifying not only the
+aims, but also the methods, of the British people, he never seems to
+distrust his own counsels whencesoever they spring nor to lack the
+courage to change them in a twinkling. He stirred the soul of the nation
+in its darkest hour and communicated his own glowing faith in its star.
+During the vicissitudes of the world struggle he was the right man for
+the responsible post which he occupied, and I am proud of having been
+one of the first to work in my own modest way to have him placed there.
+But a good war-leader may be a poor peace-negotiator, and, as a matter
+of fact, there are few tasks concerned with the welfare of the nation
+which Mr. Lloyd George could not have tackled with incomparably greater
+chances of accomplishing it than that of remodeling the world. His
+antecedents were all against him. His lack of general equipment was
+prohibitive; even his inborn gifts were disqualifications. One need not
+pay too great heed to acrimonious colleagues who set him down as a
+word-weaving trimmer, between whose utterances and thoughts there is no
+organic nexus, who declines to take the initiative unless he sees
+adequate forces behind him ready to his to his support, who lacks the
+moral courage that serves as a parachute for a fall from popularity,
+but possesses in abundance that of taking at the flood the rising tide
+which balloon-like lifts its possessor high above his fellows. But
+judging him in the light of the historic events in which he played a
+prominent part, one cannot dismiss these criticisms as groundless.
+
+Opportunism is an essential element of statecraft, which is the art of
+the possible. But there is a line beyond which it becomes shiftiness,
+and it would be rash to assert that Mr. Lloyd George is careful to keep
+on the right side of it. At the Conference his conduct appeared to
+careful observers to be traced mainly by outside influences, and as
+these were various and changing the result was a zigzag. One day he
+would lay down a certain proposition as a dogma not to be modified, and
+before the week was out he would advance the contrary proposition and
+maintain that with equal warmth and doubtless with equal conviction.
+Guided by no sound knowledge and devoid of the ballast of principle, he
+was tossed and driven hither and thither like a wreck on the ocean. Mr.
+Melville Stone, the veteran American journalist, gave his countrymen his
+impression of the first British delegate. "Mr. Lloyd George," he said,
+"has a very keen sense of humor and a great power over the multitude,
+but with this he displays a startling indifference to, if not ignorance
+of, the larger affairs of nations." In the course of a walk Mr. Lloyd
+George expressed surprise when informed that in the United States the
+war-making power was invested in Congress. "What!" exclaimed the
+Premier, "you mean to tell me that the President of the United States
+cannot declare war? I never heard that before." Later, when questions of
+national ambitions were being discussed, Mr. Lloyd George asked, "What
+is that place Rumania is so anxious to get?" meaning Transylvania.[47]
+
+The stories current of his praiseworthy curiosity about the places
+which he was busy distributing to the peoples whose destinies he was
+forging would be highly amusing if the subject were only a private
+individual and his motive a desire for useful information, but on the
+representative of a great Empire they shed a light in which the dignity
+of his country was necessarily affected and his own authority deplorably
+diminished. For moral authority at that conjuncture was the sheet anchor
+of the principal delegates. Although without a program, Mr. Lloyd George
+would appear to have had an instinctive feeling, if not a reasoned
+belief, that in matters of general policy his safest course would be to
+keep pace with the President of the United States. For he took it for
+granted that Mr. Wilson's views were identical with those of the
+American people. One of his colleagues, endeavoring to dispel this
+illusion, said: "Your province at this Conference is to lead. Your
+colleagues, including Mr. Wilson, will follow. You have the Empire
+behind you. Voice its aspirations. They coincide with those of the
+English-speaking peoples of the world. Mr. Wilson has lost his
+elections, therefore he does not stand for as much as you imagine. You
+have won your elections, so you are the spokesman of a vast community
+and the champion of a noble cause. You can knead the Conference at your
+will. Assert your will. But even if you decide to act in harmony with
+the United States, that does not mean subordinating British interests to
+the President's views, which are not those of the majority of his
+people." But Mr. Lloyd George, invincibly diffident--if diffidence it
+be--shrank from marching alone, and on certain questions which mattered
+much Mr. Wilson had his way.
+
+One day there was an animated discussion in the twilight of the Paris
+conclave while the press was belauding the plenipotentiaries for their
+touching unanimity. The debate lay between the United States as voiced
+by Mr. Wilson and Great Britain as represented by Mr. Lloyd George. On
+the morrow, before the conversation was renewed, a colleague adjured the
+British Premier to stand firm, urging that his contention of the
+previous day was just in the abstract and beneficial to the Empire as
+well. Mr. Lloyd George bowed to the force of these motives, but yielded
+to the greater force of Mr. Wilson's resolve. "Put it to the test,"
+urged the colleague. "I dare not," was the rejoinder. "Wilson won't
+brook it. Already he threatens, if we do, to leave the Conference and
+return home." "Well then, let him. If he did, we should be none the
+worse off for his absence. But rest assured, he won't go. He cannot
+afford to return home empty-handed after his splendid promises to his
+countrymen and the world." Mr. Lloyd George insisted, however, and said,
+"But he will take his army away, too." "What!" exclaimed the tempter.
+"His army? Well, I only ..." but it would serve no useful purpose to
+quote the vigorous answer in full.
+
+This odd mixture of exaggerated self-confidence, mismeasurement of
+forces, and pliability to external influences could not but be baleful
+in one of the leaders of an assembly composed, as was the Paris
+Conference, of men each with his own particular ax to grind and
+impressible only to high moral authority or overwhelming military force.
+It cannot be gainsaid that no one, not even his own familiars, could
+ever foresee the next move in Mr. Lloyd George's game of statecraft, and
+it is demonstrable that on several occasions he himself was so little
+aware of what he would do next that he actually advocated as
+indispensable measures diametrically opposed to those which he was to
+propound, defend, and carry a week or two later. A conversation which
+took place between him and one of his fellow-workers gives one the
+measure of his irresolution and fitfulness. "Do tell me," said this
+collaborator, "why it is that you members of the Supreme Council are
+hurriedly changing to-day the decisions you came to after five months'
+study, which you say was time well spent?"
+
+"Because of fresh information we have received in the meanwhile. We know
+more now than we knew then and the different data necessitate different
+treatment."
+
+"Yes, but the conditions have not changed since the Conference opened.
+Surely they were the same in January as they are in June. Is not that
+so?"
+
+"No doubt, no doubt, but we did not ascertain them before June, so we
+could not act upon them until now."
+
+With the leading delegates thus drifting and the pieces on the political
+chessboard bewilderingly disposed, outsiders came to look upon the
+Conference as a lottery. Unhappily, it was a lottery in which there were
+no mere blanks, but only prizes or heavy forfeits.
+
+To sum up: the first British delegate, essentially a man of expedients
+and shifts, was incapable of measuring more than an arc of the political
+circle at a time. A comprehensive survey of a complicated situation was
+beyond his reach. He relied upon imagination and intuition as
+substitutes for precise knowledge and technical skill. Hence he himself
+could never be sure that his decision, however carefully worked out,
+would be final, seeing that in June facts might come to his cognizance
+with which five months' investigations had left him unacquainted. This
+incertitude about the elements of the problem intensified the ingrained
+hesitancy that had characterized his entire public career and warped his
+judgment effectually. The only approach to a guiding principle one can
+find in his work at the Conference was the loosely held maxim that Great
+Britain's best policy was to stand in with the United States in all
+momentous issues and to identify Mr. Wilson with the United States for
+most purposes of the Congress. Within these limits Mr. Lloyd George was
+unyielding in fidelity to the cause of France, with which he merged that
+of civilization.
+
+M. Clemenceau is the incarnation of the tireless spirit of destruction.
+Pulling down has ever been his delight, and it is largely to his success
+in demolishing the defective work of rivals--and all human work is
+defective--that he owes the position of trust and responsibility to
+which the Parliament raised him during the last phase of the war.
+Physically strong, despite his advanced age, he is mentally brilliant
+and superficial, with a bias for paradox, epigram, and racy,
+unconventional phraseology. His action is impulsive. In the Dreyfus days
+I saw a good deal of M. Clemenceau in his editorial office, when he
+would unburden his soul to M.M. Vaughan, the poet Quillard, and others.
+Later on I approached him while he was chief of the government on a
+delicate matter of international combined with national politics, on
+which I had been requested to sound him by a friendly government, and I
+found him, despite his developed and sobering sense of responsibility,
+whimsical, impulsive, and credulous as before. When I next talked with
+him he was the rebellious editor of _L'Homme Enchaîné_, whose corrosive
+strictures upon the government of the day were the terror of Ministers
+and censors. Soon afterward he himself became the wielder of the great
+national gagging-machine, and in the stringency with which he
+manipulated it he is said by his own countrymen to have outdone the
+government of the Third Empire. His _alter ego_, Georges Mandel, is
+endowed with qualities which supplement and correct those of his
+venerable chief. His grasp of detail is comprehensive and firm, his
+memory retentive, and his judgment bold and deliberate. A striking
+illustration of the audacity of his resolve was given in the early part
+of 1918. Marshal Joffre sent a telegram to President Wilson in
+Washington, and because he had omitted to despatch it through the War
+Ministry, M. Mandel, who is a strict disciplinarian, proposed that he be
+placed under arrest. It was with difficulty that some public men moved
+him to leniency.
+
+M. Clemenceau, the professional destroyer, who can boast that he
+overthrew eighteen Cabinets, or nineteen if we include his own, was
+unquestionably the right man to carry on the war. He acquitted himself
+of the task superbly. His faith in the Allies' victory was unwavering.
+He never doubted, never flagged, never was intimidated by obstacles nor
+wheedled by persons. Once during the armistice, in May or June, when
+Marshal Foch expressed his displeasure that the Premier should have
+issued military orders to troops under his command[48] without first
+consulting him, he was on the point of dismissing the Marshal and
+appointing General Pétain to succeed him.[49] Whether the qualities
+which stood him in such good stead during the world struggle could be of
+equal, or indeed of much, avail in the general constructive work for
+which the Conference was assembled is a question that needs only to be
+formulated. But in securing every advantage that could be conferred on
+his own country his influence on the delegates was decisive. M.
+Clemenceau, who before the war was the intimate friend of Austrian
+journalists, hated his country's enemies with undying hate. And he loved
+France passionately. I remember significant words of his, uttered at the
+end of the year 1899 to an enterprising young man who had founded a
+Franco-German review in Munich and craved his moral support. "Is it
+possible," he exclaimed, "that it has already come to that? Well, a
+nation is not conquered until it accepts defeat. Whenever France gives
+up she will have deserved her humiliation."
+
+At the Conference M. Clemenceau moved every lever to deliver his country
+for all time from the danger of further invasions. And, being a realist,
+he counted only on military safeguards. At the League of Nations he was
+wont to sneer until it dawned upon him that it might be forged into an
+effective weapon of national defense. And then he included it in the
+litany of abstract phrases about right, justice, and the
+self-determination of peoples which it became the fashion to raise to
+the inaccessible heights where those ideals are throned which are to be
+worshiped but not incarnated. The public somehow never took his
+conversion to Wilsonianism seriously, neither did his political friends
+until the League bade fair to become serviceable in his country's hands.
+M. Clemenceau's acquaintanceship with international politics was at once
+superior to that of the British Premier and very slender. But his
+program at the Conference was simple and coherent, because independent
+of geography and ethnography: France was to take Germany's leading
+position in the world, to create powerful and devoted states in eastern
+Europe, on whose co-operation she could reckon, and her allies were to
+do the needful in the way of providing due financial and economic
+assistance so as to enable her to address herself to the cultural
+problems associated with her new rôle. And he left nothing undone that
+seemed conducive to the attainment of that object. Against Mr. Wilson he
+maneuvered to the extent which his adviser, M. Tardieu, deemed safe, and
+one of his most daring speculations was on the President's journey to
+the States, during which M. Clemenceau and his European colleagues hoped
+to get through a deal of work on their own lines and to present Mr.
+Wilson with the decisions ready for ratification on his return. But the
+stratagem was not merely apparent; it was bruited abroad with indiscreet
+details, whereupon the first American delegate on his return broke the
+tables of their laws--one of which separated the Treaty from the
+Covenant--and obliged them to begin anew. It is fair to add that M.
+Clemenceau was no uncompromising partisan of the conquest of the left
+bank of the Rhine, nor of colonial conquests. These currents took their
+rise elsewhere. "We don't want protesting deputies in the French
+Parliament," he once remarked in the presence of the French Minister of
+Foreign Affairs.[50] Offered the choice between a number of bridgeheads
+in Germany and the military protection of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, he
+unhesitatingly decided for the latter, which had been offered to him by
+President Wilson after the rejection of the Rhine frontier.
+
+M. Clemenceau, whose remarkable mental alacrity, self-esteem, and love
+of sharp repartee occasionally betrayed him into tactless sallies and
+epigrammatic retorts, deeply wounded the pride of more than one delegate
+of the lesser Powers in a way which they deemed incompatible alike with
+circumspect statesmanship and the proverbial hospitality of his country.
+For he is incapable of resisting the temptation to launch a _bon mot_,
+however stinging. It would be ungenerous, however, to attach more
+importance to such quickly forgotten utterances than he meant them to
+carry. An instance of how he behaved toward the representatives of
+Britain and France is worth recording, both as characterizing the man
+and as extenuating his offense against the delegates of the lesser
+Powers.
+
+One morning[51] M. Clemenceau appeared at the Conference door, and
+seemed taken aback by the large number of unfamiliar faces and figures
+behind Mr. Balfour, toward whom he sharply turned with the brusque
+interrogation: "Who are those people behind you? Are they English?"
+"Yes, they are," was the answer. "Well, what do they want here?" "They
+have come on the same errand as those who are now following you."
+Thereupon the French Premier, whirling round, beheld with astonishment
+and displeasure a band of Frenchmen moving toward him, led by M. Pichon,
+the Minister of Foreign Affairs. In reply to his question as to the
+motive of their arrival, he was informed that they were all experts, who
+had been invited to give the Conference the benefit of their views about
+the revictualing of Hungary. "Get out, all of you. You are not wanted
+here," he cried in a commanding voice. And they all moved away meekly,
+led by M. Pichon, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Their services proved
+to be unnecessary, for the result reached by the Conference was
+negative.
+
+M. Tardieu cannot be separated from his chief, with whom he worked
+untiringly, placing at his disposal his intimate knowledge of the nooks
+and crannies of professional and unprofessional diplomacy. He is one of
+the latest arrivals and most pushing workers in the sphere of the Old
+World statecraft, affects Yankee methods, and speaks English. For
+several years political editor of the _Temps_, he obtained access to the
+state archives, and wrote a book on the Agadir incident which was well
+received, and also a monograph on Prince von Bülow, became Deputy, aimed
+at a ministerial portfolio, and was finally appointed Head Commissary to
+the United States. Faced by difficulties there--mostly the specters of
+his own former utterances evoked by German adversaries--his progress at
+first was slow. He was accused of having approved some of the drastic
+methods--especially the U-boat campaign--which the Germans subsequently
+employed, because in the year 1912, when he was writing on the subject,
+France believed that she herself possessed the best submarines, and she
+meant to employ them. He was also challenged to deny that he had
+written, in August, 1912, that in every war churches and monuments of
+art must suffer, and that "no army, whatever its nationality, can
+renounce this." He was further charged with having taken a kindly
+interest in air-war and bomb-dropping, and given it as his opinion that
+it would be absurd "to deprive of this advantage those who had made most
+progress in perfecting this weapon." But M. Tardieu successfully
+exorcised these and other ghosts. And on his return from the United
+States he was charged with organizing a press bureau of his own, to
+supply American journalists with material for their cablegrams, while at
+the same time he collaborated with M. Clemenceau in reorganizing the
+political communities of the world. It is only in the French Chamber, of
+which he is a distinguished member, that M. Tardieu failed to score a
+brilliant success. Few men are prophets in their own country, and he is
+far from being an exception. At the Conference, in its later phases, he
+found himself in frequent opposition to the chief of the Italian
+delegation, Signor Tittoni. One of the many subjects on which they
+disagreed was the fate of German Austria and the political structure and
+orientation of the independent communities which arose on the ruins of
+the Dual Monarchy. M. Tardieu favored an arrangement which would bring
+these populations closely together and impart to the whole an
+anti-Teutonic impress. If Germany could not be broken up into a number
+of separate states, as in the days of her weakness, all the other
+European peoples in the territories concerned could, and should, be
+united against her, and at the least hindered from making common cause
+with her. The unification of Germany he considered a grave danger, and
+he strove to create a countervailing state system.
+
+To the execution of this project there were formidable difficulties.
+For one thing, none of the peoples in question was distinctly
+anti-German. Each one was for itself. Again, they were not particularly
+enamoured of one another, nor were their interests always concordant,
+and to constrain them by force to unite would have been not to prevent
+but to cause future wars. A Danubian federation--the concrete shape
+imagined for this new bulwark of European peace--did not commend itself
+to the Italians, who had their own reasons for their opposition besides
+the Wilsonian doctrine, which they invoked. If it be true, Signor
+Tittoni argues, that Austria does not desire to be amalgamated with
+Germany, why not allow her to exercise the right of self-determination
+accorded to other peoples? M. Tardieu, on the other hand, not content
+with the prohibition to Germany to unite with Austria, proposed[52] that
+in the treaty with Austria this country should be obliged to repress the
+unionist movement in the population. This amendment was inveighed
+against by the Italian delegation in the name of every principle
+professed and transgressed by the world-mending Powers. Even from the
+French point of view he declared it perilous, inasmuch as there was, and
+could be, no guarantee that a Danubian confederation would not become a
+tool in Germany's hands.
+
+Two things struck me as characteristic of the principal
+plenipotentiaries: as a rule, they eschewed first-rate men as
+fellow-workers, one integer and several zeros being their favorite
+formula, and they took no account of the flight of time, planning as
+though an eternity were before them and then suddenly improvising as
+though afraid of being late for a train or a steamer. These
+peculiarities were baleful. The lesser states, having mainly first-class
+men to represent them, illustrated the law of compensation, which
+assigned many mediocrities to the Great Powers. The former were also the
+most strenuous toilers, for their task bristled with difficulties and
+abounded in startling surprises, and its accomplishment depended on the
+will of others. Time and again they went over the ground with infinite
+care, counting and gaging the obstacles in their way, devising means to
+overcome them, and rehearsing the effort in advance. So much stress had
+been laid during the war on psychology, and such far-reaching
+consequences were being drawn from the Germans' lack of it, that these
+public men made its cultivation their personal care. Hence, besides
+tracing large-scale maps of provinces and comprehensive maps[53] of the
+countries to be reconstituted, and ransacking history for arguments and
+precedents, they conscientiously ascertained the idiosyncrasies of their
+judges, in order to choose the surest ways to impress, convince, or
+persuade them. And it was instructive to see them try their hand at this
+new game.
+
+One and all gave assent to the axiom that moderation would impress the
+arbiters more favorably than greed, but not all of them wielded
+sufficient self-command to act upon it. The more resourceful delegates,
+whose tasks were especially redoubtable because they had to demand large
+provinces coveted by others, prepared the ground by visiting personally
+some of the more influential arbiters before these were officially
+appointed, forcibly laying their cases before them and praying for their
+advice. In reality they were striving to teach them elementary
+geography, history, and politics. The Ulysses of the Conference, M.
+Venizelos, first pilgrimaged to London, saying: "If the Foreign Office
+is with Greece, what matters it who is against her." He hastened to call
+on President Wilson as soon as that statesman arrived in Europe, and,
+to the surprise of many, the two remained a long time closeted together.
+"Whatever did you talk about?" asked a colleague of the Greek Premier.
+"How did you keep Wilson interested in your national claims all that
+time? You must have--" "Oh no," interrupted the modest statesman. "I
+disposed of our claims succinctly enough. A matter of two minutes. Not
+more. I asked him to dispense me from taking up his time with such
+complicated issues which he and his colleagues would have ample
+opportunity for studying. The rest of the time I was getting him to give
+me the benefit of his familiarity with the subject of the League of
+Nations. And he was good enough to enumerate the reasons why it should
+be realized, and the way in which it must be worked. I was greatly
+impressed by what he said." "Just fancy!" exclaimed a colleague,
+"wasting all that time in talking about a scheme which will never come
+to anything!" But M. Venizelos knew that the time was not misspent.
+President Wilson was at first nowise disposed to lend a favorable ear to
+the claims of Greece, which he thought exorbitant, and down to the very
+last he gave his support to Bulgaria against Greece whole-heartedly. The
+Cretan statesman passed many an hour of doubt and misgiving before he
+came within sight of his goal. But he contrived to win the President
+over to his way of envisaging many Oriental questions. He is a
+past-master in practical psychology.
+
+The first experiments of M. Venizelos, however, were not wholly
+encouraging. For all the care he lavished on the chief luminaries of the
+Conference seemingly went to supplement their education and fill up a
+few of the geographical, historical, philological, ethnological, and
+political gaps in their early instruction rather than to guide them in
+their concrete decisions, which it was expected would be always left to
+the "commissions of experts." But the fruit which took long to mature
+ripened at last, and Greece had many of her claims allowed. Thus in
+reorganizing the communities of the world the personal factor played a
+predominant part. Venizelos was, so to say, a fixed star in the
+firmament, and his light burned bright through every rift in the clouds.
+His moderation astonished friends and opponents. Every one admired his
+_exposé_ of his case as a masterpiece. His statesman-like setting, in
+perspective, the readiness with which he put himself in the place of his
+competitor and struck up a fair compromise, endeared him to many, and
+his praises were in every one's mouth. His most critical hour--it lasted
+for months--struck when he found himself struggling with the President
+of the United States, who was for refusing the coast of Thrace to Greece
+and bestowing it on Bulgaria. But with that dispute I deal in another
+place.
+
+Of Italy's two plenipotentiaries during the first five months one was
+the most supple and the other the most inflexible of her statesmen,
+Signor Orlando and Baron Sonnino. If her case was presented to the
+Conference with less force than was attainable, the reasons are obvious.
+Her delegates had a formal treaty on which they relied; to the attitude
+of their country from the outbreak of the war to its finish they rightly
+ascribed the possibility of the Allies' victory, and they expected to
+see this priceless service recognized practically; the moderation and
+suppleness of Signor Orlando were neutralized by the uncompromising
+attitude of Baron Sonnino, and, lastly, the gaze of both statesmen was
+fixed upon territorial questions and sentimental aspirations to the
+neglect of economic interests vital to the state--in other words, they
+beheld the issues in wrong perspective. But one of the most popular
+figures among the delegates was Signor Orlando, whose eloquence and
+imagination gave him advantages which would have been increased a
+hundredfold if he might have employed his native language in the
+conclave. For he certainly displayed resourcefulness, humor, a historic
+sense, and the gift of molding the wills of men. But he was greatly
+hampered. Some of his countrymen alleged that Baron Sonnino was his evil
+genius. One of the many sayings attributed to him during the Conference
+turned upon the quarrels of some of the smaller peoples among
+themselves. "They are," the Premier said, "like a lot of hens being held
+by the feet and carried to market. Although all doomed to the same fate,
+they contrive to fight one another while awaiting it."
+
+After the fall of Orlando's Cabinet, M. Tittoni repaired to Paris as
+Italy's chief delegate. His reputation as one of Europe's principal
+statesmen was already firmly established; he had spent several years in
+Paris as Ambassador, and he and the late Di San Giuliano and Giolitti
+were the men who broke with the Central Empires when these were about to
+precipitate the World War. In French nationalist circles Signor Tittoni
+had long been under a cloud, as the man of pro-German leanings. The
+suspicion--for it was nothing more--was unfounded. On the contrary, M.
+Tittoni is known to have gone with the Allies to the utmost length
+consistent with his sense of duty to his own country. To my knowledge he
+once gave advice which his Italian colleagues and political friends and
+adversaries now bitterly regret was disregarded. The nature of that
+counsel will one day be disclosed....
+
+Of Japan's delegates, the Marquis Saionji and Baron Makino, little need
+be said, seeing that their qualifications for their task were
+demonstrated by the results. Mainly to statesmanship and skilful
+maneuvering Japan is indebted for her success at the Paris Conference,
+where her cause was referred by Mr. Lloyd George and M. Clemenceau to
+Mr. Wilson to deal with. The behavior of her representatives was an
+illuminating object-lesson in the worth of psychological tactics in
+practical politics. They hardly ever appeared in the footlights,
+remained constantly silent and observant, and were almost ignored by the
+press. But they kept their eyes fixed on the goal. Their program was
+simple. Amid the flitting shadows of political events they marched
+together with the Allies, until these disagreed among themselves, and
+then they voted with Great Britain and the United States. Occasionally
+they went farther and proposed measures for the lesser states which
+Britain framed, but desired to second rather than propose. Japan, at the
+Conference, was a stanch collaborator of the two English-speaking
+principals until her own opportunity came, and then she threw all her
+hoarded energies into her cause, and by her firm resolve dispelled any
+opposition that Mr. Wilson may have intended to offer. One of the most
+striking episodes of the Conference was the swift, silent, and
+successful campaign by which Japan had her secret treaty with China
+hall-marked by the puritanical President of the United States, whose
+sense of morality could not brook the secret treaties concluded by Italy
+and Rumania with the Greater and Greatest Powers of Europe. Again, it
+was with statesman-like sagacity that the Japanese judged the Russian
+situation and made the best of it--first, shortly before the invitation
+to Prinkipo, and, later, before the celebrated eight questions were
+submitted to Admiral Kolchak. I was especially struck by an occurrence,
+trivial in appearance, which demonstrated the weight which they rightly
+attached to the psychological side of politics. Everybody in Paris
+remarked, and many vainly complained of, the indifference, or rather,
+unfriendliness, of which Russians were the innocent victims. Among the
+Allied troops who marched under the Arc de Triomphe on July 14th there
+were Rumanians, Greeks, Portuguese, and Indians, but not a single
+Russian. A Russian general drove about in the forest of flags and
+banners that day looking eagerly for symbols of his own country, but for
+hours the quest was fruitless. At last, when passing the Japanese
+Embassy, he perceived, to his delight, an enormous Russian flag waving
+majestically in the breeze, side by side with that of Nippon. "I shed
+tears of joy," he told his friend that evening, "and I vowed that
+neither I nor my country would ever forget this touching mark of
+friendship."
+
+Japanese public opinion criticized severely the failure of their
+delegates to obtain recognition of the equality of races or nations.
+This judgment seems unjust, for nothing that they could have done or
+said would have wrung from Mr. Wilson and Mr. Hughes their assent to the
+doctrine, nor, if they had been induced to proclaim it, would it have
+been practically applied.
+
+In general, the lawyers were the most successful in stating their cases.
+But one of the delegates of the lesser states who made the deepest
+impression on those of the greater was not a member of the bar. The head
+of the Polish delegation, Roman Dmowski, a picturesque, forcible
+speaker, a close debater and resourceful pleader, who is never at a loss
+for an image, a comparison, an _argumentum ad hominem_, or a repartee,
+actually won over some of the arbiters who had at first leaned toward
+his opponents--a noteworthy feat if one realizes all that it meant in an
+assembly where potent influences were working against some of the
+demands of resuscitated Poland. His speech in September on the future of
+eastern Galicia was a veritable masterpiece.
+
+M. Dmowski appeared at the Conference under all the disadvantages that
+could be heaped upon a man who has incurred the resentment of the most
+powerful international body of modern times. He had the misfortune to
+have the Jews of the world as his adversaries. His Polish friends
+explained this hostility as follows. His ardent nationalist sentiments
+placed him in antagonism to every movement that ran counter to the
+progress of his country on nationalist lines. For he is above all things
+a Pole and a patriot. And as the Hebrew population of Poland,
+disbelieving in the resurrection of that nation, had long since struck
+up a cordial understanding with the states that held it in bondage, the
+gifted author of a book on the _Foundations of Nationalism_, which went
+through four editions, was regarded by the Hebrew elements of the
+population as an irreconcilable enemy. In truth, he was only the leader
+of a movement that was a historical necessity. One of the theses of the
+work was the necessity of cultivating an anti-German spirit in Poland as
+the only antidote against the Teuton virus introduced from Berlin
+through economic and other channels. And as the Polish Jews, whose idiom
+is a corrupted German dialect and whose leanings are often Teutonic,
+felt that the attack upon the whole was an attack on the part, they
+anathematized the author and held him up to universal obloquy. And there
+has been no reconciliation ever since. In the United States, where the
+Jewish community is numerous and influential, M. Dmowski found spokes in
+his wheel at every stage of his journey, and in Paris, too, he had to
+full-front a tremendous opposition, open and covert. Whatever unbiased
+people may think of this explanation and of his hostility to the Germans
+and their agents, Roman Dmowski deservedly enjoys the reputation of a
+straightforward and loyal fighter for his country's cause, a man who
+scorns underhand machinations and proclaims aloud--perhaps too
+frankly--the principles for which he is fighting. Polish Jews who
+appeared in Paris, some of them his bitterest antagonists, recognized
+the chivalrous way in which he conducts his electoral and other
+campaigns. Among the delegates his practical acquaintanceship with East
+European polities entitled him to high rank. For he knows the world
+better than any living statesman, having traveled over Europe, Asia, and
+America. He undertook and successfully accomplished a delicate mission
+in the Far East in the year 1905, rendering valuable services to his
+country and to the cause of civilization.
+
+"M. Dmowski's activity," his friends further assert, "is impassioned and
+unselfish. The ambition that inspires and nerves him is not of the
+personal sort, nor is his patriotism a ladder leading to place and
+power. Polish patriotism occupies a category apart from that of other
+European peoples, and M. Dmowski has typified it with rare fidelity and
+completeness. If Wilsonianism had been realized, Polish nationalism
+might have become an anachronism. To-day it is a large factor in
+European politics and is little understood in the West. M. Dmowski lives
+for his country. Her interests absorb his energies. He would probably
+agree with the historian Paolo Sarpi, who said, 'Let us be Venetians
+first and Christians after.' Of the two widely divergent currents into
+which the main stream of political thought and sentiment throughout the
+world is fast dividing itself, M. Dmowski moves with the national away
+from the international championed by Mr. Wilson. The frequency with
+which the leading spirits of Bolshevism turn out to be Jews--to the
+dismay and disgust of the bulk of their own community--and the ingenuity
+they displayed in spreading their corrosive tenets in Poland may not
+have been without effect upon the energy of M. Dmowski's attitude toward
+the demand of the Polish Jews to be placed in the privileged position of
+wards of the League of Nations. But the principle of the protection of
+minority--Jewish or Gentile--is assailable on grounds which have nothing
+to do with race or religion." Some of the most interesting and
+characteristic incidents at the Conference had the Polish statesman for
+their principal actor, and to him Poland owes some of the most solid and
+enduring benefits conferred on her at the Conference.
+
+Of a different temper is M. Paderewski, who appeared in Paris to plead
+his country's cause at a later stage of the labors of the Conference.
+This eminent artist's energies were all blended into one harmonious
+whole, so that his meetings with the great plenipotentiaries were never
+disturbed by a jarring note. As soon as it was borne in upon him that
+their decisions were as irrevocable as decrees of Fate, he bowed to them
+and treated the authors as Olympians who had no choice but to utter the
+stern fiat. Even when called upon to accept the obnoxious clause
+protecting religious and ethnic minorities against which his colleague
+had vainly fought, M. Paderewski sunk political passion in reason and
+attuned himself to the helpful role of harmonizer. He held that it would
+have been worse than useless to do otherwise. He was grieved that his
+country must acquiesce in that decree, he regretted intensely the
+necessity which constrained such proven friends of Poland as the Four to
+pass what he considered a severe sentence on her; but he resigned
+himself gracefully to the inevitable and thanked Fate's executioners for
+their personal sympathy. This attitude evoked praise and admiration from
+Messrs. Lloyd George and Wilson, and the atmosphere of the conclave
+seemed permeated with a spirit that induced calm satisfaction and the
+joy of elevated thoughts. M. Paderewski made a deep and favorable
+impression on the Supreme Council.
+
+Belgium sent her most brilliant parliamentarian, M. Hymans, as first
+plenipotentiary to the Conference. He was assisted by the chief of the
+Socialist party, M. Vandervelde, and by an eminent authority on
+international law, M. Van den Heuvel. But for reasons which elude
+analysis, none of the three delegates hit it off with the duumvirate
+who were spinning the threads of the world's destinies. M. Hymans,
+however, by his warmth, sincerity, and courage impressed the
+representatives of the lesser states, won their confidence, became their
+natural spokesman, and blazed out against all attempts--and they were
+numerous and deliberate--to ignore their existence. It was he who by his
+direct and eloquent protest took M. Clemenceau off his guard and
+elicited the amazing utterance that the Powers which could put twelve
+million soldiers in the field were the world's natural arbiters. In this
+way he cleared the atmosphere of the distorting mists of catchwords and
+shibboleths.
+
+How decisive a role internal politics played in the designation of
+plenipotentiaries to the Conference was shown with exceptional clearness
+in the case of Rumania. That country had no legislature. The Constituent
+Assembly, which had been dissolved owing to the German invasion, was
+followed by no fresh elections. The King, with whom the initiative thus
+rested, had reappointed M. Bratiano Chief of the Government, and M.
+Bratiano was naturally desirous of associating his own historic name
+with the aggrandizement of his country. But he also desired to secure
+the services of his political rival, M. Take Jonescu, whose reputation
+as a far-seeing statesman and as a successful negotiator is world-wide.
+Among his qualifications are an acquaintanceship with European countries
+and their affairs and a rare facility for give and take which is of the
+essence of international politics. He can assume the initiative in
+_pourparlers_, however uncompromising the outlook; frame plausible
+proposals; conciliate his opponents by showing how thoroughly he
+understands and appreciates their point of view, and by these means he
+has often worked out seemingly hopeless negotiations to a satisfactory
+issue. M. Clemenceau wrote of him, "C'est un grand Européen."[54]
+
+M. Bratiano's bid for the services of his eminent opponent was coupled
+with the offer of certain portfolios in the Cabinet to M. Jonescu and to
+a number of his parliamentary supporters. While negotiations were slowly
+proceeding by telegraph, M. Jonescu, who had already taken up his abode
+in Paris, was assiduously weaving his plans. He began by assuming what
+everybody knew, that the Powers would refuse to honor the secret treaty
+with France, Britain, and Russia, which assigned to Rumania all the
+territories to which she had laid claim, and he proposed first striking
+up a compromise with the other interested states, then compacting
+Rumania, Jugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Greece into a solid
+block, and asking the Powers to approve and ratify the new league. Truly
+it was a genial conception worthy of a broad-minded statesman. It aimed
+at a durable peace based on what he considered a fair settlement of
+claims satisfactory to all, and it would have lightened the burden of
+the Big Four. But whether it could have been realized by peoples moved
+by turbid passions and represented by trustees, some of whom were
+avowedly afraid to relinquish claims which they knew to be exorbitant,
+may well be doubted.
+
+But the issue was never put to the test. The two statesmen failed to
+agree on the Cabinet question; M. Jonescu kept aloof from office, and
+the post of second delegate fell to Rumania's greatest diplomatist and
+philologist, M. Mishu, who had for years admirably represented his
+country as Minister in the British capital. From the outset M.
+Bratiano's position was unenviable, because he based his country's case
+on the claims of the secret treaty, and to Mr. Wilson every secret
+treaty which he could effectually veto was anathema. Between the two
+men, in lieu of a bond of union, there was only a strong force of mutual
+repulsion, which kept them permanently apart. They moved on different
+planes, spoke different languages, and Rumania, in the person of her
+delegates, was treated like Cinderella by her stepmother. The Council of
+Three kept them systematically in the dark about matters which it
+concerned them to know, negotiated over their heads, transmitted to
+Bucharest injunctions which only they were competent to receive,
+insisted on their compromising to accept future decrees of the
+Conference without an inkling as to their nature, and on their admitting
+the right of an alien institution--the League of Nations--to intervene
+in favor of minorities against the legally constituted government of the
+country. M. Bratiano, who in a trenchant speech inveighed against these
+claims of the Great Powers to take the governance of Europe into their
+own hands, withdrew from the Conference and laid his resignation in the
+hands of the King.
+
+One of the most remarkable debaters in this singular parliament, where
+self-satisfied ignorance and dullness of apprehension were so hard to
+pierce, was the youthful envoy of the Czechoslovaks, M. Benes. This
+politician, who before the Conference came to an end was offered the
+honorable task of forming a new Cabinet, which he wisely declined,
+displayed a masterly grasp of Continental politics and a rare gift of
+identifying his country's aspirations with the postulates of a settled
+peace. A systematic thinker, he made a point of understanding his case
+at the outset. He would begin his _exposé_ by detaching himself from all
+national interests and starting from general assumptions recognized by
+the Olympians, and would lead his hearers by easy stages to the
+conclusions which he wished them to draw from their own premises. And
+two of them, who had no great sympathy with his thesis, assured me that
+they could detect no logical flaw in his argument. Moderation and
+sincerity were the virtues which he was most eager to exhibit, and they
+were unquestionably the best trump cards he could play. Not only had he
+a firm grasp of facts and arguments, but he displayed a sense of measure
+and open-mindedness which enabled him to implant his views on the minds
+of his hearers.
+
+Armenia's cause found a forcible and suasive pleader in Boghos Pasha,
+whose way of marshaling arguments in favor of a contention that was
+frowned upon by many commanded admiration. The Armenians asked for a
+vast stretch of territory with outlets on the Black Sea and the
+Mediterranean, but they were met with the objections that their total
+population was insignificant; that only in one province were they in a
+majority, and that their claim to Cilicia clashed with one of the
+reserved rights of France. The ice, therefore, was somewhat thin in
+parts, but Boghos Pasha skated over it gracefully. His description of
+the Armenian massacres was thrilling. Altogether his _exposé_ was a
+masterpiece, and was appreciated by Mr. Wilson and M. Clemenceau.
+
+The Jugoslav delegates, MM. Vesnitch and Trumbitch, patriotic,
+tenacious, uncompromising, had an early opportunity of showing the stuff
+of which they were made. When they were told that the Jugoslav state was
+not yet recognized and that the kingdom of Serbia must content itself
+with two delegates, they lodged an indignant protest against both
+decisions, and refused to appear at the Conference unless they were
+allowed an adequate number of representatives. Thereupon the Great
+Powers compromised the matter by according them three, and with stealthy
+rage they submitted to the refusal of recognition. They were not again
+heard of until one day they proposed that their dispute with Italy
+about Fiume and the Dalmatian coast should be solved by submitting it to
+President Wilson for arbitration. The expedient was original. President
+Wilson, people remembered, had had an animated talk on the subject with
+the Italian Premier, Orlando, and it was known that he had set his face
+against Italy's claim and against the secret treaty that recognized it.
+Consequently the Serbs were running no risk by challenging Signor
+Orlando to lay the matter before the American delegate. Whether, all
+things considered, it was a wise move to make has been questioned.
+Anyhow, the Italian delegation declined the suggestion on a number of
+grounds which several delegates considered convincing. The Conference,
+it urged, had been convoked precisely for the purpose of hearing and
+settling such disputes as theirs, and the Conference consisted, not of
+one, but of many delegates, who collectively were better qualified to
+deal with such problems than any one man. Europeans, too, could more
+fully appreciate the arguments, and the atmosphere through which the
+arguments should be contemplated, than the eminent American idealist,
+who had more than once had to modify his judgment on European matters.
+Again, to remove the discussion from the international court might well
+be felt as a slight put upon the men who composed it. For why should
+their verdict be less worth soliciting than that of the President of the
+United States? True, Italy's delegates were themselves judges in that
+tribunal, but the question to be tried was not a matter between two
+countries, but an issue of much wider import--namely, what frontiers
+accorded to the embryonic state of Jugoslavia would be most conducive to
+the world's peace. And nobody, they held, could offer a more complete or
+trustworthy answer than they and their European colleagues, who were
+conversant with all the elements of the problem. Besides--but this
+objection was not expressly formulated--had not Mr. Wilson already
+decided against Italy? On these and other grounds, then, they decided to
+leave the matter to the Conference. It was a delicate subject, and few
+onlookers cared to open their minds on its merits.
+
+Albania was represented by an old friend of mine, the venerable Turkhan
+Pasha, who had been in diplomacy ever since the Congress of Berlin in
+the 'seventies of last century, and who looked like a modernized Nestor.
+I made his acquaintance many years ago, when he was Ambassador of Turkey
+in St. Petersburg. He was then a favorite everywhere in the Russian
+capital as a conscientious Ambassador, a charming talker, and a
+professional peace-maker, who wished well to everybody. The Young Turks
+having recalled him from St. Petersburg, he soon afterward became Grand
+Vizier to the Mbret of Albania. Far resonant events removed the Mbret
+from the throne, Turkhan Pasha from the Vizierate, and Albania from the
+society of nations, and I next found my friend in Switzerland ill in
+health, eating the bitter bread of exile, temporarily isolated from the
+world of politics and waiting for something to turn up. A few years more
+gave the Allies an unexpectedly complete victory and brought back
+Turkhan Pasha to the outskirts of diplomacy and politics. He suddenly
+made his appearance at the Paris Conference as the representative of
+Albania and the friend of Italy.
+
+Another Albanian friend of mine, Essad Pasha, whose plans for the
+regeneration of his country differed widely from those of Turkhan, was
+for a long while detained in Saloniki. By dint of solicitations and
+protests, he at last obtained permission to repair to Paris and lay his
+views before the Conference, where he had a curious interview with Mr.
+Wilson. The President, having received from Albanians in the United
+States many unsolicited judgments on the character and antecedents of
+Essad Pasha, had little faith in his fitness to introduce and popularize
+democratic institutions in Albania. And he unburdened himself of these
+doubts to friends, who diffused the news. The Pasha asked for an
+audience, and by dint of patience and perseverance his prayer was heard.
+Five minutes before the appointed hour he was at the President's house,
+accompanied by his interpreter, a young Albanian named Stavro, who
+converses freely in French, Greek, and Turkish, besides his native
+language. But while in the antechamber Essad, remembering that the
+American President speaks nothing but pure English, suggested that
+Stavro should drive over to the Hôtel Crillon for an interpreter to
+translate from French. Thereupon one of the secretaries stopped him,
+saying: "Although he cannot speak French, the President understands it,
+so that a second interpreter will be unnecessary." Essad then addressed
+Mr. Wilson in Albanian, Stavro translated his words into French, and the
+President listened in silence. It was the impression of those in the
+room that, at any rate, Mr. Wilson understood and appreciated the gist
+of the Pasha's sharp criticism of Italy's behavior. But, to be on the
+safe side, the President requested his visitor to set down on paper at
+his leisure everything he had said and to send it to him.
+
+
+PRESIDENT WILSON
+
+
+President Wilson, before assuming the redoubtable rôle of world arbiter,
+was hardly more than a name in Europe, and it was not a synonym for
+statecraft. His ethical objections to the rule of Huerta in Mexico, his
+attempt to engraft democratic principles there, and the anarchy that
+came of it were matters of history. But the President of the nation to
+whose unbounded generosity and altruism the world owes a debt of
+gratitude that can only be acknowledged, not repaid, deservedly enjoyed
+a superlative measure of respect from his foreign colleagues, and the
+author of the project which was to link all nations together by ties of
+moral kinship was literally idolized by the masses. Never has it fallen
+to my lot to see any mortal so enthusiastically, so spontaneously
+welcomed by the dejected peoples of the universe. His most casual
+utterances were caught up as oracles. He occupied a height so far aloft
+that the vicissitudes of everyday life and the contingencies of politics
+seemingly could not touch him. He was given credit for a rare degree of
+selflessness in his conceptions and actions and for a balance of
+judgment which no storms of passion could upset. So far as one could
+judge by innumerable symptoms, President Wilson was confronted with an
+opportunity for good incomparably vaster than had ever before been
+within the reach of man.
+
+Soon after the opening of the Conference the shadowy outlines of his
+portrait began to fill in, slowly at first, and before three months had
+passed the general public beheld it fairly complete, with many of its
+natural lights and shades. The quality of an active politician is never
+more clearly brought out than when, raised to an eminent place, he is
+set an arduous feat in sight of the multitude. Mr. Wilson's task was
+manifestly congenial to him, for it was deliberately chosen by himself,
+and it comprised the most tremendous problems ever tackled by man born
+of woman. The means by which he set to work to solve them were
+startlingly simple: the regeneration of the human race was to be
+compassed by means of magisterial edicts secretly drafted and sternly
+imposed on the interested peoples, together with a new and not wholly
+appropriate nomenclature.
+
+In his own country, where he has bitter adversaries as well as devoted
+friends, Mr. Wilson was regarded by many as a composite being made up
+of preacher, teacher, and politician. To these diverse elements they
+refer the fervor and unction, the dogmatic tone, and the practised
+shrewdness that marked his words and acts. Independent American opinion
+doubted his qualifications to be a leader. As a politician, they said,
+he had always followed the crowd. He had swum with the tide of public
+sentiment in cardinal matters, instead of stemming or canalizing and
+guiding it. Deficient in courageous initiative, he had contented himself
+with merely executive functions. No new idea, no fresh policy, was
+associated with his name. His singular attitude on the Mexican imbroglio
+had provoked the sharp criticism even of friends and the condemnation of
+political opponents. His utterances during the first stages of the World
+War, such as the statement that the American people were too proud to
+fight and had no concern with the causes and objects of the war,[55]
+when contrasted with the opposite views which he propounded later on,
+were ascribed to quick political evolution--but were not taken as
+symptoms of a settled mind. He seemed a pacifist when his pride revolted
+at the idea of settling any intelligible question by an appeal to
+violence, and a semi-militarist when, having in his own opinion created
+a perfectly safe and bloodless peace guarantee in the shape of the
+League of Nations, he agreed to safeguard it by a military compact which
+sapped its foundation. He owed his re-election for a second term partly,
+it was alleged, to the belief that during the first he had kept his
+country out of the war despite the endeavors of some of its eminent
+leaders to bring it in; yet when firmly seated in the saddle, he
+followed the leaders whom he had theretofore with-stood and obliged the
+nation to fight.
+
+As chief of the great country, his domestic critics add, which had just
+turned victory's scale in favor of the Allies, Mr. Wilson saw a superb
+opportunity to hitch his wagon to a star, and now for the first time he
+made a determined bid for the leadership of the world. Here the idealist
+showed himself at his best. But by the way of preparation he asked the
+nation at the elections to refuse their votes to his political
+opponents, despite the fact that they were loyally supporting his
+policy, and to return only men of his own party, and in order to silence
+their misgivings he declared that to elect Republican Senators would be
+to repudiate the administration of the President of the United States at
+a critical conjuncture. This was urged against him as the inexpiable
+sin. The electors, however, sent his political opponents to the Senate,
+whereupon the President organized his historic visit to Europe. It might
+have become a turning-point in the world's history had he transformed
+his authority and prestige into the driving-power requisite to embody
+his beneficent scheme. But he wasted the opportunity for lack of moral
+courage. Thus far American criticism. But the peoples of Europe ignored
+the estimates of the President made by his fellow-countrymen, who, as
+such, may be forgiven for failing to appreciate his apostleship, or set
+the full value on his humanitarian strivings. The war-weary masses
+judged him not by what he had achieved or attempted in the past, but by
+what he proposed to do in the future. And measured by this standard, his
+spiritual statue grew to legendary proportions.
+
+Europe, when the President touched its shores, was as clay ready for the
+creative potter. Never before were the nations so eager to follow a
+Moses who would take them to the long-promised land where wars are
+prohibited and blockades unknown. And to their thinking he was that
+great leader. In France men bowed down before him with awe and
+affection. Labor leaders in Paris told me that they shed tears of joy in
+his presence, and that their comrades would go through fire and water to
+help him to realize his noble schemes.[56] To the working classes in
+Italy his name was a heavenly clarion at the sound of which the earth
+would be renewed. The Germans regarded him and his humane doctrine as
+their sheet-anchor of safety. The fearless Herr Muehlon said, "If
+President Wilson were to address the Germans, and pronounce a severe
+sentence upon them, they would accept it with resignation and without a
+murmur and set to work at once." In German-Austria his fame was that of
+a savior, and the mere mention of his name brought balm to the suffering
+and surcease of sorrow to the afflicted. A touching instance of this
+which occurred in the Austrian capital, when narrated to the President,
+moved him to tears. There were some five or six thousand Austrian
+children in the hospitals at Vienna who, as Christmas was drawing near,
+were sorely in need of medicaments and much else. The head of the
+American Red Cross took up their case and persuaded the Americans in
+France to send two million dollars' worth of medicaments to Vienna.
+These were duly despatched, and had got as far as Berne, when the French
+authorities, having got wind of the matter, protested against this
+premature assistance to infant enemies on grounds which the other
+Allies had to recognize as technically tenable, and the medicaments were
+ordered back to France from Berne. Thereupon Doctor Ferries, of the
+International Red Cross, became wild with indignation and laid the
+matter before the Swiss government, which undertook to send some
+medicaments to the children, while the Americans were endeavoring to
+move the French to allow at least some of the remedies to go through.
+The children in the hospitals, when told that they must wait, were
+bright and hopeful. "It will be all right," some of them exclaimed.
+"Wilson is coming soon, and he will bring us everything."
+
+Thus Mr. Wilson had become a transcendental hero to the European
+proletarians, who in their homely way adjusted his mental and moral
+attributes to their own ideal of the latter-day Messiah. His legendary
+figure, half saint, half revolutionist, emerged from the transparent
+haze of faith, yearning, and ignorance, as in some ecstatic vision. In
+spite of his recorded acts and utterances the mythopeic faculty of the
+peoples had given itself free scope and created a messianic democrat
+destined to free the lower orders, as they were called, in each state
+from the shackles of capitalism, legalized thraldom, and crushing
+taxation, and each nation from sanguinary warfare. Truly, no human being
+since the dawn of history has ever yet been favored with such a superb
+opportunity. Mr. Wilson might have made a gallant effort to lift society
+out of the deep grooves into which it had sunk, and dislodge the secular
+obstacles to the enfranchisement and transfiguration of the human race.
+At the lowest it was open to him to become the center of a countless
+multitude, the heart of their hearts, the incarnation of their noblest
+thought, on condition that he scorned the prudential motives of
+politicians, burst through the barriers of the old order, and deployed
+all his energies and his full will-power in the struggle against sordid
+interests and dense prejudice. But he was cowed by obstacles which his
+will lacked the strength to surmount, and instead of receiving his
+promptings from the everlasting ideals of mankind and the inspiriting
+audacities of his own highest nature and appealing to the peoples
+against their rulers, he felt constrained in the very interest of his
+cause to haggle and barter with the Scribes and the Pharisees, and ended
+by recording a pitiful answer to the most momentous problems couched in
+the impoverished phraseology of a political party.
+
+Many of his political friends had advised the President not to visit
+Europe lest the vast prestige and influence which he wielded from a
+distance should dwindle unutilized on close contact with the realists'
+crowd. Even the war-god Mars, when he descended into the ranks of the
+combatants on the Trojan side, was wounded by a Greek, and, screaming
+with pain, scurried back to Olympus with paling halo. But Mr. Wilson
+decided to preside and to direct the fashioning of his project, and to
+give Europe the benefit of his advice. He explained to Congress that he
+had expressed the ideals of the country for which its soldiers had
+consciously fought, had had them accepted "as the substance of their own
+thoughts and purpose" by the statesmen of the associated governments,
+and now, he concluded: "I owe it to them to see to it, in so far as in
+me lies, that no false or mistaken interpretation is put upon them, and
+no possible effort omitted to realize them. It is now my duty to play my
+full part in making good what they offered their lives and blood to
+obtain. I can think of no call to service which could transcend
+this."[57] No intention could well be more praiseworthy.
+
+Soon after the _George Washington_, flying the presidential flag, had
+steamed out of the Bay on her way to Europe, the United Press received
+from its correspondent on board, who was attached to Mr. Wilson's
+person, a message which invigorated the hopes of the world and evoked
+warm outpourings of the seared soul of suffering man in gratitude toward
+the bringer of balm. It began thus: "The President sails for Europe to
+uphold American ideals, and literally to fight for his Fourteen Points.
+The President, at the Peace Table, will insist on the freedom of the
+seas and a general disarmament.... The seas, he holds, ought to be
+guarded by the whole world."
+
+Since then the world knows what to think of the literal fighting at the
+Peace Table. The freedom of the seas was never as much as alluded to at
+the Peace Table, for the announcement of Mr. Wilson's militant
+championship brought him a wireless message from London to the effect
+that that proposal, at all events, must be struck out of his program if
+he wished to do business with Britain. And without a fight or a
+remonstrance the President struck it out. The Fourteen Points were not
+discussed at the Conference.[58] One may deplore, but one cannot
+misunderstand, what happened. Mr. Wilson, too, had his own fixed aim to
+attain: intent on associating his name with a grandiose humanitarian
+monument, he was resolved not to return to his country without some sort
+of a covenant of the new international life. He could not afford to go
+home empty-handed. Therein lay his weakness and the source of his
+failure. For whenever his attitude toward the Great Powers was taken to
+mean, "Unless you give me my Covenant, you cannot have your Treaty," the
+retort was ready: "Without our Treaty there will be no Covenant."
+
+Like Dejoces, the first king of the Medes, who, having built his palace
+at Ecbatana, surrounded it with seven walls and permanently withdrew his
+person from the gaze of his subjects, Mr. Wilson in Paris admitted to
+his presence only the authorized spokesmen of states and causes, and not
+all of these. He declined to receive persons who thought they had a
+claim to see him, and he received others who were believed to have none.
+During his sojourn in Paris he took many important Russian affairs in
+hand after having publicly stated that no peace could be stable so long
+as Russia was torn by internal strife. And as familiarity with Russian
+conditions was not one of his accomplishments, he presumably needed
+advice and help from those acquainted with them. Now a large number of
+Russians, representing all political parties and four governments, were
+in Paris waiting to be consulted. But between January and May not one of
+them was ever asked for information or counsel. Nay, more, those who
+respectfully solicited an audience were told to wait. In the meanwhile
+men unacquainted with the country and people were sent by Mr. Wilson to
+report on the situation, and to begin by obtaining the terms of an
+acceptable treaty from the Bolshevik government.
+
+The first plenipotentiary of one of the principal lesser states was for
+months refused an audience, to the delight of his political adversaries,
+who made the most of the circumstance at home. An eminent diplomatist
+who possessed considerable claims to be vouchsafed an interview was put
+off from week to week, until at last, by dint of perseverance, as it
+seemed to him, the President consented to see him. The diplomatist,
+pleased at his success, informed a friend that the following Wednesday
+would be the memorable day. "But are you not aware," asked the friend,
+"that on that day the President will be on the high seas on his way back
+to the United States?" He was not aware of it. But when he learned that
+the audience had been deliberately fixed for a day when Mr. Wilson would
+no longer be in France he felt aggrieved.
+
+In Italy the President's progress was a veritable triumph. Emperors and
+kings had roused no such enthusiasm. One might fancy him a deity
+unexpectedly discovered under the outward appearance of a mortal and now
+being honored as the god that he was by ecstatic worshipers. Everything
+he did was well done, everything he said was nobly conceived and worthy
+of being treasured up. In these dispositions a few brief months wrought
+a vast difference.
+
+In this respect an instructive comparison might be made between Tsar
+Alexander I at the Vienna Congress and the President of the United
+States at the Conference of Paris. The Russian monarch arrived in the
+Austrian capital with the halo of a Moses focusing the hopes of all the
+peoples of Europe. His reputation for probity, public spirit, and lofty
+aspirations had won for him the good-will and the anticipatory blessings
+of war-weary nations. He, too, was a mystic, believed firmly in occult
+influences, so firmly indeed that he accepted the fitful guidance of an
+ecstatic lady whose intuition was supposed to transcend the sagacity of
+professional statesmen. And yet the Holy Alliance was the supreme
+outcome of his endeavors, as the League of Nations was that of Mr.
+Wilson's. In lieu of universal peace all eastern Europe was still
+warring and revolting in September and the general outlook was
+disquieting. The disheartening effect of the contrast between the
+promise and the achievement of the American statesman was felt
+throughout the world. But Mr. Wilson has the solace to know that people
+hardly ever reach their goal--though they sometimes advance fairly near
+to it. They either die on the way or else it changes or they do.
+
+It was doubtless a noble ambition that moved the Prime Ministers of the
+Great Powers and the chief of the North American Republic to give their
+own service to the Conference as heads of their respective missions. For
+they considered themselves to be the best equipped for the purpose, and
+they were certainly free from such prejudices as professional traditions
+and a confusing knowledge of details might be supposed to engender. But
+in almost every respect it was a grievous mistake and the source of
+others still more grievous. True, in his own particular sphere each of
+them had achieved what is nowadays termed greatness. As a war leader Mr.
+Lloyd George had been hastily classed with Marlborough and Chatham, M.
+Clemenceau compared to Danton, and Mr. Wilson set apart in a category to
+himself. But without questioning these journalistic certificates of fame
+one must admit that all three plenipotentiaries were essentially
+politicians, old parliamentary hands, and therefore expedient-mongers
+whose highest qualifications for their own profession were drawbacks
+which unfitted them for their self-assumed mission. Of the concrete
+world which they set about reforming their knowledge was amazingly
+vague. "Frogs in the pond," says the Japanese proverb, "know naught of
+the ocean." There was, of course, nothing blameworthy in their
+unacquaintanceship with the issues, but only in the offhandedness with
+which they belittled its consequences. Had they been conversant with the
+subject or gifted with deeper insight, many of the things which seemed
+particularly clear to them would have struck them as sheer inexplicable,
+and among these perhaps their own leadership of the world-parliament.
+
+What they lacked, however, might in some perceptible degree have been
+supplied by enlisting as their helpers men more happily endowed than
+themselves. But they deliberately chose mediocrities. It is a mark of
+genial spirits that they are well served, but the plenipotentiaries of
+the Conference were not characterized by it. Away in the background some
+of them had familiars or casual prompters to whose counsels they were
+wont to listen, but many of the adjoints who moved in the limelight of
+the world-stage were gritless and pithless.
+
+As the heads of the principal governments implicitly claimed to be the
+authorized spokesmen of the human race and endowed with unlimited
+powers, it is worth noting that this claim was boldly challenged by the
+peoples' organs in the press. Nearly all the journals read by the masses
+objected from the first to the dictatorship of the group of Premiers,
+Mr. Wilson being excepted. "The modern parasite," wrote a respectable
+democratic newspaper,[59] "is the politician. Of all the privileged
+beings who have ever governed us he is the worst. In that, however,
+there is nothing surprising ... he is not only amoral, but incompetent
+by definition. And it is this empty-headed individual who is intrusted
+with the task of settling problems with the very rudiments of which he
+is unacquainted." Another French journal[60] wrote: "In truth it is a
+misfortune that the leaders of the Conference are Cabinet chiefs, for
+each of them is obsessed by the carking cares of his domestic policy.
+Besides, the Paris Conference takes on the likeness of a lyrical drama
+in which there are only tenors. Now would even the most beautiful work
+in the world survive this excess of beauties?"
+
+The truth as revealed by subsequent facts would seem to be that each of
+the plenipotentiaries recognizing parliamentary success as the source of
+his power was obsessed by his own political problems and stimulated by
+his own immediate ends. As these ends, however incompatible with each
+other, were believed by each one to tend toward the general object, he
+worked zealously for their attainment. The consequences are notorious.
+M. Clemenceau made France the hub of the universe. Mr. Lloyd George
+harbored schemes which naturally identified the welfare of mankind with
+the hegemony of the English-speaking races. Signor Orlando was inspired
+by the "sacred egotism" which had actuated all Italian Cabinets since
+Italy entered the war, and President Wilson was burning to associate his
+name and also that of his country with the vastest and noblest
+enterprise inscribed in the annals of history. And each one moved over
+his own favorite route toward his own goal. It was an apt illustration
+of the Russian fable of the swan, the crab, and the pike being harnessed
+together in order to remove a load. The swan flew upward, the crab
+crawled backward, the pike made with all haste for the water, and the
+load remained where it was.
+
+A lesser but also a serious disadvantage of the delegation of government
+chiefs made itself felt in the procedure. Embarrassing delays were
+occasioned by the unavoidable absences of the principal delegates whom
+pressure of domestic politics called to their respective capitals, as
+well as by their tactics, and their colleagues profited by their absence
+for the sake of the good cause. Thus all Paris, as we saw, was aware
+that the European chiefs, whose faith in Wilsonian orthodoxy was still
+feeble at that time, were prepared to take advantage of the President's
+sojourn in Washington to speed up business in their own sense and to
+confront him on his return with accomplished facts. But when, on his
+return, he beheld their handiwork he scrapped it, and a considerable
+loss of time ensued for which the world has since had to pay very
+heavily.
+
+Again, when Premier Orlando was in Rome after Mr. Wilson's appeal to
+the Italian people, a series of measures was passed by the delegates in
+Paris affecting Italy, diminishing her importance at the Conference, and
+modifying the accepted interpretation of the Treaty of London. Some of
+these decisions had to be canceled when the Italians returned. These
+stratagems had an undesirable effect on the Italians.
+
+Not the least of the Premiers' disabilities lay in the circumstance that
+they were the merest novices in international affairs. Geography,
+ethnography, psychology, and political history were sealed books to
+them. Like the rector of Louvain University who told Oliver Goldsmith
+that, as he had become the head of that institution without knowing
+Greek, he failed to see why it should be taught there, the chiefs of
+state, having attained the highest position in their respective
+countries without more than an inkling of international affairs, were
+unable to realize the importance of mastering them or the impossibility
+of repairing the omission as they went along.
+
+They displayed their contempt for professional diplomacy and this
+feeling was shared by many, but they extended that sentiment to certain
+diplomatic postulates which can in no case be dispensed with, because
+they are common to all professions. One of them is knowledge of the
+terms of the problems to be solved. No conjuncture could have been less
+favorable for an experiment based on this theory. The general situation
+made a demand on the delegates for special knowledge and experience,
+whereas the Premiers and the President, although specialists in nothing,
+had to act as specialists in everything. Traditional diplomacy would
+have shown some respect for the law of causality. It would have sent to
+the Conference diplomatists more or less acquainted with the issues to
+be mooted and also with the mentality of the other negotiators, and it
+would have assigned to them a number of experts as advisers. It would
+have formed a plan similar to that proposed by the French authorities
+and rejected by the Anglo-Saxons. In this way at least the technical
+part of the task would have been tackled on right lines, the war would
+have been liquidated and normal relations quickly re-established among
+the belligerent states. It may be objected that this would have been a
+meager contribution to the new politico-social fabric. Undoubtedly it
+would, but, however meager, it would have been a positive gain. Possibly
+the first stone of a new world might have been laid once the ruins of
+the old were cleared away. But even this modest feat could not be
+achieved by amateurs working in desultory fashion and handicapped by
+their political parties at home. The resultant of their apparent
+co-operation was a sum in subtraction because dispersal or effort was
+unavoidably substituted for concentration.
+
+Whether one contemplates them in the light of their public acts or
+through the prism of gossip, the figures cut by the delegates of the
+Great Powers were pathetic. Giants in the parliamentary sphere, they
+shrank to the dimensions of dwarfs in the international. In matters of
+geography, ethnography, history, and international politics they were
+helplessly at sea, and the stories told of certain of their efforts to
+keep their heads above water while maintaining a simulacrum of dignity
+would have been amusing were the issues less momentous. "Is it after
+Upper or Lower Silesia that those greedy Poles are hankering?" one
+Premier is credibly reported to have asked some months after the Polish
+delegation had propounded and defended its claims and he had had time to
+familiarize himself with them. "Please point out to me Dalmatia on the
+map," was another characteristic request, "and tell me what connection
+there is between it and Fiume." One of the principal plenipotentiaries
+addressed a delegate who is an acquaintance of mine approximately as
+follows: "I cannot understand the spokesmen of the smaller states. To me
+they seem stark mad. They single out a strip of territory and for no
+intelligible reason flock round it like birds of prey round a corpse on
+the field of battle. Take Silesia, for example. The Poles are clamoring
+for it as if the very existence of their country depended on their
+annexing it. The Germans are still more crazy about it. But for their
+eagerness I suppose there is some solid foundation. But how in Heaven's
+name do the Armenians come to claim it? Just think of it, the Armenians!
+The world has gone mad. No wonder France has set her foot down and
+warned them off the ground. But what does France herself want with it?
+What is the clue to the mystery?" My acquaintance, in reply, pointed out
+as considerately as he could that Silesia was the province for which
+Poles and Germans were contending, whereas the Armenians were pleading
+for Cilicia, which is farther east, and were, therefore, frowned upon by
+the French, who conceive that they have a civilizing mission there and
+men enough to accomplish it.
+
+It is characteristic of the epoch, and therefore worthy of the
+historian's attention, that not only the members of the Conference, but
+also other leading statesmen of Anglo-Saxon countries, were wont to make
+a very little knowledge of peoples and countries go quite a far way. Two
+examples may serve to familiarize the reader with the phenomenon and to
+moderate his surprise at the defects of the world-dictators in Paris.
+One English-speaking statesman, dealing with the Italian government[61]
+and casting around for some effective way of helping the Italian people
+out of their pitiable economic plight, fancied he hit upon a felicitous
+expedient, which he unfolded as follows. "I venture," he said, "to
+promise that if you will largely increase your cultivation of bananas
+the people of my country will take them all. No matter how great the
+quantities, our market will absorb them, and that will surely make a
+considerable addition to your balance on the right side." At first the
+Italians believed he was joking. But finding that he really meant what
+he said, they ruthlessly revealed his idea to the nation under the
+heading, "Italian bananas!"
+
+Here is the other instance. During the war the Polish people was
+undergoing unprecedented hardships. Many of the poorer classes were
+literally perishing of hunger. A Polish commission was sent to an
+English-speaking country to interest the government and people in the
+condition of the sufferers and obtain relief. The envoys had an
+interview with a Secretary of State, who inquired to what port they
+intended to have the foodstuffs conveyed for distribution in the
+interior of Poland. They answered: "We shall have them taken to Dantzig.
+There is no other way." The statesman reflected a little and then said:
+"You may meet with difficulties. If you have them shipped to Dantzig you
+must of course first obtain Italy's permission. Have you got it?" "No.
+We had not thought of that. In fact, we don't yet see why Italy need be
+approached." "Because it is Italy who has command of the Mediterranean,
+and if you want the transport taken to Dantzig it is the Italian
+government that you must ask!"[62]
+
+The delegates picked up a good deal of miscellaneous information about
+the various countries whose future they were regulating, and to their
+credit it should be said that they put questions to their informants
+without a trace of false pride. One of the two chief delegates wending
+homeward from a sitting at which M. Jules Cambon had spoken a good deal
+about those Polish districts which, although they contained a majority
+of Germans, yet belonged of right to Poland, asked the French delegate
+why he had made so many allusions to Frederick the Great. "What had
+Frederick to do with Poland?" he inquired. The answer was that the
+present German majority of the inhabitants was made up of colonists who
+had immigrated into the districts since the time of Frederick the Great
+and the partition of Poland. "Yes, I see," exclaimed the statesman, "but
+what had Frederick the Great to do with the partition of Poland?" ... In
+the domain of ethnography there were also many pitfalls and accidents.
+During an official _exposé_ of the Oriental situation before the Supreme
+Council, one of the Great Four, listening to a narrative of Turkish
+misdeeds, heard that the Kurds had tortured and killed a number of
+defenseless women, children, and old men. He at once interrupted the
+speaker with the query: "You now call them Kurds. A few minutes ago you
+said they were Turks. I take it that the Kurds and the Turks are the
+same people?" Loath to embarrass one of the world's arbiters, the
+delegate respectfully replied, "Yes, sir, they are about the same, but
+the worse of the two are the Kurds."[63]
+
+Great Britain's first delegate, with engaging candor sought to disarm
+criticism by frankly confessing in the House of Commons that he had
+never before heard of Teschen, about which such an extraordinary fuss
+was then being made, and by asking: "How many members of the House have
+ever heard of Teschen? Yet," he added significantly, "Teschen very
+nearly produced an angry conflict between two allied states."[64]
+
+The circumstance that an eminent parliamentarian had never heard of
+problems that agitate continental peoples is excusable. Less so was his
+resolve, despite such a capital disqualification, to undertake the task
+of solving those problems single-handed, although conscious that the
+fate of whole peoples depended on his succeeding. It is no adequate
+justification to say that he could always fall back upon special
+commissions, of which there was no lack at the Conference. Unless he
+possessed a safe criterion by which to assess the value of the
+commissions' conclusions, he must needs himself decide the matter
+arbitrarily. And the delegates, having no such criterion, pronounced
+very arbitrary judgments on momentous issues. One instance of this
+turned upon Poland's claims to certain territories incorporated in
+Germany, which were referred to a special commission under the
+presidency of M. Cambon. Commissioners were sent to the country to study
+the matter on the spot, where they had received every facility for
+acquainting themselves with it. After some weeks the commission reported
+in favor of the Polish claim with unanimity. But Mr. Lloyd George
+rejected their conclusions and insisted on having the report sent back
+to them for reconsideration. Again the commissioners went over the
+familiar ground, but felt obliged to repeat their verdict anew. Once
+more, however, the British Premier demurred, and such was his tenacity
+that, despite Mr. Wilson's opposition, the final decision of the
+Conference reversed that of the commission and non-suited the Poles. By
+what line of argument, people naturally asked, did the first British
+delegate come to that conclusion? That he knew more about the matter
+than the special Inter-Allied commission is hardly to be supposed.
+Indeed, nobody assumed that he was any better informed on that subject
+than about Teschen. The explanation put in circulation by interested
+persons was that, like Socrates, he had his own familiar demon to prompt
+him, who, like all such spirits, chose to flourish, like the violet, in
+the shade. That this source of light was accessible to the Prime
+Minister may, his apologists hold, one day prove a boon to the peoples
+whose fate was thus being spun in darkness and seemingly at haphazard.
+Possibly. But in the meanwhile it was construed as an affront to their
+intelligence and a violation of the promise made to them of "open
+covenants openly arrived at." The press asked why the information
+requisite for the work had not been acquired in advance as these
+semi-mystical ways of obtaining it commended themselves to nobody.
+Wholly mystical were the methods attributed to one or other of the men
+who were preparing the advent of the new era. For superstition of
+various kinds was supposed to be as well represented at the Paris
+Conference as at the Congress of Vienna. Characteristic of the epoch was
+the gravity with which individuals otherwise well balanced exercised
+their ingenuity in finding out the true relation of the world's peace to
+certain lucky numbers. For several events connected with the Conference
+the thirteenth day of the month was deliberately, and some occultists
+added felicitously, chosen. It was also noticed that an effort was made
+by all the delegates to have the Allies' reply to the German
+counter-proposals presented on the day of destiny, Friday, June 13th.
+When it miscarried a flutter was caused in the dovecotes of the
+illuminated. The failure was construed as an inauspicious omen and it
+caused the spirits of many to droop. The principal clairvoyante of
+Paris, Madame N----, who plumes herself on being the intermediary
+between the Fates that rule and some of their earthly executors, was
+consulted on the subject, one knows not with what result.[65] It was
+given out, however, as the solemn utterance of the oracle in vogue that
+Mr. Wilson's enterprise was weighted with original sin; he had made one
+false step before his arrival in Europe, and that had put everything out
+of gear. By enacting fourteen commandments he had countered the magic
+charm of his lucky thirteen. One of the fourteen, it was soothsaid, must
+therefore be omitted--it might be, say, that of open covenants openly
+arrived at, or the freedom of the seas--in a word, any one so long as
+the mystic number thirteen remained intact. But should that be
+impossible, seeing that the Fourteen Points had already become
+house-hold words to all nations and peoples, then it behooved the
+President to number the last of his saving points 13a.[66]
+
+This odd mixture of the real and the fanciful--a symptom, as the
+initiated believed, of a mood of fine spiritual exaltation--met with
+little sympathy among the impatient masses whose struggle for bare life
+was growing ever fiercer. Stagnation held the business world, prices
+were rising to prohibitive heights, partly because of the dawdling of
+the world's conclave; hunger was stalking about the ruined villages of
+the northern departments of France, destructive wars were being waged in
+eastern Europe, and thousands of Christians were dying of hunger in
+Bessarabia.[67] Epigrammatic strictures and winged words barbed with
+stinging satire indicated the feelings of the many. And the fact remains
+on record that streaks of the mysticism that buoyed up Alexander I at
+the Congress of Vienna, and is supposed to have stimulated Nicholas II
+during the first world-parliament at The Hague, were noticeable from
+time to time in the environment of the Paris Conference. The disclosure
+of these elements of superstition was distinctly harmful and might have
+been hindered easily by the system of secrecy and censorship which
+effectively concealed matters much less mischievous.
+
+The position of the plenipotentiaries was unenviable at best and they
+well deserve the benefit of extenuating circumstances. For not even a
+genius can efficiently tackle problems with the elements of which he
+lacks acquaintanceship, and the mass of facts which they had to deal
+with was sheer unmanageable. It was distressing to watch them during
+those eventful months groping and floundering through a labyrinth of
+obstacles with no Ariadne clue to guide their tortuous course, and
+discovering that their task was more intricate than they had imagined.
+The ironic domination of temper and circumstance over the fitful
+exertions of men struggling with the partially realized difficulties of
+a false position led to many incongruities upon which it would be
+ungracious to dwell. One of them, however, which illustrates the
+situation, seems almost incredible. It is said to have occurred in
+January. According to the current narrative, soon after the arrival of
+President Wilson in Paris, he received from a French publicist named
+M.B. a long and interesting memorandum about the island of Corsica,
+recounting the history, needs, and aspirations of the population as well
+as the various attempts they had made to regain their independence, and
+requesting him to employ his good offices at the Conference to obtain
+for them complete autonomy. To this demand M.B. is said to have received
+a reply[68] to the effect that the President "is persuaded that this
+question will form the subject of a thorough examination by the
+competent authorities of the Conference" Corsica, the birthplace of
+Napoleon, and as much an integral part of France as the Isle of Man is
+of England, seeking to slacken the ties that link it to the Republic and
+receiving a promise that the matter would be carefully considered by the
+delegates sounds more like a mystification than a sober statement of
+fact. The story was sent to the newspapers for publication, but the
+censor very wisely struck it out.
+
+These and kindred occurrences enable one better to appreciate the
+motives which prompted the delegates to shroud their conversations and
+tentative decisions in a decorous veil of secrecy.
+
+It is but fair to say that the enterprise to which they set their hands
+was the vastest that ever tempted lofty ambitions since the
+tower-builders of Babel strove to bring heaven within reach of the
+earth. It transcended the capacity of the contemporary world's greatest
+men.[69] It was a labor for a wonder-worker in the pristine days of
+heroes. But although to solve even the main problems without residue was
+beyond the reach of the most genial representatives of latter-day
+statecraft, it needed only clearness of conception, steadiness of
+purpose, and the proper adjustment of means to ends, to begin the work
+on the right lines and give it an impulse that might perhaps carry it to
+completion in the fullness of time.
+
+But even these postulates were wanting. The eminent parliamentarians
+failed to rise to the gentle height of average statecraft. They appeared
+in their new and august character of world-reformers with all the roots
+still clinging to them of the rank electoral soil from which they
+sprang. Their words alone were redolent of idealism, their deeds were
+too often marred by pettifogging compromises or childish
+blunders--constructive phrases and destructive acts. Not only had they
+no settled method of working, they lacked even a common proximate aim.
+For although they all employed the same phraseology when describing the
+objects for which their countries had fought and they themselves were
+ostensibly laboring, no two delegates attached the same ideas to the
+words they used. Yet, instead of candidly avowing this root-defect and
+remedying it, they were content to stretch the euphemistic terms until
+these covered conflicting conceptions and gratified the ears of every
+hearer. Thus, "open covenants openly arrived at" came to mean arbitrary
+ukases issued by a secret conclave, and "the self-determination of
+peoples" connoted implicit obedience to dictatorial decrees. The new
+result was a bewildering phantasmagoria.
+
+And yet it was professedly for the purpose of obviating such
+misunderstandings that Mr. Wilson had crossed the Atlantic. Having
+expressed in plain terms the ideals for which American soldiers had
+fought, and which became the substance of the thoughts and purposes of
+the associated statesmen, "I owe it to them," he had said, "to see to
+it, in so far as in me lies, that no false or mistaken interpretation is
+put upon them and no possible effort omitted to realize them." And that
+was the result achieved.
+
+No such juggling with words as went on at the Conference had been
+witnessed since the days of medieval casuistry. New meanings were
+infused into old terms, rendering the help of "exegesis" indispensable.
+Expressions like "territorial equilibrium" and "strategic frontiers"
+were stringently banished, and it is affirmed that President Wilson
+would wince and his expression change at the bare mention of these
+obnoxious symbols of the effete ordering which it was part of his
+mission to do away with forever. And yet the things signified by those
+words were preserved withal under other names. Nor could it well be
+otherwise. One can hardly conceive a durable state system in Europe
+under the new any more than the old dispensation without something that
+corresponds to equilibrium. An architect who should boastingly discard
+the law of gravitation in favor of a different theory would stand little
+chance of being intrusted with the construction of a palace of peace.
+Similarly, a statesman who, while proclaiming that the era of wars is
+not yet over, would deprive of strategic frontiers the pivotal states of
+Europe which are most exposed to sudden attack would deserve to find few
+disciples and fewer clients. Yet that was what Mr. Wilson aimed at and
+what some of his friends affirm he has achieved. His foreign colleagues
+re-echoed his dogmas after having emasculated them. It was instructive
+and unedifying to watch how each of the delegates, when his own
+country's turn came to be dealt with on the new lines, reversed his
+tactics and, sacrificing sound to substance, insisted on safeguards,
+relied on historic rights, invoked economic requirements, and appealed
+to common sense, but all the while loyally abjured "territorial
+equilibrium" and "strategic guarantees." Hence the fierce struggles
+which MM. Orlando, Dmowski, Bratiano, Venizelos, and Makino had to carry
+on with the chief of that state which is the least interested in
+European affairs in order to obtain all or part of the territories which
+they considered indispensable to the security and well-being of their
+respective countries.
+
+At the outset Mr. Wilson stood for an ideal Europe of a wholly new and
+undefined type, which would have done away with the need for strategic
+frontiers. Its contours were vague, for he had no clear mental picture
+of the concrete Europe out of which it was to be fashioned. He spoke,
+indeed, and would fain have acted, as though the old Continent were like
+a thinly inhabited territory of North America fifty years ago,
+unencumbered by awkward survivals of the past and capable of receiving
+any impress. He seemingly took no account of its history, its peoples,
+or their interests and strivings. History shared the fate of Kolchak's
+government and the Ukraine; it was not recognized by the delegates. What
+he brought to Europe from America was an abstract idea, old and
+European, and at first his foreign colleagues treated it as such. Some
+of them had actually sneered at it, others had damned it with faint
+praise, and now all of them honestly strove to save their own countries'
+vital interests from its disruptive action while helping to apply it to
+their neighbors. Thus Britain, who at that time had no territorial
+claims to put forward, had her sea-doctrine to uphold, and she upheld it
+resolutely. Before he reached Europe the President was notified in plain
+terms that his theory of the freedom of the seas would neither be
+entertained nor discussed. Accordingly, he abandoned it without
+protest. It was then explained away as a journalistic misconception.
+That was the first toll paid by the American reformer in Europe, and it
+spelled failure to his entire scheme, which was one and indivisible. It
+fell to my lot to record the payment of the tribute and the abandonment
+of that first of the fourteen commandments. The mystic thirteen
+remained. But soon afterward another went by the board. Then there were
+twelve. And gradually the number dwindled.
+
+This recognition of hard realities was a bitter disappointment to all
+the friends of the spiritual and social renovation of the world. It was
+a spectacle for cynics. It rendered a frank return to the ancient system
+unavoidable and brought grist to the mill of the equilibrists. And yet
+the conclusion was shriked. But even the tough realities might have been
+made to yield a tolerable peace if they had been faced squarely. If the
+new conception could not be realized at once, the old one should have
+been taken back into favor provisionally until broader foundations could
+be laid, but it must be one thing or the other. From the political angle
+of vision at which the European delegates insisted on placing
+themselves, the Old World way of tackling the various problems was alone
+admissible. Their program was coherent and their reasoning strictly
+logical. The former included strategic frontiers and territorial
+equilibrium. Doubtless this angle of vision was narrow, the survey it
+allowed was inadequate, and the results attainable ran the risk of being
+ultimately thrust aside by the indignant peoples. For the world problem
+was not wholly nor even mainly political. Still, the method was
+intelligible and the ensuing combinations would have hung coherently
+together. They would have satisfied all those--and they were many--who
+believed that the second decade of the twentieth century differs in no
+essential respect from the first and that latter-day world problems may
+be solved by judicious territorial redistribution. But even that
+conception was not consistently acted on. Deviations were permitted here
+and insisted upon there, only they were spoken of unctuously as
+sacrifices incumbent on the lesser states to the Fourteen Points. For
+the delegates set great store by their reputation for logic and
+coherency. Whatever other charges against the Conference might be
+tolerated, that of inconsistency was bitterly resented, especially by
+Mr. Wilson. For a long while he contended that he was as true to his
+Fourteen Points as is the needle to the pole. It was not until after his
+return to Washington, in the summer, that he admitted the perturbations
+caused by magnetic currents--sympathy for France he termed them.
+
+The effort of imagination required to discern consistency in such of the
+Council's decisions as became known from time to time was so far beyond
+the capacity of average outsiders that the ugly phrase "to make the
+world safe for hypocrisy" was early coined, uttered, and propagated.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[46] Cf. _Le Temps_, May 23, 1919. It is an adaptation of the
+inscription over the Pantheon, "Aux grands hommes, la Patrie
+reconnaissante."
+
+[47] _The Daily Mail_, April 25, 1919 (Paris edition).
+
+[48] In Germany.
+
+[49] General Pétain is said to have rejected the suggestion.
+
+[50] Cf. _Bulletin des Droits de l'Homme_, 19ème année, p. 461.
+
+[51] It was either Friday, the 4th, or Saturday, the 5th of July.
+
+[52] At the end of August, 1919.
+
+[53] One delegate from a poor and friendless country had to take the
+maps of a rival state and retouch them in accordance with the
+ethnographical data, which he considered alone correct.
+
+[54] _L'Homme Enchatné_, December 14, 1914.
+
+[55] "With its causes and objects we have no concern." Speech delivered
+by Mr. Wilson before the League to Enforce Peace in Washington on May
+24, 1916.
+
+[56] The testimony of a leading French press organ is worth reproducing
+here: "La situation du Président Wilson dans nos démocraties est
+magnifique, souveraine et extrêmement périlleuse. On ne connaît pas
+d'hommes, dans les temps contemporains, ayant eu plus d'autorité et de
+puissance; la popularité lui a donné ce que le droit divin ne conférait
+pas toujours aux monarques héréditaires. En revanche et par le fait du
+choc en retour, sa responsabilité est supérieure à celle du prince le
+plus absolu. S'il réussit à organiser le monde d'après ses rêves, sa
+gloire dominera les plus hautes gloires; mais il faut dire hardiment que
+s'il échouait il plongerait le monde dans un chaos dont le bolchevisme
+russe ne nous offre qu'une faible image; et sa responsabilité devant la
+conscience humaine dépasserait ce que peut supporter un simple mortel.
+Redoutable alternative!"--Cf. _Le Figaro_, February 10, 1919.
+
+[57] From Mr. Wilson's address to Congress read on December 2, 1918. Cf.
+_The Times_, December 4, 1918.
+
+[58] Cf. Secretary Lansing's evidence before the Senate Foreign
+Relations Committee, _The Chicago Tribune_, August 27, 1919.
+
+[59] _La Démocratie Nouvelle_, May 27, 1919
+
+[60] _Le Figaro_, March 26, 1919.
+
+[61] Both of them occurred before the armistice, but during the war.
+
+[62] For the accuracy of this and the preceding story I vouch
+absolutely. I have the names of persons, places, and authorities, which
+are superfluous here.
+
+[63] The Kurds are members of the great Indo-European family to which
+the Greeks, Italians, Celts, Teutons, Slavs, Hindus, Persians, and
+Afghans belong, whereas the Turks are a branch of a wholly different
+stock, the Ural-Altai group, of which the Mongols, Turks, Tartars,
+Finns, and Magyars are members.
+
+[64] April 16, 1919.
+
+[65] Madame N---- showed a friend of mine an autograph letter which she
+claims to have received from one of her clients, "a world's famous man."
+I was several times invited to inspect it at the clairvoyante's abode,
+or at my own, if I preferred.
+
+[66] Articles on the subject appeared in the French press. To the best
+of my recollection there was one in _Bonsoir_.
+
+[67] The American Red Cross buried sixteen hundred of them in August,
+1919. _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 30, 1919.
+
+[68] The reply, of which I possess what was given to me as a copy, is
+dated Paris, January 9, 1919, and is in French.
+
+[69] Imagine, for instance, the condition of mind into which the
+following day's work must have thrown the American statesman, beset as
+he was with political worries of his own. The extract quoted is taken
+from _The Daily Mail_ of April 18, 1919 (Paris edition).
+
+President Wilson had a busy day yesterday, as the following list of
+engagements shows: 11 A.M. Dr. Wellington Koo, to present the Chinese
+Delegation to the Peace Conference. 11.10 A.M. Marquis de Vogué had a
+delegation of seven others, representing the Congrès Français, to
+present their view as to the disposition of the left bank of the Rhine.
+11.30 A.M. Assyrian and Chaldean Delegation, with a message from the
+Assyrian-Chaldean nation. 11.45 A.M. Dalmatian Delegation, to present to
+the President the result of the plebiscite of that part of Dalmatia
+occupied by Italians. _Noon_. M. Bucquet, Chargé d'Affaires of San
+Marino, to convey the action of the Grand Council of San Marino,
+conferring on the President Honorary Citizenship in the Republic of San
+Marino. 12.10 P.M. M. Colonder, Swiss Minister of Foreign Affairs. 12.20
+P.M. Miss Rose Schneiderman and Miss Mary Anderson, delegates of the
+National Women's Trade Union League of the United States. 12.30 P.M. The
+Patriarch of Constantinople, the head of the Orthodox Eastern Church.
+12.45 P.M. Essad Pasha, delegate of Albania, to present the claims of
+Albania. 1 P.M. M.M.L. Coromilas, Greek Minister at Rome, to pay his
+respects. _Luncheon_. Mr. Newton D. Baker, Secretary for War. 4 P.M. Mr.
+Herbert Hoover. 4.15 P.M. M. Bratiano, of the Rumanian Delegation. 4.30
+P.M. Dr. Affonso Costa, former Portuguese Minister, Portuguese Delegate
+to the Peace Conference. 4.45 P.M. Boghos Nubar Pasha, president of the
+Armenian National Delegation, accompanied by M.A. Aharoman and Professor
+A. Der Hagopian, of Robert College. 5.15 P.M. M. Pasitch, of the Serbian
+Delegation. 5.30 P.M. Mr. Frank Walsh, of the Irish-American Delegation.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+CENSORSHIP AND SECRECY
+
+
+Never was political veracity in Europe at a lower ebb than during the
+Peace Conference. The blinding dust of half-truths cunningly mixed with
+falsehood and deliberately scattered with a lavish hand, obscured the
+vision of the people, who were expected to adopt or acquiesce in the
+judgments of their rulers on the various questions that arose. Four and
+a half years of continuous and deliberate lying for victory had
+disembodied the spirit of veracity and good faith throughout the world
+of politics. Facts were treated as plastic and capable of being shaped
+after this fashion or that, according to the aim of the speaker or
+writer. Promises were made, not because the things promised were seen to
+be necessary or desirable, but merely in order to dispose the public
+favorably toward a policy or an expedient, or to create and maintain a
+certain frame of mind toward the enemies or the Allies. At elections and
+in parliamentary discourses, undertakings were given, some of which were
+known to be impossible of fulfilment. Thus the ministers in some of the
+Allied countries bound themselves to compel the Germans not only to pay
+full compensation for damage wantonly done, but also to defray the
+entire cost of the war.
+
+The notion that the enemy would thus make good all losses was manifestly
+preposterous. In a century the debt could not be wiped out, even though
+the Teutonic people could be got to work steadily and selflessly for
+the purpose. For their productivity would be unavailing if their
+victorious adversaries were indisposed to admit the products to their
+markets. And not only were the governments unwilling, but some of the
+peoples announced their determination to boycott German wares on their
+own initiative. None the less the nations were for months buoyed up with
+the baleful delusion that all their war expenses would be refunded by
+the enemy.[70]
+
+It was not the governments only, however, who, after having for over
+four years colored and refracted the truth, now continued to twist and
+invent "facts." The newspapers, with some honorable exceptions,
+buttressed them up and even outstripped them. Plausible unveracity thus
+became a patriotic accomplishment and a recognized element of politics.
+Parties and states employed it freely. Fiction received the hall-mark of
+truth and fancies were current as facts. Public men who had solemnly
+hazarded statements belied by subsequent events denied having ever
+uttered them. Never before was the baleful theory that error is helpful
+so systematically applied as during the war and the armistice. If the
+falsehoods circulated and the true facts suppressed were to be collected
+and published in a volume, one would realize the depth to which the
+standard of intellectual and moral integrity was lowered.[71]
+
+The censorship was retained by the Great Powers during the Conference as
+a sort of soft cushion on which the self-constituted dispensers of Fate
+comfortably reposed. In Paris, where it was particularly severe and
+unreasoning, it protected the secret conclave from the harsh strictures
+of the outside world, concealing from the public, not only the
+incongruities of the Conference, but also many of the warnings of
+contemporary history. In the opinion of unbiased Frenchmen no such
+rigorous, systematic, and short-sighted repression of press liberty had
+been known since the Third Empire as was kept up under the rule of the
+great tribune whose public career had been one continuous campaign
+against every form of coercion. This twofold policy of secrecy on the
+part of the delegates and censorship on the part of the authorities
+proved incongruous as well as dangerous, for, upheld by the eminent
+statesmen who had laid down as part of the new gospel the principle of
+"open covenants openly arrived at," it furnished the world with a fairly
+correct standard by which to interpret the entire phraseology of the
+latter-day reformers. Events showed that only by applying that criterion
+could the worth of their statements of fact and their promises of
+amelioration be gaged. And it soon became clear that most of their
+utterances like that about open covenants were to be construed according
+to the maxim of _lucus a non lucendo_.
+
+It was characteristic of the system that two American citizens were
+employed to read the cablegrams arriving from the United States to
+French newspapers. The object was the suppression of such messages as
+tended to throw doubt on the useful belief that the people of the great
+American Republic were solid behind their President, ready to approve
+his decisions and acts, and that his cherished Covenant, sure of
+ratification, would serve as a safe guarantee to all the states which
+the application of his various principles might leave strategically
+exposed. In this way many interesting items of intelligence from the
+United States were kept out of the newspapers, while others were
+mutilated and almost all were delayed. Protests were unavailing. Nor was
+it until several months were gone by that the French public became aware
+of the existence of a strong current of American opinion which favored a
+critical attitude toward Mr. Wilson's policy and justified misgivings as
+to the finality of his decisions. It was a sorry expedient and an
+unsuccessful one.
+
+On another occasion strenuous efforts are reported to have been made
+through the intermediary of President Wilson to delay the publication in
+the United States of a cablegram to a journal there until the Prime
+Minister of Britain should deliver a speech in the House of Commons. An
+accident balked these exertions and the message appeared.
+
+Publicity was none the less strongly advocated by the plenipotentiaries
+in their speeches and writings. These were as sign-posts pointing to
+roads along which they themselves were incapable of moving. By their own
+accounts they were inveterate enemies of secrecy and censorship. The
+President of the United States had publicly said that he "could not
+conceive of anything more hurtful than the creation of a system of
+censorship that would deprive the people of a free republic such as ours
+of their undeniable right to criticize public officials." M. Clemenceau,
+who suffered more than most publicists from systematic repression, had
+changed the name of his newspaper from the _L'Homme Libre_ to _L'Homme
+Enchaîné_, and had passed a severe judgment on "those friends of
+liberty" (the government) who tempered freedom with preventive
+repression measured out according to the mood uppermost at the
+moment.[72] But as soon as he himself became head of the government he
+changed his tactics and called his journal _L'Homme Libre_ again. In
+the Chamber he announced that "publicity for the 'debates' of the
+Conference was generally favored," but in practice he rendered the
+system of gagging the press a byword in Europe. Drawing his own line of
+demarcation between the permissible and the illicit, he informed the
+Chamber that so long as the Conference was engaged on its arduous work
+"it must not be said that the head of one government had put forward a
+proposal which was opposed by the head of another government."[73] As
+though the disagreements, the bickerings, and the serious quarrels of
+the heads of the governments could long be concealed from the peoples
+whose spokesmen they were!
+
+That bargainings went on at the Conference which a plain-dealing world
+ought to be apprised of is the conclusion which every unbiased outsider
+will draw from the singular expedients resorted to for the purpose of
+concealing them. Before the Foreign Relations Committee in Washington,
+State-Secretary Lansing confessed that when, after the treaty had been
+signed, the French Senate called for the minutes of the proceedings on
+the Commission of the League of Nations, President Wilson telegraphed
+from Washington to the Peace Commission requesting it to withhold them.
+He further admitted that the only written report of the discussions in
+existence was left in Paris, outside the jurisdiction of the United
+States Senate. When questioned as to whether, in view of this system of
+concealment, the President's promise of "open covenants openly arrived
+at" could be said to have been honestly redeemed, Mr. Lansing answered,
+"I consider that was carried out."[74] It seems highly probable that in
+the same and only in the same sense will the Treaty and the Covenant be
+carried out in the spirit or the letter.
+
+During the fateful days of the Conference preventive censorship was
+practised with a degree of rigor equaled only by its senselessness. As
+late as the month of June, the columns of the newspapers were checkered
+with blank spaces. "Scarcely a newspaper in Paris appears uncensored at
+present," one press organ wrote. "Some papers protest, but protests are
+in vain."[75]
+
+"Practically not a word as to the nature of the Peace terms that France
+regards as most vital to her existence appears in the French papers this
+morning," complained a journal at the time when even the Germans were
+fully informed of what was being enacted. On one occasion _Bonsoir_ was
+seized for expressing the view that the Treaty embodied an Anglo-Saxon
+peace;[76] on another for reproducing an interview with Marshal Foch
+that had already appeared in a widely circulated Paris newspaper.[77] By
+way of justifying another of these seizures the French censor alleged
+that an article in the paper was deemed uncomplimentary to Mr. Lloyd
+George. The editor replied in a letter to the British Premier affirming
+that there was nothing in the article but what Mr. Lloyd George could
+and should be proud of. In fact, it only commended him "for having
+served the interests of his country most admirably and having had
+precedence given to them over all others." The letter concluded: "We are
+apprehensive that in the whole business there is but one thing truly
+uncomplimentary, and that is that the French censorship, for the purpose
+of strangling the French press, should employ your name, the name of him
+who abolished censorship many weeks ago."[78]
+
+Even when British journalists were dealing with matters as unlikely to
+cause trouble as a description of the historic proceedings at Versailles
+at which the Germans received the Peace Treaty, the censor held back
+their messages, from five o'clock in the afternoon till three the next
+morning.[79] Strange though it may seem, it was at first decided that no
+newspaper-men should be allowed to witness the formal handing of the
+Treaty to the enemy delegates! For it was deemed advisable in the
+interests of the world that even that ceremonial should be secret.[80]
+These singular methods were impressively illustrated and summarized in a
+cartoon representing Mr. Wilson as "The new wrestling champion,"
+throwing down his adversary, the press, whose garb, composed of
+journals, was being scattered in scraps of paper to the floor, and under
+the picture was the legend: "It is forbidden to publish what Marshal
+Foch says. It is forbidden to publish what Mr. George thinks. It is
+forbidden to publish the Treaty of Peace with Germany. It is forbidden
+to publish what happened at ... and to make sure that nothing else will
+be published, the censor systematically delays the transmission of every
+telegram."[81]
+
+In the Chamber the government was adjured to suppress the institution of
+censorship once the Treaty was signed by the Germans, and Ministers were
+reminded of the diatribes which they had pronounced against that
+institution in the years of their ambitions and strivings. In vain
+Deputies described and deplored the process of demoralization that was
+being furthered by the methods of the government. "In the provinces as
+well as in the capital the journals that displease are seized,
+eavesdroppers listen to telephonic conversations, the secrets of private
+letters are violated. Arrangements are made that certain telegrams shall
+arrive too late, and spies are delegated to the most private meetings.
+At a recent gathering of members of the National Press, two spies were
+surprised, and another was discovered at the Federation of the Radical
+Committees of the Oise."[82] But neither the signature of the Treaty nor
+its ratification by Germany occasioned the slightest modification in the
+system of restrictions. Paris continued in a state of siege and the
+censors were the busiest bureaucrats in the capital.
+
+One undesirable result of this régime of keeping the public in the dark
+and indoctrinating it in the views always narrow, and sometimes
+mischievous, which the authorities desired it to hold, was that the
+absurdities which were allowed to appear with the hall-mark of
+censorship were often believed to emanate directly from the government.
+Britons and Americans versed in the books of the New Testament were
+shocked or amused when told that the censor had allowed the following
+passage to appear in an eloquent speech delivered by the ex-Premier, M.
+Painlevé: "As Hall Caine, the great American poet, has put it, 'O death,
+where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?'"[83]
+
+Every conceivable precaution was taken against the leakage of
+information respecting what was going on in the Council of Ten.
+Notwithstanding this, the French papers contrived now and again, during
+the first couple of months, to publish scraps of news calculated to
+convey to the public a faint notion of the proceedings, until one day a
+Nationalist organ boldly announced that the British Premier had
+disagreed with the expert commission and with his own colleagues on the
+subject of Dantzig and refused to give way. This paragraph irritated the
+British statesman, who made a scene at the next meeting of the Council.
+"There is," he is reported to have exclaimed, "some one among us here
+who is unmindful of his obligations," and while uttering these and other
+much stronger words he eyed severely a certain mild individual who is
+said to have trembled all over during the philippic. He also launched
+out into a violent diatribe against various French journals which had
+criticized his views on Poland and his method of carrying them in
+council, and he went so far as to threaten to have the Conference
+transferred to a neutral country. In conclusion he demanded an
+investigation into the origin of the leakage of information and the
+adoption of severe disciplinary measures against the journalists who
+published the disclosures.[84] Thenceforward the Council of Ten was
+suspended and its place taken by a smaller and more secret conclave of
+Five, Four, or Three, according as the state of the plenipotentiaries'
+health, the requirements of their home politics, or their relations
+among themselves caused one or two to quit Paris temporarily.
+
+This measure insured relative secrecy, fostered rumors and gossip, and
+rendered criticism, whether helpful or captious, impossible. It also
+drove into outer darkness those Allied states whose interests were
+described as limited, as though the interests of Italy, whose delegate
+was nominally one of the privileged five, were not being treated as more
+limited still. But the point of this last criticism would be blunted if,
+as some French and Italian observers alleged, the deliberate aim of the
+"representatives of the twelve million soldiers" was indeed to enable
+peace to be concluded and the world resettled congruously with the
+conceptions and in harmony with the interests of the Anglo-Saxon
+peoples. But the supposition is gratuitous. There was no such deliberate
+plan. After the establishment of the Council of Five, Mr. Lloyd George
+and Mr. Wilson made short work of the reports of the expert commissions
+whenever these put forward reasoned views differing from their own. In a
+word, they became the world's supreme and secret arbiters without
+ceasing to be the official champions of the freedom of the lesser states
+and of "open covenants openly arrived at." They constituted, so to say,
+the living synthesis of contradictories.
+
+The Council of Five then was a superlatively secret body. No secretaries
+were admitted to its gatherings and no official minutes of its
+proceedings were recorded. Communications were never issued to the
+press. It resembled a gang of benevolent conspirators, whose debates and
+resolutions were swallowed up by darkness and mystery. Even the most
+modest meeting of a provincial taxpayers' association keeps minutes of
+its discussions. The world parliament kept none. Eschewing traditional
+usages, as became naïve shapers of the new world, and ignoring history,
+the Five, Four, or Three shut themselves up in a room, talked informally
+and disconnectedly without a common principle, program, or method, and
+separated again without having reached a conclusion. It is said that
+when one put forth an idea, another would comment upon it, a third might
+demur, and that sometimes an appeal would be made to geography, history,
+or ethnography, and as the data were not immediately accessible either
+competent specialists were sent for or the conversation took another
+turn. They very naturally refused to allow these desultory proceedings
+to be put on record, the only concession which they granted to the
+curiosity of future generations being the fixation of their own physical
+features by photography and painting. When the sitting was over,
+therefore, no one could be held to aught that he had said; there was
+nothing to bind any of the individual delegates to the views he had
+expressed, nor was there anything to mark the line to which the Council
+as a whole had advanced. Each one was free to dictate to his secretary
+his recollections of what had gone on, but as these _précis_ were given
+from memory they necessarily differed one from the other on various
+important points. On the following morning, or a few days later, the
+world's workers would meet again, and either begin at the beginning,
+traveling over the same familiar field, or else break fresh ground. In
+this way in one day they are said to have skimmed the problems of
+Spitzbergen, Morocco, Dantzig, and the feeding of the enemy populations,
+leaving each problem where they had found it. The moment the discussion
+of a contentious question approached a climax, the specter of
+disagreement deterred them from pursuing it to a conclusion, and they
+passed on quickly to some other question. And when, after months had
+been spent in these Penelopean labors, definite decisions respecting the
+peace had to be taken lest the impatient people should rise up and wrest
+matters into their own hands, the delegates referred the various
+problems which they had been unable to solve to the wisdom and tact of
+the future League of Nations.
+
+When misunderstandings arose as to what had been said or done it was the
+official translator, M. Paul Mantoux--one of the most brilliant
+representatives of Jewry at the Conference--who was wont to decide, his
+memory being reputed superlatively tenacious. In this way he attained
+the distinction of which his friends are justly proud, of being a living
+record--indeed, the sole available record--of what went on at the
+historic council. He was the recipient and is now the only repository of
+all the secrets of which the plenipotentiaries were so jealous, lest,
+being a kind of knowledge which is in verity power, it should be used
+one day for some dubious purpose. But M. Mantoux enjoyed the esteem and
+confidence not only of Mr. Wilson, but also of the British Prime
+Minister, who, it was generally believed, drew from his entertaining
+narratives and shrewd appreciations whatever information he possessed
+about French politics and politicians. It was currently affirmed that,
+being a man of method and foresight, M. Mantoux committed everything to
+writing for his own behoof. Doubts, however, were entertained and
+publicly expressed as to whether affairs of this magnitude, involving
+the destinies of the world, should have been handled in such secret and
+unbusiness-like fashion. But on the supposition that the general
+outcome, if not the preconceived aim, of the policy of the Anglo-Saxon
+plenipotentiaries was to confer the beneficent hegemony of the world
+upon its peoples, there could, it was argued, be no real danger in the
+procedure followed. For, united, those nations have nothing to fear.
+
+Although the translations were done rapidly, elegantly, and lucidly,
+allegations were made that they lost somewhat by undue compression and
+even by the process of toning down, of which the praiseworthy object was
+to spare delicate susceptibilities. For a limited number of delicate
+susceptibilities were treated considerately by the Conference. A
+defective rendering made a curious impression on the hearers once, when
+a delegate said: "My country, unfortunately, is situated in the midst of
+states which are anything but peace-loving--in fact, the chief danger to
+the peace of Europe emanates from them." M. Mantoux's translation ran,
+"The country represented by M. X. unhappily presents the greatest danger
+to the peace of Europe."
+
+On several occasions passages of the discourses of the plenipotentiaries
+underwent a certain transformation in the well-informed brain of M.
+Mantoux before being done into another language. They were plunged, so
+to say, in the stream of history before their exposure to the light of
+day. This was especially the case with the remarks of the
+English-speaking delegates, some of whom were wont to make extensive use
+of the license taken by their great national poet in matters of
+geography and history. One of them, for example, when alluding to the
+ex-Emperor Franz Josef and his successor, said: "It would be unjust to
+visit the sins of the father on the head of his innocent son. Charles I
+should not be made to suffer for Franz Josef." M. Mantoux rendered the
+sentence, "It would be unjust to visit the sins of the uncle on the
+innocent nephew," and M. Clemenceau, with a merry twinkle in his eye,
+remarked to the ready interpreter, "You will lose your job if you go on
+making these wrong translations."
+
+But those details are interesting, if at all, only as means of eking out
+a mere sketch which can never become a complete and faithful picture. It
+was the desire of the eminent lawgivers that the source of the most
+beneficent reforms chronicled in history should be as well hidden as
+those of the greatest boon bestowed by Providence upon man. And their
+motives appear to have been sound enough.
+
+The pains thus taken to create a haze between themselves and the peoples
+whose implicit confidence they were continuously craving constitute one
+of the most striking ethico-psychological phenomena of the Conference.
+They demanded unreasoning faith as well as blind obedience. Any
+statement, however startling, was expected to carry conviction once it
+bore the official hall-mark. Take, for example, the demand made by the
+Supreme Four to Bela Kuhn to desist from his offensive against the
+Slovaks. The press expressed surprise and disappointment that he, a
+Bolshevist, should have been invited even hypothetically by the "deadly
+enemies of Bolshevism" to delegate representatives to the Paris
+Conference from which the leaders of the Russian constructive elements
+were excluded. Thereupon the Supreme Four, which had taken the step in
+secret, had it denied categorically that such an invitation had been
+issued. The press was put up to state that, far from making such an
+undignified advance, the Council had asserted its authority and
+peremptorily summoned the misdemeanant Kuhn to withdraw his troops
+immediately from Slovakia under heavy pains and penalties.
+
+Subsequently, however, the official correspondence was published, when
+it was seen that the implicit invitation had really been issued and that
+the denial ran directly counter to fact. By this exposure the Council of
+Four, which still sued for the full confidence of their peoples, was
+somewhat embarrassed. This embarrassment was not allayed when what
+purported to be a correct explanation of their action was given out and
+privately circulated by a group which claimed to be initiated. It was
+summarized as follows: "The Israelite, Bela Kuhn, who is leading Hungary
+to destruction, has been heartened by the Supreme Council's indulgent
+message. People are at a loss to understand why, if the Conference
+believes, as it has asserted, that Bolshevism is the greatest scourge of
+latter-day humanity, it ordered the Rumanian troops, when nearing
+Budapest for the purpose of overthrowing it in that stronghold, first to
+halt, and then to withdraw.[85] The clue to the mystery has at last been
+found in a secret arrangement between Kuhn and a certain financial group
+concerning the Banat. About this more will be said later. In one of my
+own cablegrams to the United States I wrote: "People are everywhere
+murmuring and whispering that beneath the surface of things powerful
+undercurrents are flowing which invisibly sway the policy of the secret
+council, and the public believes that this accounts for the sinister
+vacillation and delay of which it complains."[86]
+
+In the fragmentary utterances of the governments and their press organs
+nobody placed the slightest confidence. Their testimony was discredited
+in advance, on grounds which they were unable to weaken. The following
+example is at once amusing and instructive. The French Parliamentary
+Committee of the Budget, having asked the government for communication
+of the section of the Peace Treaty dealing with finances, were told that
+their demand could not be entertained, every clause of the Treaty being
+a state secret. The Committee on Foreign Affairs made a like request,
+with the same results. The entire Chamber next expressed a similar wish,
+which elicited a firm refusal. The French Premier, it should be added,
+alleged a reason which was at least specious. "I should much like," he
+said, "to communicate to you the text you ask for, but I may not do so
+until it has been signed by the President of the Republic. For such is
+the law as embodied in Article 8 of the Constitution." Now nobody
+believed that this was the true ground for his refusal. His explanation,
+however, was construed as a courteous conventionality, and as such was
+accepted. But once alleged, the fiction should have been respected, at
+any rate by its authors. It was not. A few weeks later the Premier
+ordered the publication of the text of the Treaty, although, in the
+meantime, it had not been signed by M. Poincaré. "The excuse founded
+upon Article 8 was, therefore, a mere humbug," flippantly wrote an
+influential journal.[87]
+
+An amusing joke, which tickled all Paris was perpetrated shortly
+afterward. The editor of the _Bonsoir_ imported six hundred copies of
+the forbidden Treaty from Switzerland, and sent them as a present to
+the Deputies of the Chamber, whereupon the parliamentary authorities
+posted up a notice informing all Deputies who desired a copy to call at
+the questor's office, where they would receive it gratuitously as a
+present from the _Bonsoir._ Accordingly the Deputies, including the
+Speaker, Deschanel, thronged to the questor's office. Even solemn-faced
+Ministers received a copy of the thick volume which I possessed ever
+since the day it was issued.
+
+Another glaring instance of the lack of straightforwardness which
+vitiated the dealings of the Conference with the public turned upon the
+Bullitt mission to Russia. Mr. Wilson, who in the depths of his heart
+seems to have cherished a vague fondness for the Bolshevists there,
+which he sometimes manifested in utterances that startled the foreigners
+to whom they were addressed, despatched through Colonel House some
+fellow-countrymen of his to Moscow to ask for peace proposals which,
+according to the Moscow government, were drafted by himself and Messrs.
+House and Lansing. Mr. Bullitt, however, who must know, affirms that the
+draft was written by Mr. Lloyd George's secretary, Mr. Philip Kerr, and
+himself and presented to Lenin by Messrs. Bullitt, Steffins, and Petit.
+If the terms of this document should prove acceptable the American
+envoys were empowered to promise that an official invitation to a new
+peace conference would be sent to them as well as to their opponents by
+April 15th. The conditions--eleven in number--with a few slight
+modifications in which the Americans acquiesced--were accepted by the
+dictator, who was bound, however, not to permit their publication. The
+facts remained secret until Mr. Bullitt, thrown over by Mr. Wilson, who
+recoiled from taking the final and decisive step, resigned, and in a
+letter reproduced by the press set forth the reasons for his
+decision.[88]
+
+Now, vague reports that there was such a mission had found its way into
+the Paris newspapers at a relatively early date. But an authoritative
+denial was published without delay. The statement, the public was
+assured, was without foundation. And the public believed the assurance,
+for it was confirmed authoritatively in England. Sir Samuel Hoare, in
+the House of Commons, asked for information about a report that "two
+Americans have recently returned from Russia bringing offers of peace
+from Lenin," and received from Mr. Bonar Law this noteworthy reply: "I
+have said already that there is not the shadow of foundation for this
+information, otherwise I would have known it. Moreover, I have
+communicated with Mr. Lloyd George in Paris, who also declares that he
+knows nothing about the matter."[89] _E pur si muove_. Mr. Lloyd George
+knew nothing about President Wilson's determination to have the Covenant
+inserted in the Peace Treaty, even after the announcement was published
+to the world by the Havas Agency, and the confirmation given to pressmen
+by Lord Robert Cecil. The system of reticence and concealment, coupled
+with the indifference of this or that delegation to questions in which
+it happened to take no special interest, led to these unseemly air-tight
+compartments.
+
+From this rank soil of secrecy, repression, and unveracity sprang
+noxious weeds. False reports and mendacious insinuations were launched,
+spread, and credited, impairing such prestige as the Conference still
+enjoyed, while the fragmentary announcements ventured on now and again
+by the delegates, in sheer self-defense, were summarily dismissed as
+"eye-wash" for the public.
+
+For a time the disharmony between words and deeds passed unnoticed by
+the bulk of the masses, who were edified by the one and unacquainted
+with the other. But gradually the lack of consistency in policy and of
+manly straightforwardness and moral wholeness in method became apparent
+to all and produced untoward consequences. Mr. Wilson, whose authority
+and influence were supposed to be paramount, came in for the lion's
+share of criticism, except in the Polish policy of the Conference, which
+was traced to Mr. Lloyd George and his unofficial prompters. The
+American press was the most censorious of all. One American journal
+appearing in Paris gave utterance to the following comments on the
+President's rôle:[90]
+
+     President Wilson is conscious of his power of persuasion. That
+     power enables him to say one thing, do another, describe the act as
+     conforming to the idea, and, with act and idea in exact
+     contradiction to each other, convince the people, not only that he
+     has been consistent throughout, but that his act cannot be altered
+     without peril to the nation and danger to the world.
+
+     We do not know which Mr. Wilson to follow--the Mr. Wilson who says
+     he will not do a thing or the Mr. Wilson who does that precise
+     thing.
+
+     A great many Americans have one fixed idea. That idea is that the
+     President is the only magnanimous, clear-visioned, broad-minded
+     statesman in the United States, or the entire world, for that
+     matter.
+
+     When he uses his powers of persuasion Americans become as the
+     children of Hamelin Town. Inasmuch as Mr. Wilson of the word and
+     Mr. Wilson of the deed seem at times to be two distinct identities,
+     some of his most enthusiastic supporters for the League of Nations,
+     being unfortunately gifted with memory and perception, are fairly
+     standing on their heads in dismay.
+
+And yet Mr. Wilson himself was a victim of the policy of reticence and
+concealment to which the Great Powers were incurably addicted. At the
+time when they were moving heaven and earth to induce him to break with
+Germany and enter the war, they withheld from him the existence of their
+secret treaties. Possibly it may not be thought fair to apply the test
+of ethical fastidiousness to their method of bringing the United States
+to their side and to their unwillingness to run the risk of alienating
+the President. But it appears that until the close of hostility the
+secret was kept inviolate, nor was it until Mr. Wilson reached the
+shores of Europe for the purpose of executing his project that he was
+faced with the huge obstacles to his scheme arising out of those
+far-reaching commitments. With this depressing revelation and the
+British _non possumus_ to his demand for the freedom of the seas, Mr.
+Wilson's practical difficulties began. It was probably on that occasion
+that he resolved, seeing that he could not obtain everything he wanted,
+to content himself with the best he could get. And that was not a
+society of peoples, but a rough approximation to the hegemony of the
+Anglo-Saxon nations.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[70] The French Minister of Finances made this the cornerstone of his
+policy and declared that the indemnity to be paid by the vanquished
+Teutons would enable him to set the finances of France on a permanently
+sound basis. In view of this expectation new taxation was eschewed.
+
+[71] A selection of the untruths published in the French press during
+the war has been reproduced by the Paris journal, _Bonsoir_. It contains
+abundant pabulum for the cynic and valuable data for the psychologist.
+The example might be followed in Great Britain. The title is:
+"Anthologie du Bourrage de Crâne." It began in the month of July, 1919.
+
+[72] Cf. _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), June 2, 1919.
+
+[73] Cf. _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), January 17, 1919.
+
+[74] Cf. _The Chicago Tribune_, August 27, 1919.
+
+[75] Cf. _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), June 10, 1919.
+
+[76] Cf. _Bonsoir_, June 20, 1919.
+
+[77] On April 27th.
+
+[78] _Bonsoir_, June 21, 1919.
+
+[79] _The New York Herald_, May 15. 1919.
+
+[80] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), May 3,1919.
+
+[81] _The New York Herald_, June 6, 1919.
+
+[82] Cf. _Le Matin_, July 9, 1919. The chief speakers alluded to were
+MM. Renaudel, Deshayes, Lafont, Paul Meunier, Vandame.
+
+[83] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), April 29, 1919.
+
+[84] Quoted in the Paris _Temps_ of March 28,1919.
+
+[85] This explanation deals exclusively with the first advance of the
+Rumanian army into Hungary.
+
+[86] Cabled to _The Public Ledger_ of Philadelphia, April 20,1919.
+
+[87] _Bonsoir_, June 21, 1919.
+
+[88] Cf. _The Daily News_, July 5,1919. _L'Humanité_, July 8, 1919.
+
+[89] Cf. _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), April 4, 1919.
+
+[90] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), July 31, 1919.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+AIMS AND METHODS
+
+
+The policy of the Anglo-Saxon plenipotentiaries was never put into
+words. For that reason it has to be judged by their acts, despite the
+circumstance that these were determined by motives which varied greatly
+at different times, and so far as one can conjecture were not often
+practical corollaries of fundamental principles. From these acts one may
+draw a few conclusions which will enable us to reconstruct such policy
+as there was. One is that none of the sacrifices imposed upon the
+members of the League of Nations was obligatory on the Anglo-Saxon
+peoples. These were beyond the reach of all the new canons which might
+clash with their interests or run counter to their aspirations. They
+were the givers and administrators of the saving law rather than its
+observers. Consequently they were free to hold all that was theirs,
+however doubtful their title; nay, they were besought to accept a good
+deal more under the mandatory system, which was molded on their own
+methods of governance. It was especially taken for granted that the
+architects would be called to contribute naught to the new structure but
+their ideas, and that they need renounce none of their possessions,
+however shady its origin, however galling to the population its
+retention. It was in deference to this implicit doctrine that President
+Wilson withdrew without protest or discussion his demand for the freedom
+of the seas, on which he had been wont to lay such stress.
+
+Another way of putting the matter is this. The principal aim of the
+Conference was to create conditions favorable to the progress of
+civilization on new lines. And the seed-bearers of true, as
+distinguished from spurious, civilization and culture being the
+Anglo-Saxons, it is the realization of their broad conceptions, the
+furtherance of their beneficent strivings, that are most conducive to
+that ulterior aim. The men of this race in the widest sense of the term
+are, therefore, so to say, independent ends in themselves, whereas the
+other peoples are to be utilized as means. Hence the difference of
+treatment meted out to the two categories. In the latter were implicitly
+included Italy and Russia. Unquestionably the influence of
+Anglo-Saxondom is eminently beneficial. It tends to bring the rights and
+the dignity as well as the duties of humanity into broad day. The
+farther it extends by natural growth, therefore, the better for the
+human race. The Anglo-Saxon mode of administering colonies, for
+instance, is exemplary, and for this reason was deemed worthy to receive
+the hall-mark of the Conference as one of the institutions of the future
+League. But even benefits may be transformed into evils if imposed by
+force.
+
+That, in brief, would seem to be the clue--one can hardly speak of any
+systematic conception--to the unordered improvisations and incongruous
+decisions of the Conference.
+
+I am not now concerned to discuss whether this unformulated maxim, which
+had strong roots that may not always have reached the realm of
+consciousness, calls for approval as an instrument of ethico-political
+progress or connotes an impoverishment of the aims originally propounded
+by Mr. Wilson. Excellent reasons may be assigned why the two
+English-speaking statesmen proceeded without deliberation on these lines
+and no other. The matter might have been raised to a higher plane, but
+for that the delegates were not prepared. All that one need retain at
+present is the orientation of the Supreme Council, inasmuch as it
+imparts a sort of relative unity to seemingly heterogeneous acts. Thus,
+although the conditions of the Peace Treaty in many respects ran
+directly counter to the provisions of the Covenant, none the less the
+ultimate tendency of both was to converge in a distant point, which,
+when clearly discerned, will turn out to be the moral guidance of the
+world by Anglo-Saxondom as represented at any rate in the incipient
+stage by both its branches. Thus the discussions among the members of
+the Conference were in last analysis not contests about mere
+abstractions. Beneath the high-sounding principles and far-resonant
+reforms which were propounded but not realized lurked concrete racial
+strivings which a patriotic temper and robust faith might easily
+identify with the highest interests of humanity.
+
+When the future historian defines, as he probably will, the main result
+of the Conference's labors as a tendency to place the spiritual and
+political direction of the world in the hands of the Anglo-Saxon race,
+it is essential to a correct view of things that he should not regard
+this trend as the outcome of a deliberate concerted policy. It was
+anything but this. Nobody who conversed with the statesmen before and
+during the Conference could detect any sure tokens of such ultimate
+aims, nor, indeed, of a thorough understanding of the lesser problems to
+be settled. Circumstance led, and the statesmen followed. The historian
+may term the process drift, and the humanitarian regret that such
+momentous issues should ever have been submitted to a body of uninformed
+politicians out of touch with the people for whose behoof they claimed
+to be legislating. To liquidate the war should have been the first, as
+it was the most urgent, task. But it was complicated, adjourned, and
+finally botched by interweaving it with a mutilated scheme for the
+complete readjustment of the politico-social forces of the planet. The
+result was a tangled skein of problems, most of them still unsolved, and
+some insoluble by governments alone. Out of the confusion of clashing
+forces towered aloft the two dominant Powers who command the economic
+resources of the world, and whose democratic institutions and internal
+ordering are unquestionably more conducive to the large humanitarian end
+than those of any other, and gradually their overlordship of the world
+began to assert itself. But this tendency was not the outcome of
+deliberate endeavor. Each representative of those vast states was
+solicitous in the first place about the future of his own country, and
+then about the regeneration of the human race. One would like to be able
+to add that all were wholly inaccessible to the promptings of party
+interests and personal ambitions.
+
+Planlessness naturally characterized the exertions of the Anglo-Saxon
+delegates from start to finish. It is a racial trait. Their hosts, who
+were experts in the traditions of diplomacy, had before the opening of
+the Conference prepared a plan for their behoof, which at the lowest
+estimate would have connoted a vast improvement on their own desultory
+way of proceeding. The French proposed to distribute all the preparatory
+work among eighteen commissions, leaving to the chief plenipotentiaries
+the requisite time to arrange preliminaries and become acquainted with
+the essential elements of the problems. But Messrs. Wilson and Lloyd
+George are said to have preferred their informal conversations,
+involving the loss of three and a half months, during which no results
+were reached in Paris, while turmoil, bloodshed, and hunger fed the
+smoldering fires of discontent throughout the World.
+
+The British Premier, like his French colleague, was solicitous chiefly
+about making peace with the enemy and redeeming as far as possible his
+election pledges to his supporters. To that end everything else would
+appear to have been subordinated. To the ambitious project of a world
+reform he and M. Clemenceau gave what was currently construed as a
+nominal assent, but for a long time they had no inkling of Mr. Wilson's
+intention to interweave the peace conditions with the Covenant. So far,
+indeed, were they both from entertaining the notion that the two
+Premiers expressly denied--and allowed their denial to be circulated in
+the press--that the two documents were or could be made mutually
+interdependent. M. Pichon assured a group of journalists that no such
+intention was harbored.[91] Mr. Lloyd George is understood to have gone
+farther and to have asked what degree of relevancy a Covenant for the
+members of the League could be supposed to possess to a treaty concluded
+with a nation which for the time being was denied admission to that
+sodality. And as we saw, he was incurious enough not to read the
+narrative of what had been done by his own American colleagues even
+after the Havas Agency announced it.
+
+To President Wilson, on the other hand, the League was the _magnum opus_
+of his life. It was to be the crown of his political career, to mark the
+attainment of an end toward which all that was best in the human race
+had for centuries been consciously or unconsciously wending without
+moving perceptibly nearer. Instinctively he must have felt that the
+Laodicean support given to him by his colleagues would not carry him
+much farther and that their fervor would speedily evaporate once the
+Conference broke up and their own special aims were definitely achieved
+or missed. With the shrewdness of an experienced politician he grasped
+the fact that if he was ever to present his Covenant to the world
+clothed with the authority of the mightiest states, now was his
+opportunity. After the Conference it would be too late. And the only
+contrivance by which he could surely reckon on success was to insert the
+Covenant in the Peace Treaty and set before his colleagues an
+irresistible incentive for elaborating both at the same time.
+
+He had an additional motive for these tactics in the attitude of a
+section of his own countrymen. Before starting for Paris he had, as we
+saw, made an appeal to the electorate to return to the legislature only
+candidates of his own party to the exclusion of Republicans, and the
+result fell out contrary to his expectations. Thereupon the oppositional
+elements increased in numbers and displayed a marked combative
+disposition. Even moderate Republicans complained in terms akin to those
+employed by ex-President Taft of Mr. Wilson's "partizan exclusion of
+Republicans in dealing with the highly important matter of settling the
+results of the war. He solicited a commission in which the Republicans
+had no representation and in which there were no prominent Americans of
+any real experience and leadership of public opinion."[92]
+
+The leaders of this opposition sharply watched the policy of the
+President at the Conference and made no secret of their resolve to
+utilize any serious slip as a handle for revising or rejecting the
+outcome of his labors. Seeing his cherished cause thus trembling in the
+scale, Mr. Wilson hit upon the expedient of linking the Covenant with
+the Peace Treaty and making of the two an inseparable whole. He
+announced this determination in a forcible speech[93] to his own
+countrymen, in which he said, "When the Treaty comes back, gentlemen on
+this side will find the Covenant not only in it, but so many threads of
+the Treaty tied to the Covenant that you cannot dissect the Covenant
+from the Treaty without destroying the whole vital structure." This
+scheme was denounced by Mr. Wilson's opponents as a trick, but the
+historian will remember it as a maneuver, which, however blameless or
+meritorious its motive, was fraught with lamentable consequences for all
+the peoples for whose interests the President was sincerely solicitous.
+To take but one example. The misgivings generated by the Covenant
+delayed the ratification of the Peace Treaty by the United States
+Senate, in consequence of which the Turkish problem had to be postponed
+until the Washington government was authorized to accept or compelled to
+refuse a mandate for the Sultan's dominions, and in the meanwhile mass
+massacres of Greeks and Armenians were organized anew.
+
+A large section of the press and the majority of the delegates strongly
+condemned the interpolation of the Covenant. What they demanded was
+first the conclusion of a solid peace and then the establishment of
+suitable international safeguards. For to be safeguarded, peace must
+first exist. "A suit of armor without the warrior inside is but a
+useless ornament," wrote one of the American journals.[94]
+
+But the course advocated by Mr. Wilson was open to another direct and
+telling objection. Peace between the belligerent adversaries was, in the
+circumstances, conceivable only on the old lines of strategic frontiers
+and military guaranties. The Supreme Council implied as much in its
+official reply to the criticisms offered by the Austrians to the
+conditions imposed on them, making the admission that Italy's new
+northern frontiers were determined by considerations of strategy. The
+plan for the governance of the world by a league of pacific peoples, on
+the other hand, postulated the abolition of war preparations, including
+strategic frontiers. Consequently the more satisfactory the Treaty the
+more unfavorable would be the outlook for the moral reconstitution of
+the family of nations, and _vice versa_. And to interlace the two would
+be to necessitate a compromise which would necessarily mar both.
+
+In effect the split among the delegates respecting their aims and
+interests led to a tacit understanding among the leaders on the basis of
+give-and-take, the French and British acquiescing in Mr. Wilson's
+measures for working out his Covenant--the draft of which was
+contributed by the British--and the President, giving way to them on
+matters said to affect their countries' vital interests. How smoothly
+this method worked when great issues were not at stake may be inferred
+from the perfunctory way in which it was decided that the Kaiser's trial
+should take place in London. A few days before the Treaty was signed
+there was a pause in the proceedings of the Supreme Council during which
+the secretary was searching for a mislaid document. Mr. Lloyd George,
+looking up casually and without addressing any one in particular,
+remarked, "I suppose none of you has any objection to the Kaiser being
+tried in London?" M. Clemenceau shrugged his shoulders, Mr. Wilson
+raised his hand, and the matter was assumed to be settled. Nothing more
+was said or written on the subject. But when the news was announced,
+after the President's departure from France, it took the other American
+delegates by surprise and they disclaimed all knowledge of any such
+decision. On inquiry, however, they learned that the venue had in truth
+been fixed in this offhand way.[95]
+
+Mr. Wilson found it a hard task at first to obtain acceptance for his
+ill-defined tenets by France, who declined to accept the protection of
+his League of Nations in lieu of strategic frontiers and military
+guaranties. Insurmountable obstacles barred his way. The French
+government and people, while moved by decent respect for their American
+benefactors[96] to assent to the establishment of a league, flatly
+refused to trust themselves to its protection against Teuton aggression.
+But they were quite prepared to second Mr. Wilson's endeavors to oblige
+some of the other states to content themselves with the guaranties it
+offered, only, however, on condition that their own country was first
+safeguarded in the traditional way. Territorial equilibrium and military
+protection were the imperative provisos on which they insisted. And as
+France was specially favored by Mr. Wilson on sentimental grounds which
+outweighed his doctrine, and as she was also considered indispensable to
+the Anglo-Saxon peoples as their continental executive, she had no
+difficulty in securing their support. On this point, too, therefore, the
+President found himself constrained to give way. And only did he abandon
+his humanitarian intentions and his strongest arguments to be lightly
+brushed aside, he actually recoiled so far into the camp of his
+opponents that he gave his approval to an indefensible clause in the
+Treaty which would have handed over to France the German population of
+the Saar as the equivalent of a certain sum in gold. Coming from the
+world-reformer who, a short time before, had hurled the thunderbolts of
+his oratory against those who would barter human beings as chattels,
+this amazing compromise connoted a strange falling off. Incidentally it
+was destructive of all faith in the spirit that had actuated his
+world-crusade. It also went far to convince unbiased observers that the
+only framework of ideas with decisive reference to which Mr. Wilson
+considered every project and every objection as it arose, was that which
+centered round his own goal--the establishment, if not of a league of
+nations cemented by brotherhood and fellowship, at least of the nearest
+approach to that which he could secure, even though it fell far short of
+the original design. These were the first-fruits of the interweaving of
+the Covenant with the Treaty.
+
+In view of this readiness to split differences and sacrifice principles
+to expediency it became impossible even to the least observant of Mr.
+Wilson's adherents in the Old World to cling any longer to the belief
+that his cosmic policy was inspired by firm intellectual attachment to
+the sublime ideas of which he had made himself the eloquent exponent and
+had been expected to make himself the uncompromising champion. In every
+such surrender to the Great Powers, as in every stern enforcement of his
+principles on the lesser states, the same practical spirit of the
+professional politician visibly asserted itself. One can hardly acquit
+him of having lacked the moral courage to disregard the veto of
+interested statesmen and governments and to appeal directly to the
+peoples when the consequence of this attitude would have been the
+sacrifice of the makeshift of a Covenant which he was ultimately content
+to accept as a substitute for the complete reinstatement of nations in
+their rights and dignity.
+
+The general tendency of the labors of the Conference then was shaped by
+those two practical maxims, the immunity of the Anglo-Saxon peoples and
+of their French ally from the restrictions to be imposed by the new
+politico-social ordering in so far as these ran counter to their
+national interests, and the determination of the American President to
+get and accept such a league of nations as was feasible under extremely
+inauspicious conditions and to content himself with that.
+
+To this estimate exception may be taken on the ground that it underrates
+an effort which, however insufficient, was well meant and did at any
+rate point the way to a just resettlement of secular problems which the
+war had made pressing and that it fails to take account of the
+formidable obstacles encountered. The answer is, that like efforts had
+proceeded more than once before from rulers of men whose will, seeing
+that they were credited with possessing the requisite power, was assumed
+to be adequate to the accomplishment of their aim, and that they had led
+to nothing. The two Tsars, Alexander I at the Congress of Vienna, and
+Nicholas II at the first Conference of The Hague, are instructive
+instances. They also, like Mr. Wilson, it is assumed, would fain have
+inaugurated a golden age of international right and moral fellowship if
+verbal exhortations and arguments could have done it. The only kind of
+fresh attempt, which after the failure of those two experiments could
+fairly lay claim to universal sympathy, was one which should withdraw
+the proposed politico-social rearrangement from the domain alike of
+rhetoric and of empiricism and substitute a thorough systematic reform
+covering all the aspects of international intercourse, including all the
+civilized peoples on the globe, harmonizing the vital interests of these
+and setting up adequate machinery to deal with the needs of this
+enlarged and unified state system. And it would be fruitless to seek for
+this in Mr. Wilson's handiwork. Indeed, it is hardly too much to affirm
+that empiricism and opportunism were among the principal characteristics
+of his policy in Paris, and that the outcome was what it must be.
+
+Disputes and delays being inevitable, the Conference began its work at
+leisure and was forced to terminate it in hot haste. Having spent months
+chaffering, making compromises, and unmaking them again while the
+peoples of the world were kept in painful suspense, all of them
+condemned to incur ruinous expenditure and some to wage sanguinary wars,
+the springs of industrial and commercial activity being kept sealed, the
+delegates, menaced by outbreaks, revolts, and mutinies, began, after
+months had been wasted, to speed up and get through their work without
+adequate deliberation. They imagined that they could make up for the
+errors of hesitancy and ignorance by moments of lightning-like
+improvisation. Improvisation and haphazard conclusions were among their
+chronic failings. Even in the early days of the Conference they had
+promulgated decisions, the import and bearings of which they missed, and
+when possible they canceled them again. Sometimes, however, the error
+committed was irreparable. The fate reserved for Austria was a case in
+point. By some curious process of reasoning it was found to be not
+incompatible with the Wilsonian doctrine that German-Austria should be
+forbidden to throw in her lot with the German Republic, this prohibition
+being in the interest of France, who could not brook a powerful united
+Teuton state. The wishes of the Austrian-Germans and the principle of
+self-determination accordingly went for nothing. The representations of
+Italy, who pleaded for that principle, were likewise brushed aside.
+
+But what the delegates appear to have overlooked was the decisive
+circumstance that they had already "on strategic grounds" assigned the
+Brenner line to Italy and together with it two hundred and twenty
+thousand Tyrolese of German race living in a compact mass--although a
+much smaller alien element was deemed a bar to annexation in the case of
+Poland. And what was more to the point, this allotment deprived Tyrol of
+an independent economic existence, cutting it off from the southern
+valley and making it tributary to Bavaria. Mr. Wilson, the public was
+credibly informed, "took this grave decision without having gone deeply
+into the matter, and he repents it bitterly. None the less, he can no
+longer go back."[97]
+
+Just as Tyrol's loss of Botzen and Meran made it dependent on Bavaria,
+so the severance of Vienna from southern Moravia--- the source of its
+cereal supplies, situated at a distance of only thirty-six
+miles--transformed the Austrian capital into a head without a body. But
+on the eminent anatomists who were to perform a variety of unprecedented
+operations on other states, this spectacle had no deterrent effect.
+
+Whenever a topic came up for discussion which could not be solved
+offhand, it was referred to a commission, and in many cases the
+commission was assisted by a mission which proceeded to the country
+concerned and within a few weeks returned with data which were assumed
+to supply materials enough for a decision, even though most of its
+members were unacquainted with the language of the people whose
+condition they had been studying. How quick of apprehension these envoys
+were supposed to be may be inferred from the task with which the
+American mission under General Harbord was charged, and the space of
+time accorded him for achieving it. The members of this mission started
+from Brest in the last decade of August for the Caucasus, making a stay
+at Constantinople on the way, and were due back in Paris early in
+October. During the few intervening weeks "the mission," General Harbord
+said, "will go into every phase of the situation, political, racial,
+economic, financial, and commercial. I shall also investigate highways,
+harbors, agricultural and mining conditions, the question of raising an
+Armenian army, policing problems, and the raw materials of Armenia."[98]
+Only specialists who have some practical acquaintanceship with the
+Caucasus, its conditions, peoples, languages, and problems, can
+appreciate the herculean effort needed to tackle intelligently any one
+of the many subjects all of which this improvised commission under a
+military general undertook to master in four weeks. Never was a chaotic
+world set right and reformed at such a bewildering pace.
+
+Bad blood was caused by the distribution of places on the various
+commissions. The delegates of the lesser nations, deeming themselves
+badly treated, protested vehemently, and for a time passion ran high.
+Squabbles of this nature, intensified by fierce discussions within the
+Council, tidings of which reached the ears of the public outside,
+disheartened those who were anxious for the speedy restoration of normal
+conditions in a world that was fast decomposing. But the optimism of the
+three principal plenipotentiaries was beyond the reach of the most
+depressing stumbles and reverses. Their buoyant temper may be gaged from
+Mr. Balfour's words, reported in the press: "It is true that there is a
+good deal of discussion going on, but there is no real discord about
+ideas or facts. We are agreed on the principal questions and there only
+remains to find the words that embody the agreements."[99] These tidings
+were welcomed at the time, because whatever defects were ascribed to the
+distinguished statesmen of the Conference by faultfinders, a lack of
+words was assuredly not among them. This cheery outlook on the future
+reminded me of the better grounded composure of Pope Pius IX during the
+stormy proceedings at the Vatican Council. A layman, having expressed
+his disquietude at the unruly behavior of the prelates, the Pontiff
+replied that it had ever been thus at ecclesiastical councils. "At the
+outset," he went on to explain, "the members behave as men, wrangle and
+quarrel, and nothing that they say or do is worth much. That is the
+first act. The second is ushered in by the devil, who intensifies the
+disorder and muddles things bewilderingly. But happily there is always a
+third act in which the Holy Ghost descends and arranges everything for
+the best."
+
+The first two phases of the Conference's proceedings bore a strong
+resemblance to the Pope's description, but as, unlike ecclesiastical
+councils, it had no claim to infallibility, and therefore no third act,
+the consequences to the world were deplorable. The Supreme Council never
+knew how to deal with an emergency and every week unexpected incidents
+in the world outside were calling for prompt action. Frequently it
+contradicted itself within the span of a few days, and sometimes at one
+and the same time its principal representatives found themselves in
+complete opposition to one another. To give but one example: In April M.
+Clemenceau was asked whether he approved the project of relieving
+famine-stricken Russia. His answer was affirmative, and he signed the
+document authorizing it. His colleagues, Messrs. Wilson, Lloyd George,
+and Orlando, followed suit, and the matter seemed to be settled
+definitely. But at the same time Mr. Hoover, who had been the ardent
+advocate of the plan, officially received a letter from the French
+Minister of Foreign Affairs signifying the refusal of the French
+government to acquiesce in it.[100] On another occasion[101] the Supreme
+Council thought fit to despatch a mission to Asia Minor in order to
+ascertain the views of the populations of Syria and Mesopotamia on the
+régime best suited to them. France, whose secular relations with Syria,
+where she maintains admirable educational establishments, are said to
+have endeared her to the population, objected to this expedient as
+superfluous and mischievous. Superfluous because the Francophil
+sentiments of the people are supposed to be beyond all doubt, and
+mischievous because plebiscites or substitutes for plebiscites could
+have only a bolshevizing effect on Orientals. Seemingly yielding to
+these considerations, the Supreme Council abandoned the scheme and the
+members of the mission made other plans.[102] After several weeks'
+further reflection, however, the original idea was carried out, and the
+mission visited the East.
+
+The reader may be glad of a momentary glimpse of the interior of the
+historic assembly afforded by those who were privileged to play a part
+in it before it was transformed into a secret conclave of five, four, or
+three. Within the doors of the chambers whence fateful decrees were
+issued to the four corners of the earth the delegates were seated,
+mostly according to their native languages, within earshot of the
+special pleaders. M. Clemenceau, at the head of the table, has before
+him a delegate charged with conducting the case, say, of Greece, Poland,
+Serbia, or Czechslovakia. The delegate, standing in front of the stern
+but mobile Premier, and encircled by other more or less attentive
+plenipotentiaries, looks like a nervous schoolboy appearing before
+exacting examiners, struggling with difficult questions and eager to
+answer them satisfactorily. Suppose the first language spoken is French.
+As many of the plenipotentiaries do not understand it, they cannot be
+blamed for relaxing attention while it is being employed, and keeping up
+a desultory conversation among themselves in idiomatic English, which
+forms a running bass accompaniment to the voice, often finely modulated,
+of the orator. Owing to this embarrassing language difficulty, as soon
+as a delegate pauses to take his breath, his arguments and appeals are
+done by M. Mantoux into English, and then it is the turn of the French
+plenipotentiaries to indulge in a quiet chat until some question is put
+in English, which has forthwith to be rendered into French, after which
+the French reply is translated into English, and so on unendingly, each
+group resuming its interrupted conversations alternately.
+
+One delegate who passed several hours undergoing this ordeal said that
+he felt wholly out of sympathy with the atmosphere at the Conference
+Hall, adding: "While arguing or appealing to my country's arbiters I
+felt I was addressing only a minority of the distinguished judges, while
+the thoughts of the others were far away. And when the interpreter was
+rendering, quickly, mechanically, and summarily, my ideas without any of
+the explosive passion that shot them from my heart, I felt discouraged.
+But suddenly it dawned on me that no judgment would be uttered on the
+strength of anything that I had said or left unsaid. I remembered that
+everything would be referred to a commission, and from that to a
+sub-commission, then back again to the distinguished plenipotentiaries,"
+
+Another delegate remarked: "Many years have elapsed since I passed my
+last examination, but it came back to me in all its vividness when I
+walked up to Premier Clemenceau and looked into his restless, flashing
+eyes. I said to myself: When last I was examined I was painfully
+conscious that my professors knew a lot more about the subject than I
+did, but now I am painfully aware that they know hardly anything at all
+and I am fervently desirous of teaching them. The task is arduous. It
+might, however, save time and labor if the delegates would receive our
+typewritten dissertations, read them quietly in their respective hotels,
+and endeavor to form a judgment on the data they supply. Failing that,
+I should like at least to provide them with a criterion of truth, for
+after me will come an opponent who will flatly contradict me, and how
+can they sift truth from error when the winnow is wanting? It is hard to
+feel that one is in the presence of great satraps of destiny, but I made
+an act of faith in the possibilities of genial quantities lurking behind
+those everyday faces and of a sort of magic power of calling into being
+new relations of peace and fellowship between individual classes and
+peoples. It was an act of faith."
+
+If the members of the Supreme Council lacked the graces with which to
+draw their humbler colleagues and were incapable of according
+hospitality to any of the more or less revolutionary ideas floating in
+the air, they were also utterly powerless to enforce their behests in
+eastern Europe against serious opposition. Thus, although they kept
+considerable Inter-Allied forces in Germany, they failed to impose their
+decrees there, notwithstanding the circumstance that Germany was
+disorganized, nearly disarmed, and distracted by internal feuds. The
+Conference gave way when Germany refused to let the Polish troops
+disembark at Dantzig, although it had proclaimed its resolve to insist
+on their using that port. It allowed Odessa to be evacuated and its
+inhabitants to be decimated by the bloodthirsty Bolsheviki. It ordered
+the Ukrainians and the Poles to cease hostilities,[103] but hostilities
+went on for months afterward. An American general was despatched to the
+warring peoples to put an end to the fighting, but he returned
+despondent, leaving things as he had found them. General Smuts was sent
+to Budapest to strike up an agreement with Kuhn and the Magyar
+Bolshevists, but he, too, came back after a fruitless conversation. The
+Supreme Council's writ ran in none of those places.
+
+About March 19th the Inter-Allied commission gave Erzberger twenty-four
+hours in which to ratify the convention between Germany and Poland and
+to carry out the conditions of the armistice. But Erzberger declined to
+ratify it and the Allies were unable or unwilling to impose their will
+on him. From this state of things the Rumanian delegates drew the
+obvious corollary. Exasperated by the treatment they received, they
+quitted the Conference, pursued their own policy, occupied Budapest,
+presented their own peace conditions to Hungary, and relegated, with
+courteous phrases and a polite bow to the Council, the directions
+elaborated for their guidance to the region of pious counsels.
+
+In these ways the well-meant and well-advertised endeavors to substitute
+a moral relationship of nations for the state of latent warfare known as
+the balance of power were steadily wasted. On the one side the subtle
+skill of Old World diplomacy was toiling hard and successfully to revive
+under specious names its lost and failing causes, while on the other
+hand the New World policy, naïvely ignoring historical forces and
+secular prejudices, was boldly reaching out toward rough and ready modes
+of arranging things and taking no account of concrete circumstances.
+Generous idealists were thus pitted against old diplomatic stagers and
+both secretly strove to conclude hastily driven bargains outside the
+Council chamber with their opponents. As early as the first days of
+January I was present at some informal meetings where such transactions
+were being talked over, and I afterward gave it as my impression that
+"if things go forward as they are moving to-day the outcome will fall
+far short of reasonable expectations. The first striking difference
+between the transatlantic idealists and the Old World politicians lies
+in their different ways of appreciating expeditiousness, on the one
+hand, and the bases of the European state-system, on the other hand. A
+statesman when dealing with urgent, especially revolutionary,
+emergencies should never take his eyes from the clock. The politicians
+in Paris hardly ever take account of time or opportunity. The overseas
+reformers contend that the territorial and political balance of forces
+has utterly broken down and must be definitely scrapped in favor of a
+league of nations, and the diplomatists hold that the principle of
+equilibrium, far from having spent its force, still affords the only
+groundwork of international stability and requires to be further
+intensified."[104]
+
+Living in the very center of the busy world of destiny-weavers, who were
+generously, if unavailingly, devoting time and labor to the fabrication
+of machinery for the good government of the entire human race out of
+scanty and not wholly suitable materials, a historian in presence of the
+manifold conflicting forces at work would have found it difficult to
+survey them all and set the daily incidents and particular questions in
+correct perspective. The earnestness and good-will of the
+plenipotentiaries were highly praiseworthy and they themselves, as we
+saw, were most hopeful. Nearly all the delegates were characterized by
+the spirit of compromise, so valuable in vulgar politics, but so
+perilous in embodying ideals. Anxious to reach unanimous decisions even
+when unanimity was lacking, the principal statesmen boldly had recourse
+to ingenious formulas and provisional agreements, which each party might
+construe in its own way, and paid scant attention to what was going on
+outside. I wrote at the time:[105]
+
+"But parallel with the Conference and the daily lectures which its
+members are receiving on geography, ethnography, and history there are
+other councils at work, some publicly, others privately, which represent
+the vast masses who are in a greater hurry than the political world to
+have their urgent wants supplied. For they are the millions of Europe's
+inhabitants who care little about strategic frontiers and much about
+life's necessaries which they find it increasingly difficult to obtain.
+Only a visitor from a remote planet could fully realize the significance
+of the bewildering phenomena that meet one's gaze here every day without
+exciting wonder.... The sprightly people who form the rind of the
+politico-social world ... are wont to launch winged words and coin witty
+epigrams when characterizing what they irreverently term the efforts of
+the Peace Conference to square the circle; they contrast the noble
+intentions of the delegates with the grim realities of the workaday
+world, which appear to mock their praiseworthy exertions. They say that
+there never were so many wars as during the deliberations of these
+famous men of peace. Hard fighting is going on in Siberia; victories and
+defeats have just been reported from the Caucasus; battles between
+Bolshevists and peace-lovers are raging in Esthonia; blood is flowing in
+streams in the Ukraine; Poles and Czechs have only now signed an
+agreement to sheath swords until the Conference announces its verdict;
+the Poles and the Germans, the Poles and the Ukrainians, the Poles and
+the Bolshevists, are still decimating each other's forces on territorial
+fragments of what was once Russia, Germany, or Austria."
+
+Sinister rumors were spread from time to time in Paris, London, and
+elsewhere, which, wherever they were credited, tended to shake public
+confidence not only in the dealings of the Supreme Council with the
+smaller countries, but also in the nature of the occult influences that
+were believed to be occasionally causing its decisions to swerve from
+the orthodox direction. And these reports were believed by many even in
+Conference circles. Time and again I was visited by delegates
+complaining that this or that decision was or would be taken in response
+to the promptings not of land-grabbing governments, but of wealthy
+capitalists or enterprising captains of industry. "Why do you suppose
+that there is so much talk now of an independent little state centering
+around Klagenfurt?" one of them asked me. "I will tell you: for the sake
+of some avaricious capitalists. Already arrangements are being pushed
+forward for the establishment of a bank of which most of the shares are
+to belong to X." Another said: "Dantzig is needed for
+politico-commercial reasons. Therefore it will not be made part of
+Poland.[106] Already conversations have begun with a view to giving the
+ownership of the wharves and various lucrative concessions to
+English-speaking pioneers of industry. If the city were Polish no such
+liens could be held on it because the state would provide everything
+needful and exploit its resources." The part played in the Banat
+Republic by motives of a money-making character is described elsewhere.
+
+A friend and adviser of President Wilson publicly affirmed that the
+Fiume problem was twice on the point of being settled satisfactorily for
+all parties, when the representatives of commercial interests cleverly
+interposed their influence and prevented the scheme from going through
+in the Conference. I met some individuals who had been sent on a secret
+mission to have certain subjects taken into consideration by the Supreme
+Council, and a man was introduced to me whose aim was to obtain through
+the Conference a modification of financial legislation respecting the
+repayment of debts in a certain republic of South America. This
+optimist, however, returned as he had come and had nothing to show for
+his plans. The following significant passage appeared in a leading
+article in the principal American journal published in Paris[107] on the
+subject of the Prinkipo project and the postponement of its execution:
+
+"From other sources it was learned that the doubts and delays in the
+matter are not due so much to the declination [_sic_] of several of the
+Russian groups to participate in a conference with the Bolshevists, but
+to the pulling against one another of the several interests represented
+by the Allies. Among the Americans a certain very influential group
+backed by powerful financial interests which hold enormously rich oil,
+mining, railway, and timber concessions, obtained under the old régime,
+and which purposes obtaining further concessions, is strongly in favor
+of recognizing the Bolshevists as a _de facto_ government. In
+consideration of the _visa_ of these old concessions by Lenin and
+Trotzky and the grant of new rights for the exploitation of rich mineral
+territory, they would be willing to finance the Bolshevists to the tune
+of forty or fifty million dollars. And the Bolshevists are surely in
+need of money. President Wilson and his supporters, it is declared, are
+decidedly averse from this pretty scheme."
+
+That President Wilson would naturally set his face against any such
+deliberate compromise between Mammon and lofty ideals it was superfluous
+to affirm. He stood for a vast and beneficent reform and by exhorting
+the world to embody it in institutions awakened in some people--in the
+masses were already stirring--thoughts and feelings that might long have
+remained dormant. But beyond this he did not go. His tendencies, or,
+say, rather velleities--for they proved to be hardly more--were
+excellent, but he contrived no mechanism by which to convert them into
+institutions, and when pressed by gainsayers abandoned them.
+
+An economist of mark in France whose democratic principles are well
+known[108] communicated to the French public the gist of certain curious
+documents in his possession. They let in an unpleasant light on some of
+the whippers-up of lucre at the expense of principle, who flocked around
+the dwelling-places of the great continent-carvers and lawgivers in
+Paris. His article bears this repellent heading: "Is it true that
+English and American financiers negotiated during the war in order to
+secure lucrative concessions from the Bolsheviki? Is it true that these
+concessions were granted to them on February 4, 1919? Is it true that
+the Allied governments played into their hands?"[109]
+
+The facts alleged as warrants for these questions are briefly as
+follows: On February 4, 1919, the Soviet of the People's Commissaries in
+Moscow voted the bestowal of a concession for a railway linking
+Ob-Kotlass-Saroka and Kotlass-Svanka, in a resolution which states "(1)
+that the project is feasible; (2) that the transfer of the concession to
+representatives of foreign capital may be effected if production will be
+augmented thereby; (3) that the execution of this scheme is
+indispensable; and (4) that in order to accelerate this solution of the
+question the persons desirous of obtaining the concession shall be
+obliged to _produce proofs of their contact with Allied_ and neutral
+enterprises, and of their capacity to financing the work and supply the
+materials requisite for the construction of the said line." On the other
+hand, it appears from an _official_ document bearing the date of June
+26, 1918, that a demand for the concession of this line was lodged by
+two individuals--the painter A.A. Borissoff (who many years ago received
+from me a letter of introduction to President Roosevelt asking him to
+patronize this gentleman's exhibition of paintings in the United
+States), and Herr Edvard Hannevig. Desirous of ascertaining whether
+these petitioners possessed the qualifications demanded, the Bolshevist
+authorities made inquiries and received from the Royal Norwegian
+Consulate at Moscow a certificate[110] setting forth that "citizen
+Hannevig was a co-associate of the large banks Hannevig situated in
+London and in America." Consequently negotiations might go forward. The
+document adds: "In October Borissoff and Hannevig renewed their request,
+whereupon the journals _Pravda_, _Izevestia_, and _Ekonomitsheskaya
+Shizn_ discussed the subject with animation. At a sitting held on
+October 12th the project was approved with certain modifications, and on
+February 1, 1919, the Supreme Soviet of National Economy approved it
+anew."
+
+The magnitude of the concession may be inferred from the circumstance
+that one of its clauses conceded "_the exploitation of eight millions of
+forest land_ which even to-day, _despite existing conditions, can bring
+in a revenue of three hundred million rubles a year_."
+
+What it comes to, therefore, assuming that these official documents are
+as they seem, based on facts, is that from June 26th, that is to say
+during the war, the Bolshevist government was petitioned to accord an
+important railway concession and also the exploitation of a forest
+capable of yielding three hundred million rubles a year to a Russian
+citizen who alleged that he was acting on behalf of English and American
+capitalists, and that Edvard Hannevig, having proved that he was really
+the mandatory of these great allied financiers, the concession was
+first approved by two successive commissions[111] and then definitely
+conferred by the Soviet of the People's Commissaries.[112]
+
+The eminent author of the article proceeds to ask whether this can
+indeed be true; whether English and American capitalists petitioned the
+Bolsheviki for vast concessions during the war; whether they obtained
+them while the Conference was at its work and soldiers of their
+respective countries were fighting in Russia against the Bolsheviki who
+were bestowing them. "Is it true," he makes bold to ask further, "that
+that is the explanation of the incredible friendliness displayed by the
+Allied governments toward the Bolshevist bandits with whom they were
+willing to strike up a compromise, whom they were minded to recognize by
+organizing a conference on the Princes' Island?... Many times already
+rank-smelling whiffs of air have blown upon us; they suggested the
+belief that behind the Peace Conference there lurked not merely what
+people feared, but something still worse or an immense political Panama.
+If this is not true, gentlemen, deny it. Otherwise one day you will
+surely have an explosion."[113]
+
+Whether these grave innuendoes, together with the statement made by Mr.
+George Herron,[114] the incident of the Banat Republic and the
+ultimatum respecting the oil-fields unofficially presented to the
+Rumanians suffice to establish a _prima facie_ case may safely be left
+to the judgment of the public. The conscientious and impartial
+historian, however firm his faith in the probity of the men representing
+the powers, both of unlimited and limited interests, cannot pass them
+over in silence.
+
+One of the shrewdest delegates in Paris, a man who allowed himself to be
+breathed upon freely by the old spirit of nationalism, but was capable
+withal of appreciating the passionate enthusiasm of others for a more
+altruistic dispensation, addressed me one evening as follows: "Say what
+you will, the Secret Council is a Council of Two, and the Covenant a
+charter conferred upon the English-speaking peoples for the government
+of the world. The design--if it be a design--may be excellent, but it is
+not relished by the other peoples. It is a less odious hegemony than
+that of imperialist Germany would have been, but it is a hegemony and
+odious. Surely in a quest of this kind after the most effectual means of
+overcoming the difficulties and obviating the dangers of international
+intercourse, more even than in the choice of a political régime, the
+principle of self-determination should be allowed free play. Was that
+not to have been one of the choicest fruits of victory? But no; force is
+being set in motion, professedly for the good of all, but only as their
+good is understood by the 'all-powerful Two.' And to all the others it
+is force and nothing more. Is it to be wondered at that there are so
+many discontented people or that some of them are already casting about
+for an alternative to the Anglo-Saxon hegemony misnamed the Society of
+Nations?"
+
+It cannot be gainsaid that the two predominant partners behaved
+throughout as benevolent despots, to whom despotism came more easily
+than benevolence. As we saw, they kept their colleagues of the lesser
+states as much in the dark as the general public and claimed from them
+also implicit obedience to all their behests. They went farther and
+demanded unreasoning acquiescence in decisions to be taken in the
+future, and a promise of prompt acceptance of their injunctions--a
+pretension such as was never before put forward outside the Catholic
+Church, which, at any rate, claims infallibility. Asked why he had not
+put up a better fight for one of the states of eastern Europe, a
+sharp-tongued delegate irreverently made answer, "What more could you
+expect than I did, seeing that I was opposed by one colleague who looks
+upon himself as Napoleon and by another who believes himself to be the
+Messiah."
+
+Among the many epigrammatic sayings current in Paris about the
+Conference, the most original was ascribed to the Emir Faissal, the son
+of the King of the Hedjaz. Asked what he thought of the world's
+areopagus, he is said to have answered: "It reminds me somewhat of one
+of the sights of my own country. My country, as you know, is the desert.
+Caravans pass through it that may be likened to the armies of delegates
+and experts at the Conference--caravans of great camels solemnly
+trudging along one after the other, each bearing its own load. They all
+move not whither they will, but whither they are led. For they have no
+choice. But between the two there is this difference: that whereas the
+big caravan in the desert has but one leader--a little ass--the
+Conference in Paris is led by two delegates who are the great Ones of
+the earth." In effect, the leaders were two, and no one can say which
+of them had the upper hand. Now it seemed to be the British Premier, now
+the American President. The former scored the first victory, on the
+freedom of the seas, before the Conference opened. The latter won the
+next, when Mr. Wilson firmly insisted on inserting the Covenant in the
+Treaty and finally overrode the objections of Mr. Lloyd George and M.
+Clemenceau, who scouted the idea for a while as calculated to impair the
+value of both charters. There was also a moment when the two were
+reported to have had a serious disagreement and Mr. Lloyd George, having
+suddenly quitted Paris for rustic seclusion, was likened to Achilles
+sulking in his tent. But one of the two always gave way at the last
+moment, just as both had given way to M. Clemenceau at the outset. When
+the difference between Japan and China cropped up, for example, the
+other delegates made Mr. Wilson their spokesman. Despite M. Clemenceau's
+resolve that the public should not "be apprized that the head of one
+government had ever put forward a proposal which was opposed by the head
+of another government," it became known that they occasionally disagreed
+among themselves, were more than once on the point of separating, and
+that at best their unanimity was often of the verbal order, failing to
+take root in identity of views. To those who would fain predicate
+political tact or statesmanship of the men who thus undertook to set
+human progress on a new and ethical basis, the story of these
+bickerings, hasty improvisations, and amazing compromises is
+distressing. The incertitude and suspense that resulted were
+disconcerting. Nobody ever knew what was coming. A subcommission might
+deliver a reasoned judgment on the question submitted to it, and this
+might be unanimously confirmed by the commission, but the Four or Three
+or Two or even One could not merely quash the report, but also reverse
+the practical consequences that followed. This was done over and over
+again.
+
+And there were other performances still more amazing. When, for example,
+the Polish problem became so pressing that it could not be safely
+postponed any longer, the first delegates were at their wits' ends.
+Unable to agree on any of the solutions mooted, they conceived the idea
+of obtaining further data and a lead from a special commission. The
+commission was accordingly appointed. Among its members were Sir Esmé
+Howard, who has since become Ambassador in Rome, the American General
+Kernan, and M. Noulens, the ex-Ambassador of France in Petrograd. These
+envoys and their colleagues set out for Poland to study the problem on
+the spot. They exerted themselves to the utmost to gather data for a
+serious judgment, and returned to Paris after a sojourn of some two
+months, legitimately proud of the copious and well-sifted results of
+their research. And then they waited. Days passed and weeks, but nobody
+took the slightest interest in the envoys. They were ignored. At last
+the chief of the commission, M. Noulens, taking the initiative, wrote
+direct to M. Clemenceau, informing him that the task intrusted to him
+and his colleagues had been achieved, and requesting to be permitted to
+make their report to the Conference. The reply was an order dissolving
+the commission unheard.
+
+Once when the relations between Messrs. Wilson and Lloyd George were
+somewhat spiced by antagonism of purpose and incompatibility of methods,
+a political friend of the latter urged him to make a firm stand. But the
+British Premier, feeling, perhaps, that there were too many
+unascertained elements in the matter, or identifying the President with
+the United States, drew back. More than once, too, when a certain
+delegate was stating his case with incisive emphasis Mr. Wilson, who
+was listening with attention and in silence, would suddenly ask, "Is
+this an ultimatum?" The American President himself never shrank from
+presenting an ultimatum when sure of his ground and morally certain of
+victory. On one such occasion a proposal had been made to Mr. Lloyd
+George, who approved it whole-heartedly. But it failed to receive the
+_placet_ of the American statesman. Thereupon the British Premier was
+strongly urged to stand firm. But he recoiled, his plea being that he
+had received an ultimatum from his American colleague, who spoke of
+quitting France and withdrawing the American troops unless the point
+were conceded. And Mr. Wilson had his way. One might have thought that
+this success would hearten the President to other and greater
+achievements. But the leader who incarnated in his own person the
+highest strivings of the age, and who seemed destined to acquire
+pontifical ascendancy in a regenerated world, lacked the energy to hold
+his own when matters of greater moment and high principle were at stake.
+
+These battles waged within the walls of the palace on the Quai d'Orsay
+were discussed out-of-doors by an interested and watchful public, and
+the conviction was profound and widespread that the President, having
+set his hand to the plow so solemnly and publicly, and having promised a
+harvest of far-reaching reforms, would not look back, however
+intractable the ground and however meager the crop. But confronted with
+serious obstacles, he flinched from his task, and therein, to my
+thinking, lay his weakness. If he had come prepared to assert his
+personal responsibility, to unfold his scheme, to have it amply and
+publicly discussed, to reject pusillanimous compromise in the sphere of
+execution, and to appeal to the peoples of the world to help him to
+carry it out, the last phase of his policy would have been worthy of
+the first, and might conceivably have inaugurated the triumph of the
+ideas which the indolent and the men of little faith rejected as
+incapable of realization. To this hardy course, which would have
+challenged the approbation of all that is best in the world, there was
+an alternative: Mr. Wilson might have confessed that his judgment was at
+fault, mankind not being for the moment in a fitting mood to practise
+the new tenets, that a speedy peace with the enemy was the first and
+most pressing duty, and that a world-parliament should be convened for a
+later date to prepare the peoples of the universe for the new ordering.
+But he chose neither alternative. At first it was taken for granted that
+in the twilight of the Conference hall he had fought valiantly for the
+principles which he had propounded as the groundwork of the new
+politico-social fabric, and that it was only when he found himself
+confronted with the insuperable antagonism of his colleagues of France
+and Britain that he reluctantly receded from his position and resolved
+to show himself all the more unbending to the envoys of the lesser
+countries. But this assumption was refuted by State-Secretary Lansing,
+who admitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the
+President's Fourteen Points, which he had vowed to carry out, were not
+even discussed at the Conference. The outcome of this attitude--one
+cannot term it a policy--was to leave the best of the ideas which he
+stood for in solution, to embitter every ally except France and Britain,
+and to scatter explosives all over the world.
+
+To this dwarfing parliamentary view of world-policy Mr. Lloyd George
+likewise fell a victim. But his fault was not so glaring. For it should
+in fairness be remembered that it was not he who first preached the
+advent of the millennium. He had only given it a tardy and cold assent,
+qualified by an occasional sally of keen pleasantry. Down to the last
+moment, as we saw, he not only was unaware that the Covenant would be
+inserted in the Peace Treaty, but he was strongly of the opinion, as
+indeed were M. Pichon and others, that the two instruments were
+incompatible. He also apparently inclined to the belief that spiritual
+and moral agencies, if not wholly impotent to bring about the requisite
+changes in the politico-social world, could not effect the
+transformation for a long while to come, and that in the interval it
+behooved the governments to fall back upon the old system of so-called
+equilibrium, which, after Germany's collapse, meant an informal kind of
+Anglo-Saxon overlordship of the world and a _pax Britannica_ in Europe.
+As for his action at the Conference, in so far as it did not directly
+affect the well-being of the British Empire, which was his first and
+main care, one might describe it as one of general agreement with Mr.
+Wilson. He actually threw it into that formula when he said that
+whenever the interests of the British Empire permitted he would like to
+find himself at one with the United States. It was on that occasion that
+the person addressed warned him against identifying the President with
+the people of the United States.
+
+In truth, it was difficult to follow the distinguished American
+idealist, because one seldom knew whither he would lead. Neither,
+apparently, did he himself. Some of his own countrymen in Paris held
+that he had always been accustomed to follow, never to guide. Certainly
+at the Conference his practice was to meet the more powerful of his
+contradictors on their own ground and come to terms with them, so as to
+get at least a part of what he aimed at, and that he accepted, even when
+the instalment was accorded to him not as such, but as a final
+settlement. So far as one can judge by his public acts and by the
+admissions of State-Secretary Lansing, he cannot have seriously
+contemplated staking the success of his mission on the realization of
+his Fourteen Points. The manner in which he dealt with his Covenant,
+with the French demand for concrete military guaranties and with secret
+treaties, all afford striking illustrations of his easy temper. Before
+quitting Paris for Washington he had maintained that the Covenant as
+drafted was satisfactory, nay, he contended that "not even a period
+could be changed in the agreement." The Monroe Doctrine, he held, needed
+no special stipulation. But as soon as Senator Lodge and others took
+issue with him on the subject, he shifted his position and hedged that
+doctrine round with defenses which cut off a whole continent from the
+purview of the League, which is nothing if not cosmic in its
+functions.[115] Again, there was to be no alliance. The French Premier
+foretold that there would be one. Mr. Wilson, who was in England at the
+time, answered him in a speech declaring that the United States would
+enter into no alliance which did not include all the world: "no
+combination of power which is not a combination of all of us." Well,
+since then he became a party to a kind of triple alliance and in the
+judgment of many observers it constitutes the main result of the
+Conference. In the words of an American press organ: "Clemenceau got
+virtually everything he asked. President Wilson virtually dropped his
+own program, and adopted the French and British, both of them
+imperialistic."[116]
+
+Again, when the first commission of experts reported upon the frontiers
+of Poland, the British Premier objected to a section of the "corridor,"
+on the ground that as certain districts contained a majority of Germans
+their annexation would be a danger to the future peace and therefore to
+Poland herself, and also on the ground that it would run counter to one
+of Mr. Wilson's fundamental points; the President, who at that time
+dissented from Mr. Lloyd George, rose and remarked that his principles
+must not be construed too literally. "When I said that Poland must be
+restored, I meant that everything indispensable to her restoration must
+be accorded. Therefore, if that should involve the incorporation of a
+number of Germans in Polish territory, it cannot be helped, for it is
+part of the restoration. Poland must have access to the sea by the
+shortest route, and everything else which that implies." None the less,
+the British Premier, whose attitude toward the claims of the Poles was
+marked by a degree of definiteness and persistency which could hardly be
+anticipated in one who had never even heard of Teschen before the year
+1919, maintained his objections with emphasis and insistence, until Mr.
+Wilson and M. Clemenceau gave in.
+
+Or take the President's way of dealing with the non-belligerent states.
+Before leaving Paris for Washington, Mr. Wilson, officially questioned
+by one of his colleagues at an official sitting as to whether the
+neutrals would also sign the Covenant, replied that only the Allies
+would be admitted to affix their signatures. "Don't you think it would
+be more conducive to the firm establishment of the League if the
+neutrals were also made parties to it now?" insisted the
+plenipotentiary. "No, I do not," answered the President. "I think that
+it would be conferring too much honor on them, and they don't deserve
+it." The delegate was unfavorably impressed by this reply. It seemed
+lacking in breadth of view. Still, it was tenable on certain narrow,
+formal grounds. But what he could not digest was the eagerness with
+which Mr. Wilson, on his return from Washington, abandoned his way of
+thinking and adopted the opposite view. Toward the end of April the
+delegates and the world were surprised to learn that not only would
+Spain be admitted to the orthodox fold, but that she would have a voice
+in the management of the flock with a seat in the Council. The chief of
+the Portuguese delegation[117] at once delivered a trenchant protest
+against this abrupt departure from principle, and as a jurisconsult
+stigmatized the promotion of Spain to a voice in the Council as an
+irregularity, and then retired in high dudgeon.
+
+Thus the grave reproach cannot be spared Mr. Wilson of having been weak,
+vague, and inconsistent with himself. He constituted himself the supreme
+judge of a series of intricate questions affecting the organization and
+tranquillity of the European Continent, as he had previously done in the
+case of Mexico, with the results we know. This authority was accorded to
+him--with certain reservations--in virtue of the exalted position which
+he held in a state disposing of vast financial and economic resources,
+shielded from some of the dangers that continually overhang European
+nations, and immune from the immediate consequences of the mistakes it
+might commit in international politics. For every continental people in
+Europe is in some measure dependent on the good-will of the United
+States, and therefore anxious to deserve it by cultivating the most
+friendly relations with its chief. This predisposition on the part of
+his wards was an asset that could have been put to good account. It was
+a guaranty of a measure of success which would have satisfied a generous
+ambition; it would have enabled him to effect by a wise policy what
+revolution threatened to accomplish by violence, and to canalize and
+lead to fruitful fields the new-found strength of the proletarian
+masses.
+
+The compulsion of working with others is often a wholesome corrective.
+It helps one to realize the need of accommodating measures to people's
+needs. But Mr. Wilson deliberately segregated himself from the nations
+for whose behoof he was laboring, and from some of their authorized
+representatives. And yet the aspirations and conceptions of a large
+section of the masses differed very considerably from those of the two
+statesmen with whom he was in close collaboration. His avowed aims were
+at the opposite pole to those of his colleagues. To reconcile
+internationalism and nationalism was sheer impossible. Yet instead of
+upholding his own, taking the peoples into his confidence, and sowing
+the good seed which would certainly have sprouted up in the fullness of
+time, he set himself, together with his colleagues, to weld
+contradictories and contributed to produce a synthesis composed of
+disembodied ideas, disintegrated communities, embittered nations,
+conflicting states, frenzied classes, and a seething mass of discontent
+throughout the world.
+
+Mr. Wilson has fared ill with his critics, who, when in quest of
+explanations of his changeful courses, sought for them, as is the wont
+of the average politician, in the least noble parts of human nature. In
+his case they felt especially repelled by his imperial aloofness, the
+secrecy of his deliberations, and the magisterial tone of his judgments,
+even when these were in flagrant contradiction with one another.
+Obstinacy was also included among the traits which were commonly
+ascribed to him. As a matter of fact he was a very good listener, an
+intelligent questioner, and amenable to argument whenever he felt free
+to give practical effect to the conclusions. When this was not the case,
+arguments necessarily failed of their effect, and on these occasions
+considerations of expediency proved a lever sufficient to sway his
+decision. But, like his more distinguished colleagues, he had to rely
+upon counsel from outside, and in his case, as in theirs, the official
+adviser was not always identical with the real prompter. He, too, as we
+saw, set aside the findings of the commissions when they disagreed with
+his own. In a word, Mr. Wilson's fatal stumble was to have sacrificed
+essentials in order to score on issues of secondary moment; for while
+success enabled him to obtain his paper Covenant from his co-delegates
+in Paris, and to bring back tangible results to Washington, it lost him
+the leadership of the world. The cost of this deplorable weakness to
+mankind can be estimated only after its worst effects have been added up
+and appraised.
+
+In matters affecting the destinies of the lesser states Mr. Wilson was
+firm as a rock. Prom the position once taken up nothing could move him.
+Their economic dependence on his own country rendered their arguments
+pointless and lent irresistible force to his injunctions. Greece's
+dispute with Bulgaria was a classic instance. The Bulgars repaired to
+Paris more as claimants in support of indefeasible rights than as
+vanquished enemies summoned to learn the conditions imposed on them by
+the nations which they had betrayed and assailed. Victory alone could
+have justified their territorial pretensions; defeat made them
+grotesque. All at once, however, it was bruited abroad that President
+Wilson had become Bulgaria's intercessor and favored certain of her
+exorbitant claims. One of these was for the annexation of part of the
+coast of western Thrace, together with a seaport at the expense of the
+Greeks, the race which had resided on the seaboard for twenty-five
+hundred consecutive years. M. Venizelos offered them instead one
+commercial outlet[118] and special privileges in another, and the
+plenipotentiaries of Great Britain, France, and Japan considered the
+offer adequate.
+
+But Mr. Wilson demurred. A commercial outlet through foreign territory,
+he said, might possibly be as good as a direct outlet through one's own
+territory in peace-time, but not in time of war, and, after all, one
+must bear in mind the needs of a country during hostilities. In the
+mouth of the champion of universal peace that was an unexpected
+argument. It had been employed by Italy in favor of her claim to Fiume.
+Mr. Wilson then met it by invoking the economic requirements of
+Jugoslavia, and by declaring that the Treaty was being devised for
+peace, not for war, that the League of Nations would hinder wars, or at
+the very least supply the deficiencies of those states which had
+sacrificed strategical positions for humanitarian aims. But in the case
+of Bulgaria he was taking what seems the opposite position and
+transgressing his own principle of nationality in order to maintain it.
+
+Mr. Wilson, pursuing his line of argument, further pointed out that the
+Supreme Council had not accepted as sufficient for Poland an outlet
+through German territory, but had created the city-state of Dantzig in
+order to confer a greater degree of security upon the Polish republic.
+To that M. Venizelos replied that there was no parity between the two
+instances. Poland had no outlet to the sea except through Dantzig, and
+could not, therefore, allow that one to remain in the hands of an
+unfriendly nation, whereas Bulgaria already possessed two very
+commodious ports, Varna and Burgas, on the Black Sea, which becomes a
+free sea in virtue of the internationalization of the straits. The
+possession of a third outlet on the Ægean could not, therefore, be
+termed a vital question for his protégée. Thus the comparison with
+Poland was irrelevant.
+
+If Poland, which is a very much greater state than Bulgaria, can live
+and prosper with a single port, and that not her own--if Rumania, which
+is also a much more numerous and powerful nation, can thrive with a
+single issue to the sea, by what line of argument, M. Venizelos asked,
+can one prove that little Bulgaria requires three or four exits, and
+that her need justifies the abandonment to her tender mercies of seven
+hundred and fifty thousand Greeks and the violation of one of the
+fundamental principles underlying the new moral ordering.
+
+Compliance with Bulgaria's demand would prevent Greece from including
+within her boundaries the three-quarters of a million Greeks who have
+dwelt in Thrace for twenty-five centuries, preserving their nationality
+intact through countless disasters and tremendous cataclysms. Further,
+the Greek Premier, taking a leaf from Wilson's book, turned to the
+aspect which the problem would assume in war-time. Bulgaria, he argued,
+is essentially a continental state, whose defense does not depend upon
+naval strength, whereas Greece contains an island population of nearly a
+million and a half and looks for protection against aggression chiefly
+to naval precautions. In case of war, Bulgaria, if her claim to an issue
+on the Ægean were allowed, could with her submarines delay or hinder the
+transport and concentration in Macedonia of Greek forces from the
+islands and thus place Greece in a position of dangerous inferiority.
+
+Lastly, if Greece's claims in Thrace were rejected, she would have a
+population of 1,790,000 souls outside her national boundaries--that is
+to say, more than one-third of the population which is within her state.
+Would this be fair? Of the total population of Bulgarian and Turkish
+Thrace the Turks and Greeks together form 85 per cent., the Bulgars only
+6 per cent., and the latter nowhere in compact masses. Moreover--and
+this ought to have clinched the matter--the Hellenic population formed
+an absolute as well as a relative majority in the year 1919.
+
+These arguments and various other considerations drawn from the
+inordinate ambitions, the savage cruelty,[119] and the Punic faith of
+the Bulgars convinced the British, French, and Japanese delegates of the
+soundness of Greece's pleas, and they sided with M. Venizelos. But Mr.
+Wilson clung to his idea with a tenacity which could not be justified by
+argument, and was concurrently explained by motives irrelevant to the
+merits of the case. Whether the influence of Bulgarophil American
+missionaries and strong religious leanings were at the root of his
+insistence, as was generally assumed, or whether other considerations
+weighed with him, is immaterial. And yet it is worth recording that a
+Bulgarian journal[120] announced with the permission of the governmental
+censor that the American missionaries in Bulgaria and the professors of
+Robert College of Constantinople had so primed the American delegates at
+the Conference on the question of Thrace, and generally on the Bulgarian
+problem, that all M. Venizelos's pains to convince them of the justice
+of his contention would be lost labor."[121]
+
+However this may be, Mr. Wilson's attitude was the subject of adverse
+comment throughout Europe. His implied claim to legislate for the world
+and to take over its moral leadership earned for him the epithet of
+"Dictator," and provoked such epigrammatic comments among his own
+countrymen and the French as this: "Louis XIV said, 'I am the state!'
+Mr. Wilson, outdoing him, exclaimed, 'I am all the states!'"
+
+The necessity of winning over dissentient colleagues to his grandiose
+scheme of world reorganization and of satisfying their demands, which
+were of a nature to render that scheme abortive, was the most
+influential agency in impairing his energies and upsetting his plans.
+This remark assumes what unhappily seems a fact, that those plans were
+mainly mechanical. It is certain that they made no provision for
+directly influencing the masses, for giving them sympathetic guidance,
+and enabling them to suffuse with social sentiments the aspirations and
+strivings which were chiefly of the materialistic order, with a view to
+bringing about a spiritual transformation of the social basis. Indeed we
+have no evidence that the need of such a transformation of the basis of
+political thought, which was still rooted in the old order, was grasped
+by any of those who set their hand to the legislative part of the work.
+
+These unfavorable impressions were general. Almost every step
+subsequently taken by the Conference confirmed them, and long before the
+Treaty was presented to the Germans, public confidence was gone in the
+ability of the Supreme Council to attain any of the moral victories over
+militarism, race-hatred, and secret intrigues which its leaders had
+encouraged the world to expect.
+
+"The leaders of the Conference," wrote an influential press organ,[122]
+"are under suspicion. They may not know it, but it is true. The
+suspicion is doubtless unjust, but it exists. What exists is a fact; and
+men who ignore facts are not statesmen. The only way to deal with facts
+is to face them. The more unpleasant they are the more they need to be
+faced.
+
+"Some of the Conference leaders are suspected of having, at various
+times and in various circumstances, thought more of their own personal
+and political positions and ambitions than of the rapid and practical
+making of peace. They are suspected, in a word, of a tendency to
+subordinate policy to politics.
+
+"In regard to some important matters they are suspected of having no
+policy. They are also suspected of unwillingness to listen to their own
+competent advisers, who could lay down for them a sound policy. Some of
+them are even suspected of being under the spell of some benumbing
+influence that paralyzes their will and befogs their minds, when high
+resolve and clear visions are needful."
+
+Another accusation of the same tenor was thus formulated: "In various
+degrees[123] and with different qualities of guilt all the Allied and
+Associated leaders have dallied with dishonesty. While professing to
+seek naught save the welfare of mankind, they have harbored thoughts of
+self-interest. The result has been a progressive loss of faith in them
+by their own peoples severally, and by the Allied, Associated, and
+neutral peoples jointly. The tide of public trust in them has reached
+its lowest ebb."
+
+At the Conference, as we saw, the President of the United States
+possessed what was practically a veto on nearly all matters which left
+the vital interests of Britain and France intact. And he frequently
+exercised it. Thus the dispute about the Thracian settlement lay not
+between Bulgaria and Greece, nor between Greece and the Supreme Council,
+but between Greece and Mr. Wilson. In the quarrel over Fiume and the
+Dalmatian coast it was the same. When the Shantung question came up for
+settlement it was Mr. Wilson alone who dealt with it, his colleagues,
+although bound by their promises to support Japan, having made him their
+mouthpiece. The rigor he displayed in dealing with some of the smaller
+countries was in inverse ratio to the indulgence he practised toward the
+Great Powers. Not only were they peremptorily bidden to obey without
+discussion the behests which had been brought to their cognizance, but
+they were ordered, as we saw, to promise to execute other injunctions
+which might be issued by the Supreme Council on certain matters in the
+future, the details of which were necessarily undetermined.
+
+In order to stifle any velleities of resistance on the part of their
+governments, they were notified that America's economic aid, of which
+they were in sore need, would depend on their docility. It is important
+to remember that it was the motive thus clearly presented that
+determined their formal assent to a policy which they deprecated. A
+Russian statesman summed up the situation in the words: "It is an
+illustration of one of our sayings, 'Whose bread I eat, his songs I
+sing.'" Thus it was reported in July that an agreement come to by the
+financial group Morgan with an Italian syndicate for a yearly advance to
+Italy of a large sum for the purchase of American food and raw stuffs
+was kept in abeyance until the Italian delegation should accept such a
+solution of the Adriatic problem as Mr. Wilson could approve. The
+Russian and anti-Bolshevists were in like manner compelled to give their
+assent to certain democratic dogmas and practices. It is also fair,
+however, to bear in mind that whatever one may think of the wisdom of
+the policy pursued by the President toward these peoples, the motives
+that actuated it were unquestionably admirable, and the end in view was
+their own welfare, as he understood it. It is all the more to be
+regretted that neither the arguments nor the example of the autocratic
+delegates were calculated to give these the slightest influence over the
+thought or the unfettered action of their unwilling wards. The
+arrangements carried out were entirely mechanical.
+
+In the course of time after the vital interests of Britain, France, and
+Japan had been disposed of, and only those of the "lesser states," in
+the more comprehensive sense of this term, remained, President Wilson
+exercised supreme power, wielding it with firmness and encountering no
+gainsayer. Thus the peace between Italy and Austria was put off from
+month to month because he--and only he--among the members of the Supreme
+Council rejected the various projects of an arrangement. Into the merits
+of this dispute it would be unfruitful to enter. That there was much to
+be said for Mr. Wilson's contention, from the point of view of the
+League of Nations, and also from that of the Jugoslavs, will not be
+denied. That some of the main arguments to which he trusted his case
+were invalidated by the concessions which he had made to other countries
+was Italy's contention, and it cannot be thrust aside as untenable.
+
+At last Mr. Wilson ventured on a step which challenged the attention and
+stirred the disquietude of his friends. He despatched a note[124] to
+Turkey, warning her that if the massacres of Armenians were not
+discontinued he would withdraw the twelfth of his Fourteen Points, which
+provides for the maintenance of Turkish sovereignty over undeniable
+Turkish territories. The intention was excellent, but the necessary
+effects of his action were contrary to what the President can have aimed
+at. He had not consulted the Conference on the important change which he
+was about to make respecting a point which was supposed to be part of
+the groundwork of the new ordering. This from the Conference point of
+view was a momentous decision, which could be taken only with the
+consent of the Supreme Council. Even as a mere threat it was worthless
+if it did not stand for the deliberate will of that body which the
+President had deemed it superfluous to consult. As it happened, the
+British authorities were just then organizing a body of gendarmes to
+police the Turkish territories in question, and they were engaged in
+this work with the knowledge and approval of the Supreme Council. Mr.
+Wilson's announcement could therefore only be construed--and was
+construed--as the act of an authority superior to that of the
+Council.[125] The Turks, who are shrewd observers, must have drawn the
+obvious conclusion from these divergent measures as to the degree of
+harmony prevailing among the Allied and Associated Powers.
+
+M. Clemenceau had a conversation on the subject with Mr. Polk, who
+explained that the note was informal and given verbally, and conveyed
+the idea only of one nation in connection with the Armenian situation.
+This explanation, accepted by the French government, did not commend
+itself to public opinion, either in France or elsewhere. Moreover, the
+French were struck by another aspect of this arbitrary exercise of
+supreme power. "President Wilson," wrote an eminent French publicist,
+"throws himself into the attitude of a man who can bind and loose the
+Turkish Empire at the very moment when the Senate appears opposed to
+accepting any mandate, European or Asiatic, at the moment when Mr.
+Lansing declares to the Congress that the government of which he is a
+member does not desire to accept any mandate. But is it not obvious that
+if Mr. Wilson sovereignly determines the lot of Turkey he can be held in
+consequence to the performance of certain duties? We have often had to
+deplore the absence of policy common to the Allies. But has each one of
+them, considered separately, at least a policy of its own? Does it take
+action otherwise than at haphazard, yielding to the impulse of a
+general, a consul, or a missionary?"[126]
+
+It soon became manifest even to the most obtuse that whenever the
+Supreme Council, following its leaders and working on such lines as
+these, terminated its labors, the ties between the political communities
+of Europe would be just as flimsy as in the unregenerate days of secret
+diplomacy, secret alliances, and secret intrigues, unless in the
+meanwhile the peoples themselves intervened to render them stronger and
+more enduring. It would, however, be the height of unfairness to make
+Mr. Wilson alone answerable for this untoward ending to a far resonant
+beginning. He had been accused by the press of most countries of
+enwrapping personal ambition in the attractive covering of
+disinterestedness and altruism, just as many of his foreign colleagues
+were said to go in fear of the "malady of lost power." But charges of
+this nature overstep the bounds of legitimate criticism. Motive is
+hardly ever visible, nor is it often deducible from deliberate action.
+If, for example, one were to infer from the vast territorial
+readjustments and the still vaster demands of the various belligerents
+at the Conference, the motives that had determined them to enter the
+war, the conclusion--except in the case of the American people, whose
+disinterestedness is beyond the reach of cavil--would indeed be
+distressing. The President of the United States merited well of all
+nations by holding up to them an ideal for realization, and the mere
+announcement of his resolve to work for it imparted an appreciable if
+inadequate incentive to men of good-will. The task, however, was so
+gigantic that he cannot have gaged its magnitude, discerned the defects
+of the instruments, nor estimated aright the force of the hindrances
+before taking the world to witness that he would achieve it. Even with
+the hearty co-operation of ardent colleagues and the adoption of a sound
+method he could hardly have hoped to do more than clear the
+ground--perhaps lay the foundation-stone--of the structure he dreamt of.
+But with the partners whom circumstance allotted him, and the gainsayers
+whom he had raised up and irritated in his own country, failure was a
+foregone conclusion from the first. The aims after which most of the
+European governments strove were sheer incompatible with his own.
+Doubtless they all were solicitous about the general good, but their
+love for it was so general and so diluted with attachment to others'
+goods as to be hardly discernible. The reproach that can hardly be
+spared to Mr. Wilson, however, is that of pusillanimity. If his faith in
+the principles he had laid down for the guidance of nations were as
+intense as his eloquent words suggested, he would have spurned the offer
+of a sequence of high-sounding phrases in lieu of a resettlement of the
+world. And his appeal to the peoples would most probably have been
+heard. The beacon once lighted in Paris would have been answered in
+almost every capital of the world. One promise he kept religiously: he
+did not return to Washington without a paper covenant. Is it more? Is it
+merely a paradox to assert that as war was waged in order to make war
+impossible, so a peace was made that will render peace impossible?
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[91] In March.
+
+[92] Quoted by _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 10, 1919.
+
+[93] Delivered at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York on March 4,
+1919.
+
+[94] _The New York Herald_, March 19, 1919 (Paris edition).
+
+[95] Cf. _The New York Herald_, July 8, 1919.
+
+[96] The semi-official journals manifested a steady tendency to lean
+toward the Republican opposition in the United States, down to the month
+of August, when the amendments proposed by various Senators bade fair to
+jeopardize the Treaties and render the promised military succor
+doubtful.
+
+[97] _Journal de Genève_, May 18, 1919.
+
+[98] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), August 14, 1919.
+
+[99] Cf. Paris papers of February 2, 1919, and _The Public Ledger_
+(Philadelphia), February 4, 1919.
+
+[100] Cf. _L'Echo de Paris_, April 19, 1919.
+
+[101] In April, 1919.
+
+[102] About April 10,1919.
+
+[103] On March 19, 1919.
+
+[104] Cf. my cablegram published in _The Public Ledger_ (Philadelphia),
+January 12, 1919.
+
+[105] Cf. _The Public Ledger_ (Philadelphia), February 5, 1919.
+
+[106] Doctor Bunke, Councilor at the court of Dantzig, endeavors in _The
+Dantzig Neueste Nachrichten_ to prove that the problem of Dantzig was
+solved exclusively in the interests of the Naval Powers, America and
+Britain, who need it as a basis for their commerce with Poland, Russia,
+and Germany. Cf. also _Le Temps_, August 23, 1919
+
+[107] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), March 1, 1919.
+
+[108] Lysis, author of _Demain_, and many other remarkable studies of
+economic problems, and editor of _Le Démocratie Nouvelle_, May 30, 1919.
+
+[109] For an account of analogous bargainings with Bela Kuhn, see the
+Chapter on Rumania.
+
+[110] Bearing the number 3882.
+
+[111] On October 12, 1918, and February 1, 1919
+
+[112] On February 4, 1919.
+
+[113] _La Démocratie Nouvelle_, May 30, 1919
+
+[114] See his admirable article in _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition)
+of May 21, 1919, from which the following extract is worth quoting: "I
+have said that certain great forces have steadily and occultly worked
+for a German peace. But I mean, in fact, one force--an international
+finance to which all other forces hostile to the freedom of nations and
+of the individual soul are contributory. The influence of this finance
+had permeated the Conference, delaying the decisions as long as
+possible, increasing divisions between people and people, between class
+and class, between peace-makers and peace-makers, in order to achieve
+two definite ends, which two ends are one and the same.
+
+"The first end was so to manipulate the minds of the peace-makers, of
+their hordes of retainers and 'experts,' as to bring about, if possible,
+a peace that would not be destructive to industrial Germany. The second
+end was so to delay the Russian question, so to complicate and thwart
+every proposed solution, that, at last, either during or after the Peace
+Conference, a recognition of the Bolshevist power as the _de facto_
+government of Russia would be the only possible solution."
+
+[115] "What confidence can be commanded by men who, asserting one week
+that the ultimate of human wisdom has been attained in a document,
+confess the next week that the document is frail? When are we to believe
+that their confessions are at an end?"--_The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris
+edition), August 23, 1919.
+
+[116] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), July 31, 1919.
+
+[117] M. Affonso Costa, who shortly before had succeeded the Minister of
+Foreign Affairs, M. Monas Egiz.
+
+[118] Dedeagatch.
+
+[119] See _Rapports et Enquêtes de la Commission Interalliée sur les
+Violations du droit des gens commises en Macédoine Orientale par les
+armées bulgares_. The conclusion of the report is one of the most
+terrible indictments ever drawn up by impartial investigators against
+what is practically a whole people.
+
+[120] _Zora_, August 11th. Cf. _Le Temps_, August 28, 1919.
+
+[121] Mr. Charles House published a statement in the press of Saloniki
+to the effect that the Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
+forbids missionaries to take an active part in politics. He added that
+if this injunction was transgressed--and in Paris the current belief was
+that it had been--it would not be tolerated by the Missionary Board, nor
+recognized by the American government.
+
+[122] _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), March 31, 1919.
+
+[123] _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), April 6, 1919.
+
+[124] Somewhere between August 17 and 20, 1919. It was transmitted by
+Admiral Bristol, American member of the Inter-Allied Inquiry Mission at
+Smyrna.
+
+[125] Cf. _L'Echo de Paris_, August 28, 1919. Article by Pertinax.
+
+[126] _L'Echo de Paris_, August 28, 1919. Article by Pertinax.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE LESSER STATES
+
+
+Before the Anglo-Saxon statesmen thus set themselves to rearrange the
+complex of interests, forces, policies, nationalities, rights, and
+claims which constituted the politico-social world of 1919, they were
+expected to deal with all the Allied and Associated nations, without
+favor or prejudice, as members of one family. This expectation was not
+fulfilled. It may not have been warranted. From the various discussions
+and decisions of which we have knowledge, a number of delegates drew the
+inference that France was destined for obvious reasons to occupy the
+leading position in continental Europe, under the protection of
+Anglo-Saxondom; and that a privileged status was to be conferred on the
+Jews in eastern Europe and in Palestine, while the other states were to
+be in the leading-strings of the Four. This view was not lightly
+expressed, however inadequately it may prove to have been then supported
+by facts. As to the desirability of forming this rude hierarchy of
+states, the principal plenipotentiaries were said to have been in
+general agreement, although responding to different motives. There was
+but one discordant voice--that of France--who was opposed to the various
+limitations set to Poland's aggrandizement, and also to the clause
+placing the Jews under the direct protection of the League of Nations,
+and investing them with privileges in which the races among whom they
+reside are not allowed to participate. Bulgaria had a position unique
+in her class, for she was luckier than most of her peers in having
+enlisted on her side the American delegation and Mr. Wilson as leading
+counsel and special pleader for her claim to an outlet to the Ægean Sea.
+
+At the Conference each state was dealt with according to its class.
+Entirely above the new law, as we saw, stood its creators, the
+Anglo-Saxons. To all the others, including the French, the Wilsonian
+doctrine was applied as fully as was compatible with its author's main
+object, the elaboration of an instrument which he could take back with
+him to the United States as the great world settlement. Within these
+limits the President was evidently most anxious to apply his Fourteen
+Points, but he kept well within these. Thus he would, perhaps, have been
+quite ready to insist on the abandonment by Britain of her supremacy on
+the seas, on a radical change in the international status of Egypt and
+Ireland, and much else, had these innovations been compatible with his
+own special object. But they were not. He was apparently minded to test
+the matter by announcing his resolve to moot the problem of the freedom
+of the seas, but when admonished by the British government that it would
+not even brook its mention, he at once gave it up and, presumably
+drawing the obvious inference from this downright refusal, applied it to
+the Irish, Egyptian, and other issues, which were forthwith eliminated
+from the category of open or international problems. But France's
+insistent demand, on the other hand, for the Rhine frontier met with an
+emphatic refusal.[127]
+
+The social reformer is disheartened by the one-sided and inexorable way
+in which maxims proclaimed to be of universal application were
+restricted to the second-class nations.
+
+Russia's case abounds in illustrations of this arbitrary, unjust, and
+impolitic pressure. The Russians had been our allies. They had fought
+heroically at the time when the people of the United States were,
+according to their President, "too proud to fight." They were essential
+factors in the Allies' victory, and consequently entitled to the
+advantages and immunities enjoyed by the Western Powers. In no case
+ought they to have been placed on the same level as our enemies, and in
+lieu of recompense condemned to punishment. And yet this latter
+conception of their deserts was not wholly new. Soon after their
+defection, and when the Allies were plunged in the depths of
+despondency, a current of opinion made itself felt among certain
+sections of the Allied peoples tending to the conclusion of peace on the
+basis of compensations to Germany, to be supplied by the cession of
+Russian territory. This expedient was advocated by more than one
+statesman, and was making headway when fresh factors arose which bade
+fair to render it needless.
+
+At the Paris Conference the spirit of this conception may still have
+survived and prompted much that was done and much that was left
+unattempted. Russia was under a cloud. If she was not classed as an
+enemy she was denied the consideration reserved for the Allies and the
+neutrals. Her integrity was a matter of indifference to her former
+friends; almost every people and nationality in the Russian state which
+asked for independence found a ready hearing at the Supreme Council. And
+some of them before they had lodged any such claim were encouraged to
+lose no time in asking for separation. In one case a large sum of money
+and a mission were sent to "create the independent state of the
+Ukraine," so impatient were peoples in the West to obtain a substitute
+for the Russian ally whom they had lost in the East, and great was their
+consternation when their protégés misspent the funds and made common
+cause with the Teutons.
+
+Disorganized Russia was in some ways a godsend to the world's
+administrators in Paris. To the advocate of alliances, territorial
+equilibrium, and the old order of things it offered a facile means of
+acquiring new helpmates in the East by emancipating its various peoples
+in the name of right and justice. It held out to the capitalists who
+deplored the loss of their milliards a potential source whence part of
+that loss might be made good.[128] To the zealots of the League of
+Nations it offered an unresisting body on which all the requisite
+operations from amputation to trepanning might be performed without the
+use of anesthetics.
+
+The various border states of Russia were thus quietly lopped off without
+even the foreknowledge, much less the assent, of the patient, and
+without any pretense at plebiscites. Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Georgia
+were severed from the chaotic Slav state offhandedly, and the warrant
+was the doctrine propounded by President Wilson--that every people shall
+be free to choose its own mode of living and working. Every people?
+Surely not, remarked unbiased onlookers. The Egyptians, the Irish, the
+Austrians, the Persians, to name but four among many, are disqualified
+for the exercise of these indefeasible rights. Perhaps with good reason?
+Then modify the doctrine. Why this difference of treatment? they
+queried. Is it not because the supreme judge knows full well that Great
+Britain would not brook the discussion of the Egyptian or the Irish
+problem, and that France, in order to feel quite secure, must hinder the
+Austrian-Germans from coalescing with their brethren of the Reich? But
+if Britain and France have the right to veto every self-denying measure
+that smacks of disruption or may involve a sacrifice, why is Russia
+bereft of it? If the principle involved be of any value at all, its
+application must be universal. To an equal all-round distribution of
+sacrifice the only alternative is the supremacy of force in the service
+of arbitrary rule. And to this force, accordingly, the Supreme Council
+had recourse. The only cases in which it seriously vindicated the rights
+of oppressed or dissatisfied peoples to self-determination against the
+will of the ruling race or nation were those in which that race or
+nation was powerless to resist. Whenever Britain or France's interests
+were deemed to be imperiled by the putting in force of any of the
+Fourteen Points, Mr. Wilson desisted from its application. Thus it came
+about that Russia was put on the same plane with Germany and received
+similar, in some respects, indeed, sterner, treatment. The Germans were
+at least permitted to file objections to the conditions imposed and to
+point out flaws in the arrangements drafted, and their representations
+sometimes achieved their end. It was otherwise with the Russians. They
+were never consulted. And when their representatives in Paris
+respectfully suggested that all such changes as might be decided upon by
+the Great Powers during their country's political disablement should be
+taken to be provisional and be referred for definite settlement to the
+future constituent assembly, the request was ignored.
+
+Of psychological rather than political interest was Mr. Wilson's
+conscientious hesitation as to whether the nationalities which he was
+preparing to liberate were sufficiently advanced to be intrusted with
+self-government. As stated elsewhere, his first impulse would seem to
+have been to appoint mandatories to administer the territories severed
+from Russia. The mandatory arrangement under the ubiquitous League is
+said to have been his own. Presumably he afterward acquired the belief
+that the system might be wisely dispensed with in the case of some of
+Russia's border states, for they soon afterward received promises of
+independence and implicitly of protection against future encroachments
+by a resuscitated Russia.
+
+In this connection a scene is worth reproducing which was enacted at the
+Peace Table before the system of administering certain territories by
+proxy was fully elaborated. At one of the sittings the delegates set
+themselves to determine what countries should be thus governed,[129] and
+it was understood that the mandatory system was to be reserved for the
+German colonies and certain provinces of the Turkish Empire. But in the
+course of the conversation Mr. Wilson casually made use of the
+expression, "The German colonies, the territories of the Turkish Empire
+and other territories." One of the delegates promptly put the question,
+"What other territories?" to which the President replied,
+unhesitatingly, "Those of the late Russian Empire." Then he added by way
+of explanation: "We are constantly receiving petitions from peoples who
+lived hitherto under the scepter of the Tsars--Caucasians, Central
+Asiatic peoples, and others--who refuse to be ruled any longer by the
+Russians and yet are incapable of organizing viable independent states
+of their own. It is meet that the desires of these nations should be
+considered." At this the Czech delegate, Doctor Kramarcz, flared up and
+exclaimed: "Russia? Cut up Russia? But what about her integrity? Is that
+to be sacrificed?" But his words died away without evoking a response.
+"Was there no one," a Russian afterward asked, "to remind those
+representatives of the Great Powers of their righteous wrath with
+Germany when the Brest-Litovsk treaty was promulgated?"
+
+Toward Italy, who, unlike Russia, was not treated as an enemy, but as
+relegated to the category of lesser states, the attitude of President
+Wilson was exceptionally firm and uncompromising. On the subject of
+Fiume and Dalmatia he refused to yield an inch. In vain the Italian
+delegation argued, appealed, and lowered its claims. Mr. Wilson was
+adamant. It is fair to admit that in no other way could he have
+contrived to get even a simulacrum of a League. Unless the weak states
+were awed into submitting to sacrifices for the great aim which he had
+made his own, he must return to Washington as the champion of a
+manifestly lost cause. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that his
+thesis was not destitute of arguments to support it. Accordingly the
+deadlock went on for months, until the Italian Cabinet fell and people
+wearied of the Adriatic problems.
+
+Poland was another of the communities which had to bend before
+Anglo-Saxon will, represented in her case mainly by Mr. Lloyd George,
+not, however, without the somewhat tardy backing of his colleague from
+Washington. It is important for the historian and the political student
+to observe that as the British Premier was not credited with any
+profound or original ideas about the severing or soldering of east
+European territories, the authorship of the powerful and successful
+opposition to the allotting of Dantzig to Poland was rightly or wrongly
+ascribed not to him, but to what is euphemistically termed
+"international finance" lurking in the background, whose interest in
+Poland was obviously keen, and whose influence on the Supreme Council,
+although less obvious, was believed to be far-reaching. The same
+explanation was currently suggested for the fixed resolve of Mr. Lloyd
+George not to assign Upper Silesia to Poland without a plebiscite. His
+own account of the matter was that although the inhabitants were
+Polish--they are as two to one compared with the Germans--it was
+conceivable that they entertained leanings toward the Germans, and might
+therefore desire to throw in their lot with these. When one compares
+this scrupulous respect for the likes and dislikes of the inhabitants of
+that province with the curt refusal of the same men at first to give ear
+to the ardent desire of the Austrians to unite with the Germans, or to
+abide by a plebiscite of the inhabitants of Fiume or Teschen, one is
+bewildered. The British Premier's wish was opposed by the official body
+of experts appointed to report on the matter. Its members had no
+misgivings. The territory, they said, belonged of right to Poland, the
+great majority of its population was unquestionably Polish, and the
+practical conclusion was that it should be handed over to the Polish
+government as soon as feasible. Thereupon the staff of the commission
+was changed and new members were substituted for the old.[130] But that
+was not enough. The British Premier still encountered such opposition
+among his foreign colleagues that it was only by dint of wordy warfare
+and stubbornness that he finally won his point.
+
+The stipulation for which the first British delegate toiled thus
+laboriously was that within a fortnight after the ratification of the
+Treaty the German and Polish forces should evacuate the districts in
+which the plebiscite was to be held, that the Workmen's Councils there
+should be dissolved, and that the League of Nations should take over the
+government of the district so as to allow the population to give full
+expression to its will. But the League of Nations did not exist and
+could not be constituted for a considerable time. It was therefore
+decided[131] that some temporary substitute for the League should be
+formed at once, and the Supreme Council decided that Inter-Allied troops
+should occupy the districts. That was the first instalment of the price
+to be paid for the British Premier's tenderness for plebiscites, which
+the expert commissions deprecated as unnecessary, and which, as events
+proved in this case, were harmful.
+
+In the meanwhile Bolshevist--some said German--agents were stirring up
+the population by suasion and by terrorism until it finally began to
+ferment. Thousands of working-men responded to the goad, "turned down"
+their tools and ceased work. Thereupon the coal-fields of Upper Silesia,
+the production of which had already dropped by 50 per cent, since the
+preceding November, ceased to produce anything. This consummation
+grieved the Supreme Council, which turned for help to the Inter-Allied
+armies. For the Silesian coal-fields represented about one-third of
+Germany's production, and both France and Italy were looking to Germany
+for part of their fuel-supply. The French press pertinently asked
+whether it would not have been cheaper, safer, and more efficacious to
+have forgone the plebiscite and relied on the Polish troops from the
+outset.[132] For, however ideal the intentions of Mr. Lloyd George may
+have been, the net result of his insistence on a plebiscite was to
+enable an ex-newspaper vender named Hoersing, who had undertaken to
+prevent the detachment of Upper Silesia from Germany, to set his
+machinery for agitation in motion and cause general unrest in the
+Silesian and Dombrova coal-mining districts. When the strike was
+declared the workmen, who are Poles to a man, rejected all suggestions
+that they should refer their grievances to arbitration courts. For these
+tribunals were conducted by Germans. The consequence of Mr. Lloyd
+George's spirited intervention was, in the words of an unbiased
+observer, to "raise the specters of starvation, freezing and Bolshevism
+in eastern Europe" during the ensuing winter--a heavy price to pay for
+pedantic adherence to the letter of an irrelevant ordinance, at a moment
+when the spirit of basic principles was being allowed to evaporate.
+
+Rumania was chastened and qualified in severer fashion for admission to
+the sodality of nations until her delegates quitted the Conference in
+disgust, struck out their own policy, and courteously ignored the Great
+Powers. Then the Supreme Council changed its note for the moment and
+abandoned the position which it had taken up respecting the armistice
+with Hungary, to revert to it shortly afterward.[133] The joy with which
+the upshot of this revolt was hailed by all the lesser states was an
+evil omen. For their antipathy toward the Supreme Council had long
+before hardened into a sentiment much more intense, and any stick seemed
+good enough to break the rod of the self-constituted governors of the
+planet.
+
+The concrete result of this tinkering and cobbling could only be a
+ramshackle structure, built without any reference to the canons of
+political architecture. It was shaped neither by the Fourteen Points nor
+by the canons of the balance of power and territory. It was hardly more
+than an abortive attempt to make a synthesis of the two. Created by
+force, it could be perpetuated only by force; but if symptoms are to be
+trusted, it is more likely to be broken up by force. As an American
+press organ remarked in August: "The Council of Five complains that no
+one now condescends to recognize the League of Nations. Even the small
+nations are buying war material, quite oblivious of the fact that there
+are to be no more wars, now that the League is there to prevent them.
+Sweden is buying large supplies from Germany, and Spain is sending a
+commission to Paris to negotiate for some of France's war
+equipment."[134]
+
+Belgium, too, was treated with scant consideration. The praise lavished
+on her courageous people during the war was apparently deemed an
+adequate recompense for the sacrifices she had made and the losses she
+endured. For the revision of the treaties of 1839, indispensable to the
+economic development of the country, no diplomatic preparation was made
+down to May, and among the Treaty clauses then drafted Belgium's share
+of justice was so slight and insufficient that the unbiased press
+published sharp strictures on the forgetfulness or egotism of the
+Supreme Council. "The little that has leaked out of the decisions taken
+regarding the conditions which affect Belgium," wrote one journal, "has
+caused not only bitter disappointment in Belgium, but also indignation
+everywhere.... The Allies having decided not to accord moral
+satisfaction to Belgium (they chose Geneva as the capital of the League
+of Nations), it was perhaps to be expected that they would not accord
+her material satisfaction. And such expectations are being fulfilled.
+The Limburg province, annexed to Holland in 1839, the province which
+gave the retreating enemy unlawful refuge in 1918, a rank violation of
+Dutch neutrality, is apparently not to be restored to Belgium. Even the
+right, vital to the safety and welfare of Belgium, the right of
+unimpeded navigation of the Scheldt between Antwerp and the sea, has not
+yet been conceded. And the raw material that is indispensable if Belgian
+industry is to be revived is withheld; the Allies, however, are quite
+willing to flood the country with manufactured articles."[135]
+
+And yet Belgium's demands were extremely modest.[136] They were
+formulated, not as the guerdon for her heroic defense of civilization,
+but as a plain corollary flowing direct from each and every principle
+officially recognized by the heads of the Conference--right,
+nationality, legitimate guarantees, and economic requirements. Tested by
+any or all of these accepted touchstones, everything asked for was
+reasonable and fair in itself, and seemingly indispensable to the
+durability of the new world-structure which the statesmen were
+endeavoring to raise on the ruins of the old. Belgium's forlorn
+political and territorial plight embodied all the worst vices of the old
+balance of power stigmatized by President Wilson: the mutilation of the
+country; the forcible separation of sections of its population from each
+other; the distribution of these lopped, ethnic fragments among alien
+states and dynasties; the control of her waterways handed over to
+commercial rivals; the transformation of cities and districts that were
+obviously destined to figure among her sources of national well-being
+and centers of culture into dead towns that paralyze her effort and
+hinder her progress. In a word, Belgium had had no political existence
+for her own behoof. She was not an organic unit in the sodality of
+nations, but a mere cog in the mechanism of European equilibrium.
+
+Ruined by the war, Belgium was sorely tried by the Peace Conference. She
+complained of two open wounds which poisoned her existence, stunted her
+economic growth, and rendered her self-defense an impossibility: the
+vast gap of Limburg on the east and the blocking of the Scheldt on the
+west. The great national _réduit_, Antwerp, cut off from the sea,
+inaccessible to succor in case of war, on the one side, and Limburg
+opening to Germany's armies the road through central Belgium, on the
+other--these were the two standing dangers which it was hoped would be
+removed. How dangerous they are events had demonstrated. In October,
+1914, Antwerp fell because Holland had closed the Scheldt and forbidden
+the entrance to warships and transports, and in November, 1918, a German
+army of over seventy thousand men eluded pursuit by the Allies by
+passing through Dutch Limburg, carrying with them vast war materials and
+booty. Militarily Belgium is exposed to mortal perils so long as the
+treaties which ordained this preposterous division of territories are
+maintained in vigor.
+
+Economically, too, the consequences, especially of the status of the
+Scheldt, are admittedly baleful. To Holland the river is practically
+useless--indeed, the only advantage it could confer would be the power
+of impeding the growth and prosperity of Antwerp for the benefit of its
+rival, Rotterdam. All that the Belgians desired there was the complete
+control of their national river, with the right of carrying out the
+works necessary to keep it navigable. A like demand was put forward for
+the canal of Terneuzen, which links the city of Ghent with the Scheldt;
+and the suppression of the checks and hindrances to Belgium's free
+communications with her hinterland--_i.e._, the basins of the Meuse and
+the Rhine. Prom every point of view, including that of international
+law, the claims made were at once modest and grounded. But the Supreme
+Council had no time to devote to such subsidiary matters, and, like more
+momentous issues, they were adjourned.
+
+The Belgian delegation did not ask that Holland's territory should be
+curtailed. On the contrary, they would have welcomed its increase by the
+addition of territory inhabited by people of her own idiom, under
+German sway.[137] But the Dutch demurred, as Denmark had done in the
+matter of the third Schleswig zone, for fear of offending Germany. And
+the Supreme Council acquiesced in the refusal. Again, when issues were
+under discussion that turned upon the Rhine country and affected Belgian
+interests, her delegates were never consulted. They were systematically
+ignored by the Conference. When the capital of the League of Nations was
+to be chosen, their hopes that Brussels would be deemed worthy of the
+honor were blasted by President Wilson himself. One of the American
+delegates informed a foreign colleague "that the capital of the League
+must be situate in a tranquil country, must have a steady, settled
+population and a really good climate." "A good climate?" asked a
+continental statesman. "Then why not choose Monte Carlo?"
+
+But the decision in favor of Geneva was sent by courier from Switzerland
+ready made to President Wilson. The chief grounds which lent color to
+the belief that religious bias played a larger part in the Conference's
+decisions than was apparent were the following: It was from Geneva that
+the spirit of religious and political liberty first went forth to be
+incarnated among the various nations of the world. It is to John Calvin,
+rather than to Martin Luther, that the birth of the Scotch Covenanters
+and of English Puritanism is traceable. Hence Geneva is the parent of
+New England. So, too, it was Rousseau--a true child of Calvin--who was
+the author of America's Declaration of Independence. Again, one of the
+first pacifists and advocates of international arbitration was born in
+Geneva. John Knox sat for two years at the feet of Calvin. Consequently
+the Puritan Revolution, the French Revolution, and the American
+Revolution all had their springs in Geneva.
+
+These were the considerations which weighed with President Wilson when
+he refused to fix his choice on Brussels. In vain the Belgians argued
+and pleaded, urging that if the Conference were to vote for London,
+Washington, or Paris, they would receive the announcement with
+respectful acquiescence, but that among the lesser states they conceived
+that their country's claims were the best grounded. To the Americans who
+objected that Switzerland's mountains and lakes, being free from hateful
+war memories, offer more fitting surroundings for the capital of the
+League of Peace than Brussels, where vestiges of the odious struggle
+will long survive, they answered that they could only regret that
+Belgium's resistance to the lawless invaders should be taken to
+disqualify her for the honor.
+
+It is worth while pursuing this matter a step farther. The Federal
+Council in Berne having soon afterward officially recommended[138] the
+nation to enter the League which guarantees it neutrality,[139] an
+illuminating discussion ensued. And it was elicited that as there is an
+obligation imposed on all member-states to execute the decrees of the
+League for the coercion of rebellious fellow-members, it follows that in
+such cases Switzerland, too, would be obliged to take an active part in
+the struggle between the League and the recalcitrant country. From
+military operations, however, Switzerland is dispensed, but it would
+certainly be bound to adopt economic measures of pressure, and to this
+extent abandon its neutrality. Now not only would that attitude be
+construed by the disobedient nation as unfriendly, and the usual
+consequences drawn from it, but as Switzerland is freed from military
+co-operation, it follows that the League could not fix the headquarters
+of its military command in its own capital, Geneva, as that would
+constitute a violation of Swiss neutrality. And, if it did, Switzerland
+would in self-defense be bound to oppose the decision!
+
+The Belgians were discouraged by the disdainful demeanor and grudging
+disposition of the Supreme Council, and irritated by the arbitrariness
+of its decrees and the indefensible way in which it applied principles
+that were propounded as sacred. Before restoring the diminutive cantons
+of Eupen and Malmedy to Belgium, for example, Mr. Wilson insisted on
+ascertaining the will of the population by plebiscite. In itself the
+measure was reasonable, but the position of these little districts was
+substantially on all-fours with Alsace-Lorraine, which was restored to
+France without any such test. In Fiume, also, the will of the
+inhabitants went for nothing, Mr. Wilson refusing to consult them.
+Further, Austria, whose people were known to favor union with Germany,
+was systematically jockeyed into ruinous isolation. "Now what, in the
+light of these conflicting judgments," asked the Belgians, "is the true
+meaning of the principle of self-determination?" The only reply they
+received was that Mr. Wilson was right when he told his
+fellow-countrymen that his principles stood in need of interpretation,
+and that, as he was the sole authorized interpreter, his presence was
+required in Europe.
+
+In money matters, too, the chief plenipotentiaries can hardly be
+acquitted of something akin to niggardliness toward the country which
+had saved theirs from a catastrophe. Down to the month of May, 1921, two
+and a half milliard francs was the maximum sum allotted to Belgium by
+the Supreme Council. And for the work of restoring the devastated
+country, which the Great Powers had spontaneously promised to
+accomplish, it was alleged by experts to be wholly inadequate. Other
+financial grievances were ignored--for a time. Further, it was decided
+that Germany should surrender her African colonies to the Great Powers;
+yet Belgium, who contributed materially to their conquest, was not to be
+associated with them.
+
+Irritated by this illiberality, the Belgian delegation, having consulted
+with M. Renkin, to whose judgment in these matters special weight
+attached, resolved to make a firm stand, and refused to sign the Treaty
+unless at least certain modest financial, economic, and colonial claims,
+which ought to have been settled spontaneously, were accorded under
+pressure. And the Supreme Council, rather than be arraigned before the
+world on the charge of behaving unjustly as well as ungenerously toward
+Belgium, ultimately gave way, leaving, however, an impression behind
+which seemed as indelible as it was profound....
+
+The domination which is now being exercised by the principal Powers over
+the remaining states of the world is fraught with consequences which
+were not foreseen, and have not yet been realized by those who
+established it. Among the least momentous, but none the less real, is
+one to which Belgium is exposed. Hitherto there was a language problem
+in that heroic country which, being an internal controversy, could be
+settled without noteworthy perturbations by the good-will of the
+Walloons and the Flemings. The danger, which one fervently hopes will be
+warded off, consists in the possible transformation of that dispute into
+an international question, in consequence of possible accords of a
+military or economic nature. The subject is too delicate to be handled
+by a foreigner, and the Belgian people are too practical and law-loving
+not to avoid unwary steps that might turn a linguistic problem into a
+racial issue.
+
+The Supreme Council soon came to be looked upon as the prototype of the
+future League, and in that light its action was sharply scrutinized by
+all whom the League concerned. Foremost among these were the
+representatives of the lesser states, or, as they were termed, "states
+with limited interests." This band of patriots had pilgrimaged to Paris
+full of hope for their respective countries, having drunk in avidly the
+unstinted praise and promises which had served as pabulum for their
+attachment to the Allied cause during the war. But their illusions were
+short-lived. At one of their first meetings with the delegates of the
+Great Powers a storm burst which scattered their expectations to the
+winds. When the sky cleared it was discovered that from indispensable
+fellow-workers they had shrunk to dwarfish protégées, mere units of an
+inferior category, who were to be told what to do and would be
+constrained to do it thoroughly if not unmurmuringly.
+
+At the historic sitting of January 26th, the delegates of the lesser
+states protested energetically against the purely decorative part
+assigned to them at a Conference in the decisions of which their peoples
+were so intensely interested. The Canadian Minister, having spoken of
+the "proposal" of the Great Powers, was immediately corrected by M.
+Clemenceau, who brusquely said that it was not a proposal, but a
+decision, which was therefore definitive and final. Thereupon the
+Belgian delegate, M. Hymans, delivered a masterly speech, pleading for
+genuine discussion in order to elucidate matters that so closely
+concerned them all, and he requested the Conference to allow the smaller
+belligerent Allies more than two delegates. Their demand was curtly
+rejected by the French Premier, who informed his hearers that the
+Conference was the creation of the Great Powers, who intended to keep
+the direction of its labors in their own hands. He added significantly
+that the smaller nations' representatives would probably not have been
+invited at all if the special problem of the League of Nations had not
+been mooted. Nor should it be forgotten, he added, that the five Great
+Powers represented no less than twelve million fighting-men.... In
+conclusion, he told them that they had better get on with their work in
+lieu of wasting precious time in speechmaking. These words produced a
+profound and lasting effect, which, however, was hardly the kind
+intended by the French statesman.
+
+"Conferential Tsarism" was the term applied to this magisterial method
+by one of the offended delegates. He said to me on the morrow: "My reply
+to M. Clemenceau was ready, but fear of impairing the prestige of the
+Conference prevented me from uttering it. I could have emphasized the
+need for unanimity in the presence of vigilant enemies, ready to
+introduce a wedge into every fissure of the edifice we are constructing.
+I could have pointed out that, this being an assembly of nations which
+had waged war conjointly, there is no sound reason why its membership
+should be diluted with states which never drew the sword at all. I might
+have asked what has become of the doctrine preached when victory was
+still undecided, that a league of nations must repose upon a free
+consent of all sovereign states. And above all things else I could have
+inquired how it came to pass that the architect-in-chief of the society
+of nations which is to bestow a stable peace on mankind should invoke
+the argument of force, of militarism, against the pacific peoples who
+voluntarily made the supreme sacrifice for the cause of humanity and now
+only ask for a hearing. Twelve million fighting-men is an argument to be
+employed against the Teutons, not against the peace-loving, law-abiding
+peoples of Europe.
+
+"Premier Clemenceau seemed to lay the blame for the waste of time on our
+shoulders, but the truth is that we were never admitted to the
+deliberations until yesterday; although two and one-half months have
+elapsed since the armistice was concluded, and although the progress
+made by these leading statesmen is manifestly limited, he grudged us
+forty-five minutes to give vent to our views and wishes.
+
+"The French Tiger was admirable when crushing the enemies of
+civilization with his twelve million fighting-men; but gestures and
+actions which were appropriate to the battlefield become sources of
+jarring and discord when imported into a concert of peoples."
+
+Much bitterness was generated by those high-handed tactics, whereupon
+certain slight concessions were made in order to placate the offended
+delegates; but, being doled out with a bad grace, they failed of the
+effect intended. Belgium received three delegates instead of two, and
+Jugoslavia three; but Rumania, whose population was estimated at
+fourteen millions, was allowed but two. This inexplicable decision
+caused a fresh wound, which was kept continuously open by friction,
+although it might readily have been avoided. Its consequences may be
+traced in Rumania's singular relations to the Supreme Council before and
+after the fall of Kuhn in Hungary.
+
+But even those drastic methods might be deemed warranted if the policy
+enforced were, in truth, conducive to the welfare of the nations on whom
+it was imposed. But hastily improvised by one or two men, who had no
+claim to superior or even average knowledge of the problems involved,
+and who were constantly falling into egregious and costly errors, it was
+inevitable that their intervention should be resented as arbitrary and
+mischievous by the leaders of the interested nations whose
+acquaintanceship with those questions and with the interdependent issues
+was extensive and precise. This resentment, however, might have been
+not, indeed, neutralized, but somewhat mitigated, if the temper and
+spirit in which the Duumvirate discharged its self-set functions had
+been free from hauteur and softened by modesty. But the magisterial
+wording in which its decisions were couched, the abruptness with which
+they were notified, and the threats that accompanied their imposition
+would have been repellent even were the authors endowed with
+infallibility.
+
+One of the delegates who unbosomed himself to me on the subject soon
+after the Germans had signed the Treaty remarked: "The Big Three are
+superlatively unsympathetic to most of the envoys from the lesser
+belligerent states. And it would be a wonder if it were otherwise, for
+they make no effort to hide their disdain for us. In fact, it is
+downright contempt. They never consult us. When we approach them they
+shove us aside as importunate intruders. They come to decisions unknown
+to us, and carry them out in secrecy, as though we were enemies or
+spies. If we protest or remonstrate, we are imperialists and ungrateful.
+
+"Often we learn only from the newspapers the burdens or the restrictions
+that have been imposed on us."
+
+A couple of days previously M. Clemenceau, in an unofficial reply to a
+question put by the Rumanian delegation, directed them to consult the
+financial terms of the Treaty with Austria, forgetting that the
+delegates of the lesser states had not been allowed to receive or read
+those terms. Although communicated to the Austrians, they were carefully
+concealed from the Rumanians, whom they also concerned. At the same
+time, the Rumanian government was called upon to take and announce a
+decision which presupposed acquaintanceship with those conditions,
+whereupon the Rumanian Premier telegraphed from Bucharest to Paris to
+have them sent. But his _locum tenens_ did not possess a copy and had no
+right to demand one.[140] Incongruities of this character were frequent.
+
+One statesman in Paris, who enjoys a world-wide reputation, dissented
+from those who sided with the lesser states. He looked at their protests
+and tactics from an angle of vision which the unbiased historian,
+however emphatically he may dissent from it, cannot ignore. He said:
+"All the smaller communities are greedy and insatiable. If the chiefs of
+the World Powers had understood their temper and ascertained their
+aspirations in 1914, much that has passed into history since then would
+never have taken place. During the war these miniature countries were
+courted, flattered, and promised the sun and the moon, earth and heaven,
+and all the glories therein. And now that these promises cannot be
+redeemed, they are wroth, and peevishly threaten the great states with
+disobedience and revolt. This, it is true, they could not do if the
+latter had not forfeited their authority and prestige by allowing their
+internal differences, hesitations, contradictions, and repentances to
+become manifest to all. To-day it is common knowledge that the Great
+Powers are amenable to very primitive incentives and deterrents. If in
+the beginning they had been united and said to their minor brethren:
+'These are your frontiers. These your obligations,' the minor brethren
+would have bowed and acquiesced gratefully. In this way the boundary
+problems might have been settled to the satisfaction of all, for each
+new or enlarged state would have been treated as the recipient of a free
+gift from the World Powers. But the plenipotentiaries went about their
+task in a different and unpractical fashion. They began by recognizing
+the new communities, and then they gave them representatives at the
+Conference. This they did on the ground that the League of Nations must
+first be founded, and that all well-behaved belligerents on the Allied
+side have a right to be consulted upon that. And, finally, instead of
+keeping to their program and liquidating the war, they mingled the
+issues of peace with the clauses of the League and debated them
+simultaneously. In these debates they revealed their own internal
+differences, their hesitancy, and the weakness of their will. And the
+lesser states have taken advantage of that. The general results have
+been the postponement of peace, the physical exhaustion of the Central
+Empires, and the spread of Bolshevism."
+
+It should not be forgotten that this mixture of the general and the
+particular of the old order and the new was objected to on other
+grounds. The Italians, for example, urged that it changed the status of
+a large number of their adversaries into that of highly privileged
+Allies. During the war they were enemies, before the peace discussions
+opened they had obtained forgiveness, after which they entered the
+Conference as cherished friends. The Italians had waged their war
+heroically against the Austrians, who inflicted heavy losses on them.
+Who were these Austrians? They were composed of the various
+nationalities which made up the Hapsburg monarchy, and in especial of
+men of Slav speech. These soldiers, with notable exceptions, discharged
+their duty to the Austrian Emperor and state conscientiously, according
+to the terms of their oath. Their disposition toward the Italians was
+not a whit less hostile than was that of the common German man against
+the French and the English. Why, then, argued the Italians, accord them
+privileges over the ally who bore the brunt of the fight against them?
+Why even treat the two as equals? It may be replied that the bulk of the
+people were indifferent and merely carried out orders. Well, the same
+holds good of the average German, yet he is not being spoiled by the
+victorious World Powers. But the Croats and others suddenly became the
+favorite children of the Conference, while the Germans and
+Teuton-Austrians, who in the meanwhile had accepted and fulfilled
+President Wilson's conditions for entry into the fellowship of nations,
+were not only punished heavily--which was perfectly just--but also
+disqualified for admission into the League, which was inconsistent.
+
+The root of all the incoherences complained of lay in the circumstance
+that the chiefs of the Great Powers had no program, no method; Mr.
+Wilson's pristine scheme would have enabled him to treat the gallant
+Serbs and their Croatian brethren as he desired. But he had failed to
+maintain it against opposition. On the other hand, the traditional
+method of the balance of power would have given Italy all that she could
+reasonably ask for, but Mr. Wilson had partially destroyed it. Nothing
+remained then but to have recourse to a _tertium quid_ which profoundly
+dissatisfied both parties and imperiled the peace of the world in days
+to come. And even this makeshift the eminent plenipotentiaries were
+unable to contrive single-handed. Their notion of getting the work done
+was to transfer it to missions, commissions, and sub-commissions, and
+then to take action which, as often as not, ran counter to the
+recommendations of these selected agents. Oddly enough, none of these
+bodies received adequate directions. To take a concrete example: a
+central commission was appointed to deal with the Polish frontier
+problems, a second commission under M. Jules Cambon had to study the
+report on the Polish Delimitation question, but although often
+consulted, it was seldom listened to. Then there was a third commission,
+which also did excellent work to very little purpose. Now all the
+questions which formed the subjects of their inquiries might be
+approached from various sides. There were historical frontiers,
+ethnographical frontiers, political and strategical and linguistic
+frontiers. And this does not exhaust the list. Among all these, then,
+the commissioners had to choose their field of investigation as the
+spirit moved them, without any guidance from the Supreme Council, which
+presumably did not know what it wanted.
+
+As an example of the Council's unmethodical procedure, and of its
+slipshod way of tackling important work, the following brief sketch of a
+discussion which was intended to be decisive and final, but ended in
+mere waste of time, may be worth recording. The topic mooted was
+disarmament. The Anglo-Saxon plenipotentiaries, feeling that they owed
+it to their doctrines and their peoples to ease the military burdens of
+the latter and lessen temptations to acts of violence, favored a measure
+by which armaments should be reduced forthwith. The Italian delegates
+had put forward the thesis, which was finally accepted, that if Austria,
+for instance, was to be forbidden to keep more than a certain number of
+troops under arms, the prohibition should be extended to all the states
+of which Austria had been composed, and that in all these cases the
+ratio between the population and the army should be identical.
+Accordingly, the spokesmen of the various countries interested were
+summoned to take cognizance of the decision and intimate their readiness
+to conform to it.
+
+M. Paderewski listened respectfully to the decree, and then remarked:
+"According to the accounts received from the French military
+authorities, Germany still has three hundred and fifty thousand soldiers
+in Silesia." "No," corrected M. Clemenceau, "only three hundred
+thousand." "I accept the correction," replied the Polish Premier. "The
+difference, however, is of no importance to my contention, which is that
+according to the symptoms reported we Poles may have to fight the
+Germans and to wage the conflict single-handed. As you know, we have
+other military work on hand. I need only mention our strife with the
+Bolsheviki. If we are deprived of effective means of self-defense, on
+the one hand, and told to expect no help from the Allies, on the other
+hand, the consequence will be what every intelligent observer foresees.
+Now three hundred thousand Germans is no trifle to cope with. If we
+confront them with an inadequate force and are beaten, what then?"
+"Undoubtedly," exclaimed M. Clemenceau, "if the Germans were victorious
+in the east of Europe the Allies would have lost the war. And that is a
+perspective not to be faced."
+
+M. Bratiano spoke next. "We too," he said, "have to fight the Bolsheviki
+on more than one front. This struggle is one of life and death to us.
+But it concerns, if only in a lesser degree, all Europe, and we are
+rendering services to the Great Powers by the sacrifices we thus offer
+up. Is it desirable, is it politic, to limit our forces without
+reference to these redoubtable tasks which await them? Is it not
+incumbent on the Powers to allow these states to grow to the dimensions
+required for the discharge of their functions?" "What you advance is
+true enough for the moment," objected M. Clemenceau; "but you forget
+that our limitations are not to be applied at once. We fix a term after
+the expiry of which the strength of the armies will be reduced. We have
+taken all the circumstances into account." "Are you prepared to affirm,"
+queried the Rumanian Minister, "that you can estimate the time with
+sufficient precision to warrant our risking the existence of our country
+on your forecast?" "The danger will have completely disappeared,"
+insisted the French Premier, "by January, 1921." "I am truly glad to
+have this assurance," answered M. Bratiano, "for I doubt not that you
+are quite certain of what you advance, else you would not stake the fate
+of your eastern allies on its correctness. But as we who have not been
+told the grounds on which you base this calculation are asked to
+manifest our faith in it by incurring the heaviest conceivable risks,
+would it be too much to suggest that the Great Powers should show their
+confidence in their own forecast by guaranteeing that if by the
+insurgence of unexpected events they proved to be mistaken and Rumania
+were attacked, they would give us prompt and adequate military
+assistance?" To this appeal there was no affirmative response; whereupon
+M. Bratiano concluded: "The limitation of armaments is highly desirable.
+No people is more eager for it than ours. But it has one limitation
+which must, I venture to think, be respected. So long as you have a
+restive or dubious neighbor, whose military forces are subjected neither
+to limitation nor control, you cannot divest yourself of your own means
+of self-defense. That is our view of the matter."
+
+Months later the same difficulty cropped up anew, this time in a
+concrete form, and was dealt with by the Supreme Council in its
+characteristic manner. Toward the end of August Rumania's doings in
+Hungary and her alleged designs on the Banat alarmed and angered the
+delegates, whose authority was being flouted with impunity; and by way
+of summarily terminating the scandal and preventing unpleasant surprises
+M. Clemenceau proposed that all further consignments of arms to Rumania
+should cease. Thereupon Italy's chief representative, Signor Tittoni,
+offered an amendment. He deprecated, he said, any measure leveled
+specially against Rumania, all the more that there existed already an
+enactment of the old Council of Four limiting the armaments of all the
+lesser states. The Military Council of Versailles, having been charged
+with the study of this matter, had reached the conclusion that the Great
+Powers should not supply any of the governments with war material.
+Signor Tittoni was of the opinion, therefore, that those conclusions
+should now be enforced.
+
+The Council thereupon agreed with the Italian delegate, and passed a
+resolution to supply none of the lesser countries with war material. And
+a few minutes later it passed another resolution authorizing Germany to
+cede part of her munitions and war material to Czechoslovakia and some
+more to General Yudenitch![141]
+
+When the commissions to which all the complex problems had to be
+referred were being first created,[142] the lesser states were allowed
+only five representatives on the Financial and Economic commissions, and
+were bidden to elect them. The nineteen delegates of these States
+protested on the ground that this arrangement would not give them
+sufficient weight in the councils by which their interests would be
+discussed. These malcontents were headed by Senhor Epistacio Pessoa, the
+President-elect of the United States of Brazil. The Polish delegate, M.
+Dmowski, addressing the meeting, suggested that they should not proceed
+to an election, the results of which might stand in no relation to the
+interests which the states represented had in matters of European
+finance, but that they should ask the Great Powers to appoint the
+delegates. To this the President-elect of Brazil demurred, taking the
+ground that it would be undignified for the lesser states to submit to
+have their spokesman nominated by the greater. Thereupon they elected
+five delegates, all of them from South American countries, to deal with
+European finance, leaving the Europeans to choose five from among
+themselves. This would have given ten in all to the communities whose
+interests were described as limited, and was an affront to the Great
+Powers.
+
+This comedy was severely judged and its authors reprimanded by the heads
+of the Conference, who, while quashing the elections, relented to the
+extent of promising that extra delegates might be appointed for the
+lesser nations later on. As a matter of fact, the number of commissions
+was of no real consequence, because on all momentous issues their
+findings, unless they harmonized with the decisions of the chief
+plenipotentiaries, were simply ignored.
+
+The curious attitude of the Supreme Council toward Rumania may be
+contemplated from various angles of vision. But the safest coign of
+vantage from which to look at it is that formed by the facts.
+
+Rumania's grievances were many, and they began at the opening of the
+Conference, when she was refused more than two delegates as against the
+five attributed to each of the Great Powers and three each for Serbia
+and Belgium, whose populations are numerically inferior to hers. Then
+her treaty with Great Britain, France, and Russia, on the strength of
+which she entered the war, was upset by its more powerful signatories as
+soon as the frontier question was mooted at the Conference. Further, the
+existence of the Rumanian delegation was generally ignored by the
+Supreme Council. Thus, when the treaty with Germany was presented to
+Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau, a mere journalist[143] at the Conference
+possessed a complete copy, whereas the Rumanian delegation, headed by
+the Prime Minister Bratiano, had cognizance only of an incomplete
+summary. When the fragmentary treaty was drafted for Austria, the
+Rumanian delegation saw the text only on the evening before the
+presentation, and, noticing inacceptable clauses, formulated
+reservations. These reservations were apparently acquiesced in by the
+members of the Supreme Council. That, at any rate, was the impression of
+MM. Bratiano and Misu. But on the following day, catching a glimpse of
+the draft, they discovered that the obnoxious provisions had been left
+intact. Then they lodged their reserves in writing, but to no purpose.
+One of the obligations imposed on Rumania by the Powers was a promise to
+accept in advance any and every measure that the Supreme Council might
+frame for the protection of minorities in the country, and for further
+restricting the sovereignty of the state in matters connected with the
+transit of Allied goods. And, lastly, the Rumanians complained that the
+action of the Supreme Council was creating a dangerous ferment in the
+Dobrudja, and even in Transylvania, where the Saxon minority, which had
+willingly accepted Rumanian sway, was beginning to agitate against it.
+In Bessarabia the non-Rumanian elements of the population were fiercely
+opposing the Rumanians and invoking the support of the Peace Conference.
+The cardinal fact which, in the judgment of the Rumanians, dominated the
+situation was the _quasi_ ultimatum presented to them in the spring,
+when they were summoned unofficially and privately to grant industrial
+concessions to a pushing body of financiers, or else to abide by the
+consequences, one of which, they were told, would be the loss of
+America's active assistance. They had elected to incur the threatened
+penalty after having carefully weighed the advantages and disadvantages
+of laying the matter before President Wilson himself, and inquiring
+officially whether the action in question was--as they felt sure it must
+be--in contradiction with the President's east European policy. For it
+would be sad to think that abundant petroleum might have washed away
+many of the tribulations which the Rumanians had afterward to endure,
+and that loans accepted on onerous conditions would, as was hinted, have
+softened the hearts of those who had it in their power to render the
+existence of the nation sour or sweet.[144] "Look out," exclaimed a
+Rumanian to me. "You will see that we shall be spurned as Laodiceans,
+or worse, before the Conference is over." Rumania's external situation
+was even more perilous than her domestic plight. Situated between Russia
+and Hungary, she came more and more to resemble the iron between the
+hammer and the anvil. A well-combined move of the two anarchist states
+might have pulverized her. Alive to the danger, her spokesmen in Paris
+were anxious to guard against it, but the only hope they had at the
+moment was centered in the Great Powers, whose delegates at the
+Conference were discharging the functions which the League of Nations
+would be called on to fulfil whenever it became a real institution. And
+their past experience of the Great Powers' mode of action was not
+calculated to command their confidence. It was the Great Powers which,
+for their own behoof and without the slightest consideration for the
+interests of Rumania, had constrained that country to declare war
+against the Central Empires[145] and had made promises of effective
+support in the shape of Russian troops, war material of every kind,
+officers, and heavy artillery. But neither the promises of help nor the
+assurances that Germany's army of invasion would be immobilized were
+redeemed, and so far as one can now judge they ought never to have been
+made. For what actually came to pass--the invasion of the country by
+first-class German armies under Mackensen--might easily have been
+foreseen, and was actually foretold.[146] The entire country was put to
+sack, and everything of value that could be removed was carried off to
+Hungary, Germany, or Austria. The Allies lavished their verbal
+sympathies on the immolated nation, but did little else to succor it,
+and want and misery and disease played havoc with the people.
+
+After the armistice things became worse instead of better. The
+Hungarians were permitted to violate the conditions and keep a powerful
+army out of all proportion to the area which they were destined to
+retain, and as the Allies disposed of no countering force in eastern
+Europe, their commands were scoffed at by the Budapest Cabinet. In the
+spring of 1919 the Bolshevists of Hungary waxed militant and threatened
+the peace of Rumania, whose statesmen respectfully sued for permission
+to occupy certain commanding positions which would have enabled their
+armies to protect the land from invasion. But the Duumviri in Paris
+negatived the request. They fancied that they understood the situation
+better than the people on the spot. Thereupon the Bolshevists, ever
+ready for an opportunity, seized upon the opening afforded them by the
+Supreme Council, attacked the Rumanians, and invaded their territory.
+Nothing abashed, the two Anglo-Saxon statesmen comforted M. Bratiano and
+his colleagues with the expression of their regret and the promise that
+tranquillity would not again be disturbed. The Supreme Council would see
+to that. But this promise, like those that preceded it, was broken.
+
+The Rumanians went so far as to believe that the Supreme Council either
+had Bolshevist leanings or underwent secret influences--perhaps
+unwittingly--the nature of which it was not easy to ascertain. In
+support of these theories they urged that when the Rumanians were on the
+very point of annihilating the Red troops of Kuhn, it was the Supreme
+Council which interposed its authority to save them, and did save them
+effectually, when nothing else could have done it. That Kuhn was on the
+point of collapsing was a matter of common knowledge. A radio-telegram
+flashed from Budapest by one of his lieutenants contained this
+significant avowal: "He [Kuhn] has announced that the Hungarian forces
+are in flight. The troops which occupied a good position at the
+bridgehead of Gomi have abandoned it, carrying with them the men who
+were doing their duty. In Budapest preparations are going forward for
+equipping fifteen workmen's battalions." In other words, the downfall of
+Bolshevism had begun. The Rumanians were on the point of achieving it.
+Their troops on the bank of the river Tisza[147] were preparing to march
+on Budapest. And it was at that critical moment that the world-arbiters
+at the Conference who had anathematized the Bolshevists as the curse of
+civilization interposed their authority and called a halt. If they had
+solid grounds for intervening they were not avowed. M. Clemenceau sent
+for M. Bratiano and vetoed the march in peremptory terms which did scant
+justice to the services rendered and the sacrifices made by the Rumanian
+state. Secret arrangements, it was whispered, had been come to between
+agents of the Powers and Kuhn. At the time nobody quite understood the
+motive of the sudden change of disposition evinced by the Allies toward
+the Magyar Bolshevists. For it was assumed that they still regarded the
+Bolshevist leaders as outlaws. One explanation was that they objected to
+allow the Rumanian army alone to occupy the Hungarian capital. But that
+would not account for their neglect to despatch an Inter-Allied
+contingent to restore order in the city and country. For they remained
+absolutely inactive while Kuhn's supporters were rallying and
+consolidating their scattered and demoralized forces, and they kept the
+Rumanians from balking the Bolshevist work of preparing another attack.
+As one of their French critics[148] remarked, they dealt exclusively in
+negatives--some of them pernicious enough, whereas a positive policy
+was imperatively called for. To reconstruct a nation, not to say a
+ruined world, a series of contradictory vetoes is hardly sufficient. But
+another explanation of their attitude was offered which gained
+widespread acceptance. It will be unfolded presently.
+
+The dispersed Bolshevist army, thus shielded, soon recovered its nerve,
+and, feeling secure on the Rumanian front, where the Allies held the
+invading troops immobilized, attacked the Slovaks and overran their
+country. For Bolshevism is by nature proselytizing. The Prague Cabinet
+was dismayed. The new-born Czechoslovak state was shaken. A catastrophe
+might, as it seemed, ensue at any moment. Rumania's troops were on the
+watch for the signal to resume their march, but it came not. The
+Czechoslovaks were soliciting it prayerfully. But the weak-kneed
+plenipotentiaries in Paris were minded to fight, if at all, with weapons
+taken from a different arsenal. In lieu of ordering the Rumanian troops
+to march on Budapest, they addressed themselves to the Bolshevist
+leader, Kuhn, summoned him to evacuate the Slovak country, and
+volunteered the promise that they would compel the Rumanians to
+withdraw. This amazing line of action was decided on by the secret
+Council of Three without the assent or foreknowledge of the nation to
+whose interests it ran counter and the head of whose government was
+rubbing shoulders with the plenipotentiaries every day. But M.
+Bratiano's existence and that of his fellow-delegate was systematically
+ignored. It is not easy to fathom the motives that inspired this
+supercilious treatment of the spokesman of a nation which was
+sacrificing its sons in the service of the Allies as well as its own.
+Personal antipathy, however real, cannot be assumed without convincing
+grounds to have been the mainspring.
+
+But there was worse than the contemptuous treatment of a colleague who
+was also the chief Minister of a friendly state. If an order was to be
+given to the Rumanian government to recall its forces from the front
+which they occupied, elementary courtesy and political tact as well as
+plain common sense would have suggested its being communicated, in the
+first instance, to the chief of that government--who was then resident
+in Paris--as head of his country's delegation to the Conference. But
+that was not the course taken. The statesmen of the Secret Council had
+recourse to the radio, and, without consulting M. Bratiano, despatched a
+message "to the government in Bucharest" enjoining on it the withdrawal
+of the Rumanian army. For they were minded scrupulously to redeem their
+promise to the Bolshevists. One need not be a diplomatist to realize the
+amazement of "the Rumanian government" on receiving this abrupt behest.
+The feelings of the Premier, when informed of these underhand doings,
+can readily be imagined. And it is no secret that the temper of a large
+section of the Rumanian people was attuned by these petty freaks to
+sentiments which boded no good to the cause for which the Allies
+professed to be working. In September M. Bratiano was reported as having
+stigmatized the policy adopted by the Conference toward Rumania as being
+of a "malicious and dangerous character."[149]
+
+The frontier to which the troops were ordered to withdraw had, as we
+saw, just been assigned to Rumania[150] without the assent of her
+government, and with a degree of secrecy and arbitrariness that gave
+deep offense, not only to her official representatives, but also to
+those parliamentarians and politicians who from genuine attachment or
+for peace' sake were willing to go hand in hand with the Entente. "If
+one may classify the tree by its fruits," exclaimed a Rumanian statesman
+in my hearing, "the great Three are unconscious Bolshevists. They are
+undermining respect for authority, tradition, plain, straightforward
+dealing, and, in the case of Rumania, are behaving as though their
+staple aim were to detach our nation from France and the Entente. And
+this aim is not unattainable. The Rumanian people were heart and soul
+with the French, but the bonds which were strong a short while ago are
+being weakened among an influential section of the people, to the regret
+of all Rumanian patriots."
+
+The answer given by the "Rumanian government in Bucharest" to the
+peremptory order of the Secret Council was a reasoned refusal to comply.
+Rumania, taught by terrible experience, declined to be led once more
+into deadly peril against her own better judgment. Her statesmen, more
+intimately acquainted with the Hungarians than were Mr. Lloyd George,
+Mr. Wilson, and M. Clemenceau, required guaranties which could be
+supplied only by armed forces--Rumanian or Allied. Unless and until
+Hungary received a government chosen by the free will of the people and
+capable of offering guaranties of good conduct, the troops must remain
+where they were. For the line which they occupied at the moment could be
+defended with four divisions, whereas the new one could not be held by
+less than seven or eight. The Council was therefore about to commit
+another fateful mistake, the consequences of which it was certain to
+shift to the shoulders of the pliant people. It was then that Rumania's
+leaders kicked against the pricks.
+
+To return to the dispute between Bucharest and Paris: the Rumanian
+government would have been willing to conform to the desire of the
+Supreme Council and withdraw its troops if the Supreme Council would
+only make good its assurance and guarantee Rumania effectually from
+future attacks by the Hungarians. The proviso was reasonable, and as a
+measure of self-defense imperative. The safeguard asked for was a
+contingent of Allied force. But the two supreme councilors in Paris
+dealt only in counters. All they had to offer to M. Bratiano were verbal
+exhortations before the combat and lip-sympathy after defeat, and these
+the Premier rejected. But here, as in the case of the Poles, the
+representatives of the "Allied and Associated" Powers insisted. They
+were profuse of promises, exhortations, and entreaties before passing to
+threats--of guaranties they said nothing--but the Rumanian Premier,
+turning a deaf ear to cajolery and intimidation, remained inflexible.
+For he was convinced that their advice was often vitiated by gross
+ignorance and not always inspired by disinterestedness, while the orders
+they issued were hardly more than the velleities of well-meaning gropers
+in the dark who lacked the means of executing them.
+
+The eminent plenipotentiaries, thus set at naught by a little state,
+ruminated on the embarrassing situation. In all such cases their
+practice had been to resign themselves to circumstances if they proved
+unable to bend circumstances to their schemes. It was thus that
+President Wilson had behaved when British statesmen declined even to
+hear him on the subject of the freedom of the seas, when M. Clemenceau
+refused to accept a peace that denied the Saar Valley and a pledge of
+military assistance to France, and when Japan insisted on the
+retrocession of Shantung. Toward Italy an attitude of firmness had been
+assumed, because owing to her economic dependence on Britain and the
+United States she could not indulge in the luxury of nonconformity.
+Hence the plenipotentiaries, and in particular Mr. Wilson, asserted
+their will inexorably and were painfully surprised that one of the
+lesser states had the audacity to defy it.
+
+The circumstance that after their triumph over Italy the world's
+trustees were thus publicly flouted by a little state of eastern Europe
+was gall and wormwood to them. It was also a menace to the cause with
+which they were identified. None the less, they accepted the inevitable
+for the moment, pitched their voices in a lower key, and decided to
+approve the Rumanian thesis that Neo-Bolshevism in Hungary must be no
+longer bolstered up,[151] but be squashed vicariously. They accordingly
+invited the representatives of the three little countries on which the
+honor of waging these humanitarian wars in the anarchist east of Europe
+was to be conferred, and sounded them as to their willingness to put
+their soldiers in the field, and how many as to the numbers available.
+M. Bratiano offered eight divisions. The Czechoslovaks did not relish
+the project, but after some delay and fencing around agreed to furnish a
+contingent, whereas the Jugoslavs met the demand with a plain negative,
+which was afterward changed to acquiescence when the Council promised to
+keep the Italians from attacking them. As things turned out, none but
+the Rumanians actually fought the Hungarian Reds. Meanwhile the members
+of the American, British, and Italian missions in Hungary endeavored to
+reach a friendly agreement with the criminal gang in Budapest.
+
+The plan of campaign decided on had Marshal Foch for its author. It was,
+therefore, business-like. He demanded a quarter of a million men,[152]
+to which it was decided that Rumania should contribute 120,000,
+Jugoslavia 50,000, and Czechoslovakia as many as she could conveniently
+afford. But the day before the preparations were to have begun,[153]
+Bela Kuhn flung his troops[154] against the Rumanians with initial
+success, drove them across the Tisza with considerable loss, took up
+commanding positions, and struck dismay into the members of the Supreme
+Council. The Semitic Dictator, with grim humor, explained to the
+crestfallen lawgivers, who were once more at fault, that a wanton breach
+of the peace was alien to his thoughts; that, on the contrary, his
+motive for action deserved high praise--it was to compel the rebellious
+Rumanians to obey the behest of the Conference and withdraw to their
+frontiers. The plenipotentiaries bore this gibe with dignity, and
+decided to have recourse once more to their favorite, and, indeed, only
+method--the despatch of exhortative telegrams. Of more efficacious means
+they were destitute. This time their message, which lacked a definite
+address, was presumably intended for the anti-Bolshevist population of
+Hungary, whom it indirectly urged to overthrow the Kuhn Cabinet and
+receive the promised reward--namely, the privilege of entering into
+formal relations with the Entente and signing the death-warrant of the
+Magyar state. It is not easy to see how this solution alone could have
+enabled the Supreme Council to establish normal conditions and
+tranquillity in the land. But the Duumvirate seemed utterly incapable of
+devising a coherent policy for central or eastern Europe. Even when
+Hungary had a government friendly to the Entente they never obtained any
+advantage from it. They had had no use for Count Karolyi. They had
+allowed things to slip and slide, and permitted--nay, helped--Bolshevism
+to thrive, although they had brand-marked it as a virulent epidemic to
+be drastically stamped out. Temper, education, and training disqualified
+them for seizing opportunity and pressing the levers that stood ready
+to their hand.
+
+In consequence of the vacillation of the two chiefs, who seldom stood
+firm in the face of difficulties, the members of the predatory gang
+which concealed its alien origin under Magyar nationality and its
+criminal propensities[155] under a political mask had been enabled to go
+on playing an odious comedy, to the disgust of sensible people and the
+detriment of the new and enlarged states of Europe. For the cost of the
+Supreme Council's weakness had to be paid in blood and substance, little
+though the two delegates appeared to realize this. The extent to which
+the ruinous process was carried out would be incredible were it not
+established by historic facts and documents.
+
+The permanent agents of the Powers in Hungary,[156] preferring
+conciliation to force, now exhorted the Hungarians to rid themselves of
+Kuhn and promised in return to expel the Rumanians from Hungarian
+territory once more and to have the blockade raised. At the close of
+July some Magyars from Austria met Kuhn at a frontier station[157] and
+strove to persuade him to withdraw quietly into obscurity, but he,
+confiding in the policy of the Allies and his star, scouted the
+suggestion. It was at this juncture that the Rumanians, pushing on to
+Budapest, resolved, come what might, to put an end to the intolerable
+situation and to make a clean job of it once for all. And they
+succeeded.
+
+For Rumania's initial military reverse[158] was the result of a
+surprise attack by some eighty thousand men. But her troops rapidly
+regained their warlike spirit, recrossed the river Tisza, shattered the
+Neo-Bolshevist regime, and reached the environs of Budapest.
+
+By the 1st of August the lawless band that was ruining the country
+relinquished the reins of power, which were taken over at first by a
+Socialist Cabinet of which an influential French press organ wrote: "The
+names of the new ... commissaries of the people tell us nothing, because
+their bearers are unknown. But the endings of their names tell us that
+most of them are, like those of the preceding government, of Jewish
+origin. Never since the inauguration of official communism did Budapest
+better deserve the appellation of Judapest, which was assigned to it by
+the late M. Lueger, chief of the Christian Socialists of Vienna. That is
+an additional trait in common with the Russian Soviets."[159]
+
+The Rumanians presented a stiff ultimatum to the new Hungarian Cabinet.
+They were determined to safeguard their country and its neighbors from a
+repetition of the danger and of the sacrifices it entailed; in other
+words, to dictate the terms of a new armistice. The Powers demurred and
+ordered them to content themselves with the old one concluded by the
+Serbian Voyevod Mishitch and General Henrys in November of the preceding
+year and violated subsequently by the Magyars. But the objections to
+this course were many and unanswerable. In fact they were largely
+identical with the objections which the Supreme Council itself had
+offered to the Polish-Ukrainian armistice. And besides these there were
+others. For example, the Rumanians had had no hand or part in drafting
+the old armistice. Moreover it was clearly inapplicable to the fresh
+campaign which was waged and terminated nine months after it had been
+drawn up. Experience had shown that it was inadequate to guarantee
+public tranquillity, for it had not hindered Magyar attacks on the
+Rumanians and Czechoslovaks. The Rumanians, therefore, now that they had
+worsted their adversaries, were resolved to disarm them and secure a
+real peace. They decided to leave fifteen thousand troops for the
+maintenance of internal order.[160] Rumania's insistence on the delivery
+of live-stock, corn, agricultural machinery, and rolling-stock for
+railways was, it was argued, necessitated by want and justified by
+equity. For it was no more than partial reparation for the immense
+losses wantonly inflicted on the nation by the Magyars and their allies.
+Until then no other amends had been made or even offered. The Austrians,
+Hungarians, and Germans, during their two years' occupation of Rumania,
+had seized and carried off from the latter country two million five
+hundred thousand tons of wheat and hundreds of thousands of head of
+cattle, besides vast quantities of clothing, wool, skins, and raw
+material, while thousands of Rumanian homes were gutted and their
+contents taken away and sold in the Central Empires. Factories were
+stripped of their machinery and the railways of their engines and
+wagons. When Mackensen left there remained in Rumania only fifty
+locomotives out of the twelve hundred which she possessed before the
+war. The material, therefore, that Rumania removed from Hungary during
+the first weeks of the occupation represented but a small part of the
+quantities of which she had been despoiled during the war.
+
+It was further urged that at the beginning the Rumanian delegates would
+have contented themselves with reparation for losses wantonly inflicted
+and for the restitution of the property wrongfully taken from them by
+their enemies, on the lines on which France had obtained this offset.
+They had asked for this, but were informed that their request could not
+be complied with. They were not even permitted to send a representative
+to Germany to point out to the Inter-Allied authorities the objects of
+which their nation had been robbed, as though the plunderers would
+voluntarily give up their ill-gotten stores! It was partly because of
+these restrictions that the Rumanian authorities resolved to take what
+belonged to them without more ado. And they could not, they said, afford
+to wait, because they were expecting an attack by the Russian Bolsheviki
+and it behooved them to have done with one foe before taking on another.
+These explanations irritated in lieu of calming the Supreme Council.
+
+"Possibly," wrote the well-informed _Temps_, "Rumania would have been
+better treated if she had closed with certain proposals of loans on
+crushing terms or complied with certain demands for oil
+concessions."[161] Possibly. But surely problems of justice, equity, and
+right ought never to have been mixed up with commercial and industrial
+interests, whether with the connivance or by the carelessness of the
+holders of a vast trust who needed and should have merited unlimited
+confidence. It is neither easy nor edifying to calculate the harm which
+transactions of this nature, whether completed or merely inchoate, are
+capable of inflicting on the great community for whose moral as well as
+material welfare the Supreme Council was laboring in darkness against so
+many obstacles of its own creation. Is it surprising that the states
+which suffered most from these weaknesses of the potent delegates should
+have resented their misdirection and endeavored to help themselves as
+best they could? It may be blameworthy and anti-social, but it is
+unhappily natural and almost unavoidable. It is sincerely to be
+regretted that the art of stimulating the nations--about which the
+delegates were so solicitous--to enthusiastic readiness to accept the
+Council as the "moral guide of the world" should have been exercised in
+such bungling fashion.
+
+The Supreme Council then feeling impelled to assert its dignity against
+the wilfulness of a small nation decided on ignoring alike the service
+and the disservice rendered by Rumania's action. Accordingly, it
+proceeded without reference to any of the recent events except the
+disappearance of the Bolshevist gang. Four generals were accordingly
+told off to take the conduct of Hungarian affairs into their hands
+despite their ignorance of the actual conditions of the problem.[162]
+They were ordered to disarm the Magyars, to deliver up Hungary's war
+material to the Allies, of whom only the Rumanians and the Czechoslovaks
+had taken the field against the enemy since the conclusion of the
+armistice the year before, and they were also to exercise their
+authority over the Rumanian victors and the Serbs, both of whom occupied
+Hungarian territory. The _Temps_ significantly remarked that the Supreme
+Council, while not wishing to deal with any Hungarian government but one
+qualified to represent the country, "seems particularly eager to see
+resumed the importation of foreign wares into Hungary. Certain persons
+appear to fear that Rumania, by retaking from the Magyars wagons and
+engines, might check the resumption of this traffic."[163]
+
+What it all came to was that the Great Powers, who had left Rumania to
+her fate when she was attacked by the Magyars, intervened the moment the
+assailed nation, helping itself, got the better of its enemy, and then
+they resolved to balk it of the fruits of victory and of the safeguards
+it would fain have created for the future. It was to rely upon the
+Supreme Council once more, to take the broken reed for a solid staff.
+That the Powers had something to urge in support of their interposition
+will not be denied. They rightly set forth that Rumania was not
+Hungary's only creditor. Her neighbors also possessed claims that must
+be satisfied as far as feasible, and equity prompted the pooling of all
+available assets. This plea could not be refuted. But the credit which
+the pleaders ought to have enjoyed in the eyes of the Rumanian nation
+was so completely sapped by their antecedents that no heed was paid to
+their reasoning, suasion, or promises.
+
+Rumania, therefore, in requisitioning Hungarian property was formally in
+the wrong. On the other hand, it should be borne in mind that she, like
+other nations, was exasperated by the high-handed action of the Great
+Powers, who proceeded as though her good-will and loyalty were of no
+consequence to the pacification of eastern Europe.
+
+After due deliberation the Supreme Council agreed upon the wording of a
+conciliatory message, not to the Rumanians, but to the Magyars, to be
+despatched to Lieutenant-Colonel Romanelli. The gist of it was the old
+refrain, "to carry out the terms of the armistice[164] and respect the
+frontiers traced by the Supreme Council[165] and we will protect you
+from the Rumanians, who have no authority from us. We are sending
+forthwith an Inter-Allied military commission[166] to superintend the
+disarmament and see that the Rumanian troops withdraw."
+
+It cannot be denied that the Rumanian conditions were drastic. But it
+should be remembered that the provocation amounted almost to
+justification. And as for the crime of disobedience, it will not be
+gainsaid that a large part of the responsibility fell on the shoulders
+of the lawgivers in Paris, whose decrees, coming oracularly from
+Olympian heights without reference to local or other concrete
+circumstances, inflicted heavy losses in blood and substance on the
+ill-starred people of Rumania. And to make matters worse, Rumania's
+official representatives at the Conference had been not merely ignored,
+but reprimanded like naughty school-children by a harsh dominie and
+occasionally humiliated by men whose only excuse was nervous tenseness
+in consequence of overwork combined with morbid impatience at being
+contradicted in matters which they did not understand. Other states had
+contemplated open rebellion against the big ferrule of the "bosses," and
+more than once the resolution was taken to go on strike unless certain
+concessions were accorded them. Alone the Rumanians executed their
+resolve.
+
+Naturally the destiny-weavers of peoples and nations in Paris were
+dismayed at the prospect and apprehensive lest the Rumanians should end
+the war in their own way. They despatched three notes in quick
+succession to the Bucharest government, one of which reads like a
+peevish indictment hastily drafted before the evidence had been sifted
+or even carefully read. It raked up many of the old accusations that had
+been leveled against the Rumanians, tacked them on to the crime of
+insubordination, and without waiting for an answer--assuming, in fact,
+that there could be no satisfactory answer--summoned them to prove
+publicly by their acts that they accepted and were ready to execute in
+good faith the policy decided upon by the Conference.[167]
+
+That note seemed unnecessarily offensive and acted on the Rumanians as
+a powerful irritant,[168] besides exposing the active members of the
+Supreme Council to scathing criticism. The Rumanians asked their Entente
+friends in private to outline the policy which they were accused of
+countering, and were told in reply that it was beyond the power of the
+most ingenious hair-splitting casuist to define or describe. "As for
+us," wrote one of the stanchest supporters of the Entente in French
+journalism, "who have followed with attention the labors and the
+utterances, written and oral, of the Four, the Five, the Ten, of the
+Supreme and Superior Councils, we have not yet succeeded in discovering
+what was the 'policy decided by the Conference.' We have indeed heard or
+read countless discourses pronounced by the choir-masters. They abound
+in noble thought, in eloquent expositions, in protests, and in promises.
+But of aught that could be termed a policy we have not found a
+trace."[169] This verdict will be indorsed by the historian.
+
+The Rumanians seemed in no hurry to reply to the Council's three notes.
+They were said to be too busy dealing out what they considered rough and
+ready justice to their enemies, and were impatient of the intervention
+of their "friends." They seized rolling-stock, cattle, agricultural
+implements, and other property of the kind that had been stolen from
+their own people and sent the booty home without much ado. Work of this
+kind was certain to be accompanied by excesses and the Conference
+received numerous protests from the aggrieved inhabitants. But on the
+whole Rumania, at any rate during the first few weeks of the occupation,
+had the substantial sympathy of the largest and most influential
+section of the world's press. People declared that they were glad to
+see the haze of self-righteousness and cant at last dispelled by a whiff
+of wholesome egotism. From the outspoken comments of the most widely
+circulating journals in France and Britain the dictators in Paris, who
+were indignant that the counsels of the strong should carry so little
+weight in eastern Europe, could acquaint themselves with the impression
+which their efforts at cosmic legislation were producing among the saner
+elements of mankind.
+
+In almost every language one could read words of encouragement to the
+recalcitrant Rumanians for having boldly burst the irksome bonds in
+which the peoples of the world were being pinioned. "It is our view,"
+wrote one firm adherent of the Entente, "that having proved incapable of
+protecting the Rumanians in their hour of danger, our alliance cannot
+to-day challenge the safeguards which they have won for
+themselves."[170]
+
+"If liberty had her old influence," one read in another popular
+journal,[171] "the Great Powers would not be bringing pressure to bear
+on Rumania with the object of saving Hungary from richly deserved
+punishment." "Instead of nagging the Rumanians," wrote an eminent French
+publicist, "they would do much better to keep the Turks in hand. If the
+Turks in despair, in order to win American sympathies, proclaim
+themselves socialists, syndicalists, or laborists, will President Wilson
+permit them to renovate Armenia and other places after the manner of
+Jinghiz Khan?"[172]
+
+But what may have weighed with the Supreme Council far more than the
+disapproval of publicists were its own impotence, the undignified figure
+it was cutting, and the injury that was being done to the future League
+of Nations by the impunity with which one of the lesser states could
+thus set at naught the decisions of its creators and treat them with
+almost the same disrespect which they themselves had displayed toward
+the Rumanian delegates in Paris. They saw that once their energetic
+representations were ignored by the Bucharest government they were at
+the end of their means of influencing it. To compel obedience by force
+was for the time being out of the question. In these circumstances the
+only issue left them was to make a virtue of necessity and veer round to
+the Rumanian point of view as unobtrusively as might be, so as to tide
+over the transient crisis. And that was the course which they finally
+struck out.
+
+Matters soon came to the culminating point. The members of the Allied
+Military Mission had received full powers to force the commanders of the
+troops of occupation to obey the decisions of the Conference, and when
+they were confronted with M. Diamandi, the ex-Minister to Petrograd,
+they issued their orders in the name of the Supreme Council. "We take
+orders here only from our own government, which is in Bucharest," was
+the answer they received. The Rumanians have a proverb which runs: "Even
+a donkey will not fall twice into the same quicksand," and they may have
+quoted it to General Gorton when refusing to follow the Allies after
+their previous painful experience. Then the mission telegraphed to Paris
+for further instructions.[173] In the meanwhile the Rumanian government
+had sent its answer to the three notes of the Council. And its tenor was
+firm and unyielding. Undeterred by menaces, M. Bratiano maintained that
+he had done the right thing in sending troops to Budapest, imposing
+terms on Hungary and re-establishing order. As a matter of fact he had
+rendered a sterling service to all Europe, including France and
+Britain. For if Kuhn and his confederates had contrived to overrun
+Rumania, the Great Powers would have been morally bound to hasten to the
+assistance of their defeated ally. The press was permitted to announce
+that the Council of Five was preparing to accept the Rumanian position.
+The members of the Allied Military Mission were informed that they were
+not empowered to give orders to the Rumanians, but only to consult and
+negotiate with them, whereby all their tact and consideration were
+earnestly solicited.
+
+But the palliatives devised by the delegates were unavailing to heal the
+breach. After a while the Council, having had no answer to its urgent
+notes, decided to send an ultimatum to Rumania, calling on her to
+restore the rolling-stock which she had seized and to evacuate the
+Hungarian capital. The terms of this document were described as
+harsh.[174] Happily, before it was despatched the Council learned that
+the Rumanian government had never received the communications nor
+seventy others forwarded by wireless during the same period. Once more
+it had taken a decision without acquainting itself of the facts.
+Thereupon a special messenger[175] was sent to Bucharest with a note
+"couched in stern terms," which, however, was "milder in tone" than the
+ultimatum.
+
+To go back for a moment to the elusive question of motive, which was not
+without influence on Rumania's conduct. Were the action and inaction of
+the plenipotentiaries merely the result of a lack of cohesion among
+their ideas? Or was it that they were thinking mainly of the fleeting
+interests of the moment and unwilling to precipitate their conceptions
+of the future in the form of a constructive policy? The historian will
+do well to leave their motives to another tribunal and confine himself
+to facts, which even when carefully sifted are numerous and significant
+enough.
+
+During the progress of the events just sketched there were launched
+certain interesting accounts of what was going on below the surface,
+which had such impartial and well-informed vouchers that the chronicler
+of the Conference cannot pass them over in silence. If true, as they
+appear to be, they warrant the belief that two distinct elements lay at
+the root of the Secret Council's dealings with Rumania. One of them was
+their repugnance to her whole system of government, with its survivals
+of feudalism, anti-Semitism, and conservatism. Associated with this was,
+people alleged, a wish to provoke a radical and, as they thought,
+beneficent change in the entire régime by getting rid of its chiefs.
+This plan had been successfully tried against MM. Orlando and Sonnino in
+Italy. Their solicitude for this latter aim may have been whetted by a
+personal lack of sympathy for the Rumanian delegates, with whom the
+Anglo-Saxon chiefs hardly ever conversed. It was no secret that the
+Rumanian Premier found it exceedingly difficult to obtain an audience of
+his colleague President Wilson, from whom he finally parted almost as
+much a stranger as when he first arrived in Paris.
+
+It may not be amiss to record an instance of the methods of the Supreme
+Council, for by putting himself in the place of the Rumanian Premier the
+reader may the more clearly understand his frame of mind toward that
+body. In June the troops of Moritz (or Bela) Kuhn had inflicted a severe
+defeat on the Czechoslavs. Thereupon the Secret Council of Four or Five,
+whose shortsighted action was answerable for the reverse, decided to
+remonstrate with him. Accordingly they requested him to desist from the
+offensive. Only then did it occur to them that if he was to withdraw
+his armies behind the frontiers, he must be informed where these
+frontiers were. They had already been determined in secret by the three
+great statesmen, who carefully concealed them not merely from an
+inquisitive public, but also from the states concerned. The Rumanian,
+Jugoslav and Czechoslovak delegates were, therefore, as much in the dark
+on the subject as were rank outsiders and enemies. But as soon as
+circumstances forced the hand of all the plenipotentiaries the secret
+had to be confided to them all.[176] The Hungarian Dictator pleaded that
+if his troops had gone out of bounds it was because the frontiers were
+unknown to him. The Czechoslovaks respectfully demurred to one of the
+boundaries along the river Ipol which it was difficult to justify and
+easy to rectify. But the Rumanian delegation, confronted with the map,
+met the decision with a frank protest. For it amounted to the
+abandonment of one of their three vital irreducible claims which they
+were not empowered to renounce. Consequently they felt unable to
+acquiesce in it. But the Supreme Council insisted. The second delegate,
+M. Misu, was in consequence obliged to start at once for Bucharest to
+consult with the King and the Cabinet and consider what action the
+circumstances called for. In the meantime, the entire question, and
+together with it some of the practical consequences involved by the
+tentative solution, remained in suspense.
+
+When certain clauses of the Peace Treaty, which, although they
+materially affected Rumania, had been drafted without the knowledge of
+her plenipotentiaries, were quite ready, the Rumanian Premier was
+summoned to take cognizance of them. Their tenor surprised and irritated
+him. As he felt unable to assent to them, and as the document was to be
+presented to the enemy in a day or two, he deemed it his duty to mention
+his objections at once. But hardly had he begun when M. Clemenceau arose
+and exclaimed, "M. Bratiano, you are here to listen, not to comment."
+Stringent measures may have been considered useful and dictatorial
+methods indispensable in default of reasoning or suasion, but it was
+surely incumbent on those who employed them to choose a form which would
+deprive them of their sting or make them less personally painful.
+
+For whatever one may think of the wisdom of the policy adopted by the
+Supreme Council toward the unprivileged states, it would be difficult to
+justify the manner in which they imposed it. Patience, tact, and suasion
+are indispensable requisites in men who assume the functions of leaders
+and guides, yet know that military force alone is inadequate to shape
+the future after their conception. The delegates could look only to
+moral power for the execution of their far-reaching plans, yet they
+spurned the means of acquiring it. The best construction one can put
+upon their action will represent it as the wrecking of the substance by
+the form. By establishing a situation of force throughout Europe the
+Council created and sanctioned the principle that it must be maintained
+by force.
+
+But the affronted nations did not stop at this mild criticism. They
+assailed the policy itself, cast suspicion on the disinterestedness of
+the motives that inspired it, and contributed thereby to generate an
+atmosphere of distrust in which the frail organism that was shortly to
+be called into being could not thrive. Contemplated through this
+distorting medium, one set of delegates was taunted with aiming at a
+monopoly of imperialism and the other with rank hypocrisy. It is
+superfluous to remark that the idealism and lofty aims of the President
+of the United States were never questioned by the most reckless
+Thersites. The heaviest charges brought against him were weakness of
+will, exaggerated self-esteem, impatience of contradiction, and a naive
+yearning for something concrete to take home with him, in the shape of a
+covenant of peoples.
+
+The reports circulating in the French capital respecting vast commercial
+enterprises about to be inaugurated by English-speaking peoples and
+about proposals that the governments of the countries interested should
+facilitate them, were destructive of the respect due to statesmen whose
+attachment to lofty ideals should have absorbed every other motive in
+their ethico-political activity. Thus it was affirmed by responsible
+politicians that an official representative of an English-speaking
+country gave expression to the view, which he also attributed to his
+government, that henceforth his country should play a much larger part
+in the economic life of eastern Europe than any other nation. This, he
+added, was a conscious aim which would be steadily pursued, and to the
+attainment of which he hoped the politicians and their people would
+contribute. So far this, it may be contended, was perfectly legitimate.
+
+But it was further affirmed, and not by idle quidnuncs, that one of
+Rumania's prominent men had been informed that Rumania could count on
+the good-will and financial assistance of the United States only if her
+Premier gave an assurance that, besides the special privileges to be
+conferred on the Jewish minority in his country, he would also grant
+industrial and commercial concessions to certain Jewish groups and firms
+who reside and do business in the United States. And by way of taking
+time by the forelock one or more of these firms had already despatched
+representatives to Rumania to study and, if possible, earmark the
+resources which they proposed to exploit.
+
+Now, to expand the trade of one's country is a legitimate ambition, and
+to hold that Jewish firms are the best qualified to develop the
+resources of Rumania is a tenable position. But to mix up any commercial
+scheme with the ethical regeneration of Europe is, to put it mildly,
+impolitic. However unimpeachable the motives of the promoter of such a
+project, it is certain to damage both causes which he has at heart. But
+the report does not leave the matter here. It goes on to state that a
+very definite proposal, smacking of an ultimatum, was finally presented,
+which set before the Rumanians two alternatives from which they were to
+choose--either the concessions asked for, which would earn for them the
+financial assistance of the United States, or else no concessions and no
+help.
+
+At a Conference, the object of which was the uplifting of the life of
+nations from the squalor of sordid ambitions backed by brutal force, to
+ideal aims and moral relationship, haggling and chaffering such as this
+seemed wholly out of place. It reminded one of "those that sold oxen and
+sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting" in the temple of
+Jerusalem who were one day driven out with "a scourge of small cords."
+The Rumanians hoped that the hucksters in the latter-day temple of peace
+might be got rid of in a similar way; one of them suggested boldly
+asking President Wilson himself to say what he thought of the policy
+underlying the disconcerting proposal....
+
+The other alleged element of the Supreme Council's attitude needs no
+qualification. The mystery that enwrapped the orders from the Conference
+which suddenly arrested the march of the Rumanian and Allied troops,
+when they were nearing Budapest for the purpose of overthrowing Bela
+Kuhn, never perplexed those who claimed to possess trustworthy
+information about the goings-on between certain enterprising officers
+belonging some to the Allied Army of Occupation and others to the
+Hungarian forces. One of these transactions is alleged to have taken
+place between Kuhn himself, who is naturally a shrewd observer and hard
+bargain-driver, and a certain financial group which for obvious reasons
+remained nameless. The object of the compact was the bestowal on the
+group of concessions in the Banat in return for an undertaking that the
+Bolshevist Dictator would be left in power and subsequently honored by
+an invitation to the Conference. The plenipotentiaries' command
+arresting the march against Kuhn and their conditional promise to summon
+him to the Conference, dovetail with this contract. These undeniable
+coincidences are humiliating. The nexus between them was discovered and
+announced before the stipulations were carried out.
+
+The Banat had been an apple of discord ever since the close of
+hostilities. The country, inhabited chiefly by Rumanians, but with a
+considerable admixture of Magyar and Saxon elements, is one of the
+richest unexploited regions in Europe. Its mines of gold, zinc, lead,
+coal, and iron offer an irresistible temptation to pushing capitalists
+and their governments, who feel further attracted by the credible
+announcement that it also possesses oil in quantities large enough to
+warrant exploitation. It was partly in order to possess herself of these
+abundant resources and create an accomplished fact that Serbia, who also
+founded her claim on higher ground, laid hands on the administration of
+the Banat. But the experiment was disappointing. The Jugoslavs having
+failed to maintain themselves there, the bargain just sketched was
+entered into by officers of the Hungarian and Allied armies. For
+concession-hunters are not fastidious about the nationality or character
+of those who can bestow what they happen to be seeking.
+
+This stroke of jobbery had political consequences. That was inevitable.
+For so long as the Banat remained in Rumania or Serbian hands it could
+not be alienated in favor of any foreign group. Therefore secession from
+both those states was a preliminary condition to economic alienation.
+The task was bravely tackled. An "independent republic" was suddenly
+added to the states of Europe. This amazing creation, which fitted in
+with the Balkanizing craze of the moment, was the work of a few
+wire-pullers in which the easy-going inhabitants had neither hand nor
+part. Indeed, they were hardly aware that the Republic of the Banat had
+been proclaimed. The amateur state-builders were obliging officers of
+the two armies, and behind them were speculators and concession-hunters.
+It was obvious that the new community, as it contained a very small
+population for an independent state, would require a protector. Its
+sponsors, who had foreseen this, provided for it by promising to assign
+the humanitarian rôle of protectress of the Banat Republic to democratic
+France. And French agents were on the spot to approve the arrangement.
+Thus far the story, of which I have given but the merest outline.[177]
+
+In this compromising fashion then Bela Kuhn was left for the time being
+in undisturbed power, and none of his friends had any fear that he would
+be driven out by the Allies so long as he contrived to hit it off with
+the Hungarians. Should these turn away from him, however, the
+cosmopolitan financiers, whose cardinal virtues are suppleness and
+adaptability, would readily work with his successor, whoever he might
+be. The few who knew of this quickening of high ideals with low intrigue
+were shocked by the light-hearted way in which under the ægis of the
+Conference a discreditable pact was made with the "enemy of the human
+race," a grotesque régime foisted on a simple-minded people without
+consideration for the principle of self-determination, and the very
+existence of the Czechoslovak Republic imperiled. Indeed, for a brief
+while it looked as though the Bolshevist forces of the Ukraine and
+Russia would effect a junction with the troops of Bela Kuhn and shatter
+eastern Europe to shreds. To such dangerous extent did the Supreme
+Council indirectly abet the Bolshevist peace-breakers against the
+Rumanians and Czechoslovak allies.
+
+It was at this conjuncture that a Rumanian friend remarked to me: "The
+apprehension which our people expressed to you some months ago when they
+rejected the demand for concessions has been verified by events. Please
+remember that when striking the balance of accounts."
+
+The fact could not be blinked that in the camp of the Allies there was a
+serious schism. The partizans of the Supreme Council accused the
+Bucharest government of secession, and were accused in turn of having
+misled their Rumanian partners, of having planned to exploit them
+economically, of having favored their Bolshevist invaders, and pursued a
+policy of blackmail. The rights and wrongs of this quarrel had best be
+left to another tribunal. What can hardly be gainsaid is that in a
+general way the Rumanians--and not these alone--were implicitly classed
+as people of a secondary category, who stood to gain by every measure
+for their good which the culture-bearers in Paris might devise. These
+inferior nations were all incarnate anachronisms, relics of dark ages
+which had survived into an epoch of democracy and liberty, and it now
+behooved them to readjust themselves to that. Their institutions must be
+modernized, their Old World conceptions abandoned, and their people
+taught to imitate the progressive nations of the West. What the
+populations thought and felt on the subject was irrelevant, they being
+less qualified to judge what was good for them than their
+self-constituted guides and guardians. To the angry voices which their
+spokesmen uplifted no heed need be paid, and passive resistance could be
+overcome by coercion. This modified version of Carlyle's doctrine would
+seem to be at the root of the Supreme Council's action toward the lesser
+nations generally and in especial toward Rumania.
+
+
+POLAND AND THE SUPREME COUNCIL
+
+This frequent misdirection by the Supreme Council, however one may
+explain it, created an electric state of the political atmosphere among
+all nations whose interests were set down or treated as "limited," and
+more than one of them, as we saw, contemplated striking out a policy of
+passive resistance. As a matter of fact some of them timidly adopted it
+more than once, almost always with success and invariably with impunity.
+It was thus that the Czechoslovaks--the most docile of them
+all--disregarding the injunctions of the Conference, took possession of
+contentious territory,[178] and remained in possession of it for several
+months, and that the Jugoslavs occupied a part of the district of
+Klagenfurt and for a long time paid not the slightest heed to the order
+issued by the Supreme Council to evacuate it in favor of the Austrians,
+and that the Poles applied the same tactics to eastern Galicia. The
+story of this last revolt is characteristic alike of the ignorance and
+of the weakness of the Powers which had assumed the functions of
+world-administrators. During the hostilities between the Ruthenians of
+Galicia and the Poles the Council, taunted by the press with the
+numerous wars that were being waged while the world's peace-makers were
+chatting about cosmic politics in the twilight of the Paris conclave,
+issued an imperative order that an armistice must be concluded at once.
+But the Poles appealed to events, which swiftly settled the matter as
+they anticipated. Neither the Supreme Council nor the agents it employed
+had a real grasp of the east European situation, or of the rôle
+deliberately assigned to Poland by its French sponsors--that of
+superseding Russia as a bulwark against Germany in the East--or of the
+local conditions. Their action, as was natural in these circumstances,
+was a sequence of gropings in the dark, of incongruous behests,
+exhortations, and prohibitions which discredited them in the eyes of
+those on whose trust and docility the success of their mission depended.
+
+Consciousness of these disadvantages may have had much to do with the
+rigid secrecy which the delegates maintained before their desultory
+talks ripened into discussions. In the case of Poland, as of Rumania,
+the veil was opaque, and was never voluntarily lifted. One day[179] the
+members of the Polish delegation, eager to get an inkling of what had
+been arranged by the Council of Four about Dantzig, requested M.
+Clemenceau to apprize them at least of the upshot if not of the details.
+The French Premier, who has a quizzing way and a keen sense of humor,
+replied, "On the 26th inst. you will learn the precise terms." But
+Poland's representative insisted and pleaded suasively for a hint of
+what had been settled. The Premier finally consented and said, "Tell the
+General Secretary of the Conference, M. Dutasta, from me, that he may
+make the desired communication to you." The delegate accordingly
+repaired to M. Dutasta, preferred his request, and received this reply:
+"M. Clemenceau may say what he likes. His words do not bind the
+Conference. Before I consider myself released from secrecy I must have
+the consent of all his colleagues as well. If you would kindly bring me
+their express authorization I will communicate the information you
+demand." That closed the incident.
+
+When the Council finally agreed to a solution, the delegates were
+convoked to learn its nature and to make a vow of obedience to its
+decisions. During the first stage of the Conference the representatives
+of the lesser states had sometimes been permitted to put questions and
+present objections. But later on even this privilege was withdrawn. The
+following description of what went on may serve as an illustration of
+the Council's mode of procedure. One day the Polish delegation was
+summoned before the Special Commission to discuss an armistice between
+the Ruthenians of Galicia and the Polish Republic. The late General
+Botha, a shrewd observer, whose valuable experience of political
+affairs, having been confined to a country which had not much in common
+with eastern Europe, could be of little help to him in solving the
+complex problems with which he was confronted, was handicapped from the
+outset. Unacquainted with any languages but English and Dutch, the
+general had to surmount the additional difficulty of carrying on the
+conversation through an interpreter. The form it took was somewhat as
+follows:
+
+"It is the wish of the Supreme Council," the chairman began, "that
+Poland should conclude an armistice with the Ruthenians, and under new
+conditions, the old ones having lost their force.[180] Are you prepared
+to submit your proposals?" "This is a military matter," replied the
+Polish delegate, "and should be dealt with by experts. One of our most
+competent military authorities will arrive shortly in Paris with full
+powers to treat with you on the subject. In the meantime, I agree that
+the old conditions are obsolete and must be changed. I can also mention
+three provisos without which no armistice is possible: (1) The Poles
+must be permitted to get into permanent contact with Rumania. That
+involves their occupation of eastern Galicia. The principal grounds for
+this demand are that our frontier includes that territory and that the
+Rumanians are a law-abiding, pacific people whose interests never clash
+with ours and whose main enemy--Bolshevism--is also ours. (2) The Allies
+shall purge the Ukrainian army of the Bolshevists, German and other
+dangerous elements that now pervade it and render peace impossible. (3)
+The Poles must have control of the oil-fields were it only because these
+are now being treated as military resources and the Germans are
+receiving from Galicia, which contains the only supplies now open to
+them, all the oil they require and are giving the Ruthenians munitions
+in return, thus perpetuating a continuous state of warfare. You can
+realize that we are unwilling to have our oil-fields employed to supply
+our enemies with war material against ourselves." General Botha asked,
+"Would you be satisfied if, instead of occupying all eastern Galicia at
+once in order to get into touch with the Rumanians, the latter were to
+advance to meet you?" "Quite. That would satisfy us as a provisional
+measure." "But now suppose that the Supreme Council rejects your three
+conditions--a probable contingency--- what course do you propose to
+take?" "In that case our action would be swayed by events, one of which
+is the hostility of the Ruthenians, which would necessitate measures of
+self-defense and the use of our army. And that would bring back the
+whole issue to the point where it stands to-day."[181] To the
+suggestions made by the Polish delegate that the question of the
+armistice be referred to Marshal Foch, the answer was returned that the
+Marshal's views carried no authority with the Supreme Council.
+
+General Botha, thereupon adopting an emotional tone, said: "I have one
+last appeal to make to you. It behooves Poland to lift the question from
+its present petty surroundings and set it in the larger frame of world
+issues. What we are aiming at is the overthrow of militarism and the
+cessation of bloodshed. As a civilized nation Poland must surely see eye
+to eye with the Supreme Council how incumbent it is on the Allies to put
+a stop to the misery that warfare has brought down on the world and is
+now inflicting on the populations of Poland and eastern Galicia."
+"Truly," replied the Polish delegate, "and so thoroughly does she
+realize it that it is repugnant to her to be satisfied with a sham
+peace, a mere pause during which a bloodier war may be organized. We
+want a settlement that really connotes peace, and our intimate knowledge
+of the circumstances enables us to distinguish between that and a mere
+truce. That is the ground of our insistence."
+
+"Bear well in mind," insisted the Boer general, "the friendly attitude
+of the great Allies toward your country at a critical period of its
+history. They restored it. They meant and mean to help it to preserve
+its status. It behooves the Poles to show their appreciation of this
+friendship in a practical way by deferring to their wishes. Everything
+they ordain is for your good. Realize that and carry out their schemes."
+"For their help we are and will remain grateful," was the answer, "and
+we will go as far toward meeting their wishes as is feasible without
+actually imperiling their contribution to the restoration of our state.
+But we cannot blink the facts that their views are sometimes mistaken
+and their power to realize them generally imaginary. They have made
+numerous and costly mistakes already, which they now frankly avow. If
+they persisted in their present plan they would be adding another to the
+list. And as to their power to help us positively, it is nil. Their
+initial omission to send a formidable military force to Poland was an
+irreparable blunder, for it left them without an executive in eastern
+Europe, where they now can help none of their protégées against their
+respective enemies. Poles, Rumanians, Jugoslavs are all left to
+themselves. From the Allies they may expect inspiriting telegrams, but
+little else. In fact, the utmost they can do is to issue decrees that
+may or may not be obeyed. Examples are many. They obtained for us by the
+armistice the right of disembarking troops at Dantzig, and we were
+unspeakably grateful to them. But they failed to make the Germans
+respect that right and we had to resign ourselves to abandon it. They
+ordered the Ukrainians to cease their numerous attacks on us and we
+appreciated their thoughtfulness. But the order was disobeyed; we were
+assailed and had no one to look to for help but ourselves. Still we are
+most thankful for all that they could do. But if we concluded the
+armistice which you are pleading for, this is what would happen: we
+should have the Ruthenians arrayed against us on one side and the
+Germans on the other. Now if the Ruthenians have brains, their forces
+will attack us at the same time as those of the Germans do. That is
+sound tactics. But if their strength is only on paper, they will give
+admission to the Bolsheviki. That is the twofold danger which you, in
+the name of the Great Powers, are unwillingly endeavoring to conjure up
+against us. If you admit its reality you cannot blame our reluctance to
+incur it. On the other hand, if you regard the peril as imaginary, you
+will draw the obvious consequences and pledge the word of the Great
+Powers that they will give us military assistance against it should it
+come?"
+
+If clear thinking and straightforward action has counted for anything,
+the matter would have been settled satisfactorily then and there. But
+the Great Powers operated less with argument than with more forcible
+stimuli. Holding the economic and financial resources of the world in
+their hands, they sometimes merely toyed with reasoning and proceeded to
+coerce where they were unable to convince or persuade. One day the chief
+delegate of one of the states "with limited interests" said to me: "The
+unvarnished truth is that we are being coerced. There is no milder term
+to signify this procedure. Thus we are told that unless we indorse the
+decrees of the Powers, whose interests are unlimited like their
+assurance, they will withhold from us the supplies of food, raw
+materials, and money without which our national existence is
+inconceivable. Necessarily we must give way, at any rate for the time
+being." Those words sum up the relations of the lesser to the greater
+Powers.
+
+In the case of Poland the conversation ended thus--General Botha,
+addressing the delegate, said: "If you disregard the injunctions of the
+Big Four, who cannot always lay before you the grounds of their policy,
+you run the risk of being left to your own devices. And you know what
+that means. Think well before you decide!" Just then, as it chanced,
+only a part of General Haller's soldiers in France had been transported
+to their own country,[182] and the Poles were in mortal terror lest the
+work of conveying the remainder should be interrupted. This, then, was
+an implicit appeal to which they could not turn a wholly deaf ear.
+"Well, what is it that the Big Four ask of us?" inquired the delegate.
+"The conclusion of an armistice with the Ruthenians, also that
+Poland--as one of the newly created states--should allow the free
+transit of all the Allied goods through her territory." The delegate
+expressed a wish to be told why this measure should be restricted to the
+newly made states. The answer was because it was in the nature of an
+experiment and should, therefore, not be tried over too large an area.
+"There is also another little undertaking which you are requested to
+give--namely, that you will accept and act upon the future decisions of
+the commission whatever they may be." "Without an inkling of their
+character?" "If you have confidence in us you need have no misgivings as
+to that." In spite of the deterrents the Polish delegation at that
+interview met all these demands with a firm _non possumus_. It upheld
+the three conditions of the armistice, rejected the free transit
+proposal, and demurred to the demand for a promise to bow to all future
+decisions of a fallible commission. "When the Polish dispute with the
+Czechoslovaks was submitted to a commission we were not asked in advance
+to abide by its decision. Why should a new rule be introduced now?"
+argued the Polish delegates. And there the matter rested for a brief
+while.
+
+But the respite lasted only a few days, at the expiry of which an envoy
+called on the members of the Polish delegation and reopened the
+discussion on new lines. He stated that he spoke on behalf of the Big
+Four, of whose views and intentions he was the authorized exponent. And
+doubtless he thought he was. But as a matter of fact the French
+government had no cognizance of his visit or mission or of the
+conversation to which it led. He presented arguments before having
+recourse to deterrents. Poland's situation, he said, called for
+prudence. Her secular enemy was Germany, with whom it would be
+difficult, perhaps impossible, ever to cultivate such terms as would
+conciliate her permanently. All the more reason, therefore, to deserve
+and win the friendship of her other neighbors, in particular of the
+Ruthenians. The Polish plenipotentiary met the argument in the usual
+way, where upon the envoy exclaimed: "Well, to make a long story short,
+I am here to say that the line of action traced out for your country
+emanates from the inflexible will of the Great Powers. To this you must
+bend. If it should lead to hostilities on the part of your neighbors you
+could, of course, rely on the help of your protectors. Will this not
+satisfy you?" "If the protection were real it certainly would. But where
+is it? Has it been vouchsafed at any moment since the armistice? Have
+the Allied governments an executive in eastern Europe? Are they likely
+to order their troops thither to assist any of their protégées? And if
+they issued such an order, would it be obeyed? They cannot protect us,
+as we know to our cost. That is why we are prepared, in our
+interests--also in theirs--to protect ourselves."
+
+This remarkable conversation was terminated by the announcement of the
+penalty of disobedience. "If you persist in refusing the proposals I
+have laid before you, I am to tell you that the Great Powers will
+withdraw their aid from your country and may even feel it to be their
+duty to modify the advantageous status which they had decided to confer
+upon it." To which this answer was returned: "For the assistance we are
+receiving we are and will ever be truly grateful. But in order to
+benefit by it the Polish people must be a living organism and your
+proposals tend to reduce us to a state of suspended vitality. They also
+place us at the mercy of our numerous enemies, the greatest of whom is
+Germany."
+
+But lucid intelligence, backed by unflagging will, was of no avail
+against the threat of famine. The Poles had to give way. M. Paderewski
+pledged his word to Messrs. Lloyd George and Wilson that he would have
+an armistice concluded with the Ruthenians of eastern Galicia, and the
+Duumvirs rightly placed implicit confidence in his word as in his moral
+rectitude. They also felt grateful to him for having facilitated their
+arduous task by accepting the inevitable. To my knowledge President
+Wilson himself addressed a letter to him toward the end of April,
+thanking him cordially for the broad-minded way in which he had
+co-operated with the Supreme Council in its efforts to reconstitute his
+country on a solid basis. Probably no other representative of a state
+"with limited interests" received such high mark of approval.
+
+M. Paderewski left Paris for Warsaw, there to win over the Cabinet. But
+in Poland, where the authorities were face to face with the concrete
+elements of the problem, the Premier found no support. Neither the
+Cabinet nor the Diet nor the head of the state found it possible to
+redeem the promise made in their name. Circumstance was stronger than
+the human will. M. Paderewski resigned. The Ruthenians delivered a
+timely attack on the Poles, who counter-attacked, captured the towns of
+Styra, Tarnopol, Stanislau, and occupied the enemy country right up to
+Rumania, with which they desired to be in permanent contact. Part of the
+Ruthenian army crossed the Czech frontier and was disarmed, the
+remainder melted away, and there remained no enemy with whom to conclude
+an armistice.
+
+For the "Big Four" this turn of events was a humiliation. The Ruthenian
+army, whose interests they had so taken to heart, had suddenly ceased to
+exist, and the future danger which it represented to Poland was seen to
+have been largely imaginary. Their judgment was at fault and their power
+ineffectual. Against M. Paderewski's impotence they blazed with
+indignation. He had given way to their decision and promptly gone to
+Warsaw to see it executed, yet the conditions were such that his words
+were treated as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. The Polish
+Premier, it is true, had tendered his resignation in consequence, but it
+was refused--and even had it been accepted, what was the retirement of a
+Minister as compared with the indignity put upon the world's lawgivers
+who represented power and interests which were alike unlimited? Angry
+telegrams were flashed over the wires from Paris to Warsaw and the
+Polish Premier was summoned to appear in Paris without delay. He duly
+returned, but no new move was made. The die was cast.
+
+A noteworthy event in latter-day Polish history ensued upon that
+military victory over the Ruthenians of eastern Galicia. The
+Ukrainian[183] Minister at Vienna was despatched to request the Poles to
+sign a unilateral treaty with them after the model of that which was
+arranged by the two Anglo-Saxon states in favor of France. The proposal
+was that the Ukraine government would renounce all claims to eastern
+Galicia and place their troops under the supreme command of the Polish
+generalissimus, in return for which the Poles should undertake to
+protect the Ukrainians against all their enemies. This draft agreement,
+while under consideration in Warsaw, was negatived by the Polish
+delegates in Paris, who saw no good reason why their people should bind
+themselves to fight Russia one day for the independence of the Ukraine.
+Another inchoate state which made an offer of alliance to Poland was
+Esthonia, but its advances were declined on similar grounds. It is
+manifest, however, that in the new state system alliances are more in
+vogue than in the old, although they were to have been banished from it.
+
+Throughout all the negotiations that turned upon the future status and
+the territorial frontiers of Poland the British Premier unswervingly
+stood out against the Polish claims, just as the President of the United
+States inflexibly countered those of Italy, and both united to negative
+those of the Rumanians. Whatever one may think of the merits of these
+controversies--and various opinions have been put forward with obvious
+sincerity--there can be but one judgment as to the spirit in which they
+were conducted. It was a dictatorial spirit, which was intolerant not
+merely of opposition, but of enlightened and constructive criticism. To
+the representatives of the countries concerned it seemed made up of
+bitter prejudice and fierce partizanship, imbibed, it was affirmed, from
+those unseen sources whence powerful and, it was thought, noxious
+currents flowed continuously toward the Conference. For none of the
+affronted delegates credited with a knowledge of the subject either Mr.
+Lloyd George, who had never heard of Teschen, or Mr. Wilson, whose
+survey of Corsican politics was said to be so defective. And yet to the
+activity of men engaged like these in settling affairs of unprecedented
+magnitude it would be unfair to apply the ordinary tests of technical
+fastidiousness. Their position as trustees of the world's greatest
+states, even though they lacked political imagination, knowledge, and
+experience, entitled them to the high consideration which they generally
+received. But it could not be expected to dazzle to blindness the eyes
+of superior men--and the delegates of the lesser states, Venizelos,
+Dmowski, and Benes, were undoubtedly superior in most of the attributes
+of statesmanship. Yet they were frequently snubbed and each one made to
+feel that he was the fifth wheel in the chariot of the Conference. No
+sacred fame, says Goethe, requires us to submit to contempt, and they
+winced under it. The Big Three lacked the happy way of doing things
+which goes with diplomatic tact and engaging manners, and the
+consequence was that not only were their arguments mistrusted, but even
+their good faith was, as we saw, momentarily subjected to doubt. "Bitter
+prejudice, furious antipathy" were freely predicated of the two
+Anglo-Saxon statesmen, who were rashly accused of attempting by
+circuitous methods to deprive France of her new Slav ally in eastern
+Europe. Sweeping recriminations of this character deserve notice only as
+indicating the spirit of discord--not to use a stronger term--prevailing
+at a Conference which was professedly endeavoring to knit together the
+peoples of the planet in an organized society of good-fellowship.
+
+The delegates of the lesser states, to whom one should not look for
+impartial judgments, formulated some queer theories to explain the
+Allies' unavowed policy and revealed a frame of mind in no wise
+conducive to the attainment of the ostensible ends of the Conference.
+One delegate said to me: "I have no longer the faintest doubt that the
+firm purpose of the 'Big Two' is the establishment of the hegemony of
+the Anglo-Saxon peoples, which in the fullness of time may be
+transformed into the hegemony of the United States of North America.
+Even France is in some respects their handmaid. Already she is bound to
+them indissolubly. She is admittedly unable to hold her own without
+their protection. She will become more dependent on them as the years
+pass and Germany, having put her house in order, regains her economic
+preponderance on the Continent. This decline is due to the operation of
+a natural law which diplomacy may retard but cannot hinder. Numbers will
+count in the future, and then France's rôle will be reduced. For this
+reason it is her interest that her new allies in eastern Europe should
+be equipped with all the means of growing and keeping strong instead of
+being held in the leading-strings of the overlords. But perhaps this
+tutelage is reckoned one of those means?"
+
+Against Britain in especial the Poles, as we saw, were wroth. They
+complained that whenever they advanced a claim they found her first
+delegate on their path barring their passage, and if Mr. Wilson chanced
+to be with them the British Premier set himself to convert him to his
+way of thinking or voting. Thus it was against Mr. Lloyd George that the
+eastern Galician problem had had to be fought at every stage. At the
+outset the British Premier refused Galicia to Poland categorically and
+purposed making it an entirely separate state under the League of
+Nations. This design, of which he made no secret, inspired the
+insistence with which the armistice with the Ruthenians of Galicia was
+pressed. The Polish delegates, one of them a man of incisive speech,
+left no stone unturned to thwart that part of the English scheme, and
+they finally succeeded. But their opponents contrived to drop a spoonful
+of tar in Poland's pot of honey by ordering a plebiscite to take place
+in eastern Galicia within ten or fifteen years. Then came the question
+of the Galician Constitution. The Poles proposed to confer on the
+Ruthenians a restricted measure of home rule with authority to arrange
+in their own way educational and religious matters, local
+communications, and the means of encouraging industry and agriculture,
+besides giving them a proportionate number of seats in the state
+legislature in Warsaw. But again the British delegates--experienced in
+problems of home rule--expressed their dissatisfaction and insisted on a
+parliament or diet for the Ukraine invested with considerable authority
+over the affairs of the province. The Poles next announced their
+intention to have a governor of eastern Galicia appointed by the
+President of the Polish Republic, with a council to advise him. The
+British again amended the proposal and asked that the governor should be
+responsible to the Galician parliament, but to this the Poles demurred
+emphatically, and finally it was settled that only the members of his
+council should be responsible to the provincial legislature. The Poles
+having suggested that military conscription should be applied to eastern
+Galicia on the same terms as to the rest of Poland, the British once
+more joined issue with them and demanded that no troops whatever should
+be levied in the province. The upshot of this dispute was that after
+much wrangling the British Commission gave way to the Poles, but made it
+a condition that the troops should not be employed outside the province.
+To this the Poles made answer that the massing of so many soldiers on
+the Rumanian frontier might reasonably be objected to by the
+Rumanians--and so the amoebean word-game went on in the subcommission.
+In a word, when dealing with the eastern Galician problem, Mr. Lloyd
+George played the part of an ardent champion of complete home rule.
+
+To sum up, the Conference linked eastern Galicia with Poland, but made
+the bonds extremely tenuous, so that they might be severed at any moment
+without involving profound changes in either country, and by this
+arrangement, which introduced the provisional into the definitive, a
+broad field of operations was allotted to political agitation and revolt
+was encouraged to rear its crest.
+
+The province of Upper Silesia was asked for on grounds which the Poles,
+at any rate, thought convincing. But Mr. Lloyd George, it was said,
+declared them insufficient. The subject was thrashed out one day in June
+when the Polish delegates were summoned before their all-powerful
+colleagues to be told of certain alterations that had been recently
+introduced into the Treaty which concerned them to know. They appeared
+before the Council of Five.[184] President Wilson, addressing the two
+delegates, spoke approximately as follows: "You claim Silesia on the
+ground that its inhabitants are Poles and we have given your demand
+careful consideration. But the Germans tell us that the inhabitants,
+although Polish by race, wish to remain under German rule as heretofore.
+That is a strong objection if founded on fact. At present we are unable
+to answer it. In fact, nobody can answer it with finality but the
+inhabitants themselves. Therefore we must order a plebiscite among
+them." One of the Polish delegates remarked: "If you had put the
+question to the inhabitants fifty years ago they would have expressed
+their wish to remain with the Germans because at that time they were
+profoundly ignorant and their national sentiment was dormant. Now it is
+otherwise. For since then many of them have been educated, and the
+majority are alive to the issue and will therefore declare for Poland.
+And if any section of the territory should still prefer German sway to
+Polish and their district in consequence of your plebiscite becomes
+German, the process of enlightenment which has already made such headway
+will none the less go on, and their children, conscious of their loss,
+will anathematize their fathers for having inflicted it. And then there
+will be trouble."
+
+Mr. Wilson retorted: "You are assuming more than is meet. The frontiers
+which we are tracing are provisional, not final. That is a consideration
+which ought to weigh with you. Besides, the League of Nations will
+intervene to improve what is imperfect." "O League of Nations, what
+blunders are committed in thy name!" the delegate may have muttered to
+himself as he listened to the words meant to comfort him and his
+countrymen.
+
+Much might have been urged against this proffered solace if the
+delegates had been in a captious mood. The League of Nations had as yet
+no existence. If its will, intelligence, and power could indeed be
+reckoned upon with such confidence, how had it come to pass that its
+creators, Britain and the United States, deemed them dubious enough to
+call for a reinforcement in the shape of a formal alliance for the
+protection of France? If this precautionary measure, which shatters the
+whole Wilsonian system, was indispensable to one Ally it was at least
+equally indispensable to another. And in the case of Poland it was more
+urgent than in the case of France, because if Germany were again to
+scheme a war of conquest the probability is infinitesimal that she would
+invade Belgium or move forward on the western front. The line of least
+resistance, which is Poland, would prove incomparably more attractive.
+And then? The absence of Allied troops in eastern Europe was one of the
+principal causes of the wars, tumults, and chaotic confusion that had
+made nervous people tremble for the fate of civilization in the interval
+between the conclusion of the armistice and the ratification of the
+Treaty. In the future the absence of strongly situated Allies there, if
+Germany were to begin a fresh war, would be more fatal still, and the
+Polish state might conceivably disappear before military aid from the
+Allied governments could reach it. Why should the safety of Poland and
+to some extent the security of Europe be made to depend upon what is at
+best a gambler's throw?
+
+But no counter-objections were offered. On the contrary, M. Paderewski
+uttered the soft answer that turneth away wrath. He profoundly regretted
+the decision of the lawgivers, but, recognizing that it was immutable,
+bowed to it in the name of his country. He knew, he said, that the
+delegates were animated by very friendly feelings toward his country and
+he thanked them for their help. M. Paderewski's colleague, the less
+malleable M. Dmowski, is reported to have said: "It is my desire to be
+quite sincere with you, gentlemen. Therefore I venture to submit that
+while you profess to have settled the matter on principle, you have not
+carried out that principle thoroughly. Doubtless by inadvertence. Thus
+there are places inhabited by a large majority of Poles which you have
+allotted to Germany on the ground that they are inhabited by Germans.
+That is inconsistent." At this Mr. Lloyd George jumped up from his place
+and asked: "Can you name any such places?" M. Dmowski gave several
+names. "Point them out to me on the map," insisted the British Premier.
+They were pointed out on the map. Twice President Wilson asked the
+delegate to spell the name Bomst for him.[185] Mr. Lloyd George then
+said: "Well, those are oversights that can be rectified." "Oh yes,"
+added Mr. Wilson, "we will see to that."[186] M. Dmowski also questioned
+the President about the plebiscite, and under whose auspices the voting
+would take place, and was told that there would be an Inter-Allied
+administration to superintend the arrangements and insure perfect
+freedom of voting. "Through what agency will that administration work?
+Is it through the officials?" "Evidently," Mr. Wilson answered. "You are
+doubtless aware that they are Germans?" "Yes. But the administration
+will possess the right to dismiss those who prove unworthy of their
+confidence." "Don't you think," insisted M. Dmowski, "that it would be
+fairer to withdraw one half of the German bureaucrats and give their
+places to Poles?" To which the President replied: "The administration
+will be thoroughly impartial and will adopt all suitable measures to
+render the voting free." There the matter ended.
+
+The two potentates in council, tackling the future status of Lithuania,
+settled it in an offhand and singular fashion which at any rate bespoke
+their good intentions. The principle of self-determination, or what was
+facetiously termed the Balkanization of Europe, was at first applied to
+that territory and a semi-independent state created _in petto_ which was
+to contain eight million inhabitants and be linked with Poland. Certain
+obstacles were soon afterward encountered which had not been foreseen.
+One was that all the Lithuanians number only two millions, or say at the
+most two millions and one hundred thousand. Out of these even the
+Supreme Council could not make eight millions. In Lithuania there are
+two and a half million Poles, one and a half million Jews, and the
+remainder are White Russians.[187] It was recognized that a community
+consisting of such disparate elements, situated where it now is, could
+hardly live and strive as an independent state. The Lithuanian Jews,
+however, were of a different way of thinking, and they opposed the
+Polish claims with a degree of steadfastness and animation which wounded
+Poland's national pride and left rankling sores behind.
+
+It is worth noting that the representatives of Russia, who are supposed
+to clutch convulsively at all the states which once formed part of the
+Tsardom, displayed a degree of political detachment in respect of
+Lithuania which came as a pleasant surprise to many. The Russian
+Ambassador in Paris, M. Maklakoff, in a remarkable address before a
+learned assembly[188] in the French capital, announced that Russia was
+henceforward disinterested in the status of Lithuania.
+
+That the Poles were minded to deal very liberally with the Lithuanians
+became evident during the Conference. General Pilsudski, on his own
+initiative, visited Vilna and issued a proclamation to the Lithuanians
+announcing that elections would be held, and asking them to make known
+their desires, which would be realized by the Warsaw government. One of
+the many curious documents of the Conference is an official missive
+signed by the General Secretary, M. Dutasta, and addressed to the first
+Polish delegate, exhorting him to induce his government to come to terms
+with the Lithuanian government, as behooves two neighboring states.
+Unluckily for the soundness of that counsel there was no recognized
+Lithuanian state or Lithuanian government to come to terms with.
+
+As has been often enough pointed out, the actions and utterances of the
+two world-menders were so infelicitous as to lend color to the
+belief--shared by the representatives of a number of humiliated
+nations--that greed of new markets was at the bottom of what purported
+to be a policy of pure humanitarianism. Some of the delegates were
+currently supposed to be the unwitting instruments of elusive
+capitalistic influences. Possibly they would have been astonished were
+they told this: Great Britain was suspected of working for complete
+control of the Baltic and its seaboard in order to oust the Germans from
+the markets of that territory and to have potent levers for action in
+Poland, Germany, and Russia. The achievement of that end would mean
+command of the Baltic, which had theretofore been a German lake.[189] It
+would also entail, it was said, the separation of Dantzig from Poland,
+and the attraction of the Finns, Esthonians, Letts, and Lithuanians from
+Germany's orbit into that of Great Britain. In vain the friends of the
+delegates declared that economic interests were not the mainspring of
+their deliberate action and that nothing was further from their
+intention than to angle for a mandate for those countries. The
+conviction was deep-rooted in the minds of many that each of the Great
+Powers was playing for its own hand. That there was some apparent
+foundation for this assumption cannot, as we saw, be gainsaid. Widely
+and unfavorably commented was the circumstance that in the heat of those
+discussions at the Conference a man of confidence of the Allies put this
+significant and impolitic question to one of the plenipotentiaries: "How
+would you take it if England were to receive a mandate for Lithuania?"
+
+"The Great Powers," observed the most outspoken of the delegates of the
+lesser states, "are bandits, but as their operations are on a large
+scale they are entitled to another and more courteous name. Their gaze
+is fascinated by markets, concessions, monopolies. They are now making
+preparations for a great haul. At this politicians cannot affect to be
+scandalized. For it has never been otherwise since men came together in
+ordered communities. But what is irritating and repellent is the perfume
+of altruism and philanthropy which permeates this decomposition. We are
+told that already they are purchasing the wharves of Dantzig, making
+ready for 'big deals' in Libau, Riga, and Reval, founding a bank in
+Klagenfurt and negotiating for oil-wells in Rumania. Although deeply
+immersed in the ethics of politics, they have not lost sight of the
+worldly goods to be picked up and appropriated on the wearisome journey
+toward ideal goals. The atmosphere they have thus renewed is peculiarly
+favorable to the growth of cant, and tends to accelerate the process of
+moral and social dissolution. And the effects of this mephitic air may
+prove more durable than the contribution of its creators to the
+political reorganization of Europe. If we compare the high functions
+which they might have fulfilled in relation to the vast needs and the
+unprecedented tendencies of the new age with those which they have
+unwittingly and deliberately performed as sophists of sentimental
+morality and destroyers of the wheat together with the tares, we shall
+have to deplore one of the rarest opportunities missed beyond retrieve."
+
+In this criticism there is a kernel of truth. The ethico-social currents
+to which the war gave rise had a profoundly moral aspect, and if rightly
+canalized might have fertilized many lands and have led to a new and
+healthy state-system. One indispensable condition, however, was that the
+peoples of the world should themselves be directly interested in the
+process, that they should be consulted and listened to, and helped or
+propelled into new grooves of thought and action. Instead of that the
+delegates contented themselves with giving new names to old institutions
+and tendencies which stood condemned, and with teaching lawless
+disrespect for every check and restraint except such as they chose to
+acknowledge. They were powerful advocates for right and justice,
+democracy and publicity, but their definitions of these abstract nouns
+made plain-speaking people gasp. Self-interest and material power were
+the idols which they set themselves to pull down, but the deities which
+they put in their places wore the same familiar looks as the idols, only
+they were differently colored.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[127] In February, 1919.
+
+[128] The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. Pichon, undertook to
+recognize in principle the independence of Esthonia, provided that
+Esthonia would take over her part of the Russian debt.
+
+[129] In the first version of the Covenant, Article XIX deals with this
+subject. In the revised version it is Article XXI.
+
+[130] Cf. _L'Echo de Paris_, August 19, 1919.
+
+[131] In July, 1919.
+
+[132] _L'Echo de Paris_, August 19, 1919.
+
+[133] The armistice concluded with Hungary was grossly violated by the
+Hungarians and had lost its force. The Rumanians, when occupying the
+country, demanded a new one, and drafted it. The Supreme Council at
+first demurred, and then desisted from dictation. But its attitude
+underwent further changes later.
+
+[134] _The New York Herald_, (Paris ed.), August 20, 1919.
+
+[135] _Ibid._, May 4, 1919.
+
+[136] I discussed Belgium's demands in a series of special articles
+published in _The London Daily Telegraph_ and _The Philadelphia Public
+Ledger_ in the months of January, February, and March, 1919.
+
+[137] In Frisia and Ghelderland.
+
+[138] In August, 1919.
+
+[139] By Article XXI of the Covenant and Article CCCCXXXV of the Treaty.
+
+[140] I was in possession of a complete copy.
+
+[141] Cf. _Corriere della Sera_, August 24, 1919.
+
+[142] In February.
+
+[143] Cf. Chapter, "Censorship and Secrecy." The writer of these pages
+was the journalist.
+
+[144] _Le Temps_, July 8, 1919.
+
+[145] At the close of August, 1916.
+
+[146] I was one of those who at the time maintained that even in the
+Allies' interests Rumania ought not to enter the war at that
+conjuncture, and anticipation of that invasion was one of the reasons I
+adduced.
+
+[147] Also known by the German name of Theiss.
+
+[148] Cf. _Le Temps_, July 28, 1919.
+
+[149] Cf. _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), September 5, 1919.
+
+[150] On June 13, 1919.
+
+[151] On July 11, 1919, some days later, the decision was suspended,
+owing to the opinion of General Bliss, who disagreed with Foch.
+
+[152] On July 17, 1919.
+
+[153] On July 20th.
+
+[154] Estimated at 85,000.
+
+[155] Moritz Kuhn, who altered his name to Bela Kuhn, was a vulgar
+criminal. Expelled from school for larceny, he underwent several terms
+of imprisonment, and is alleged to have pilfered from a fellow-prisoner.
+Even among some thieves there is no honor.
+
+[156] Italy was represented by Lieutenant-Colonel Romanelli, who resided
+in Budapest; Britain, by Col. Sir Thomas Cunningham, who was in Vienna,
+as was also Prince Livio Borghese. Later on the Powers delegated
+generals to be members of a military mission to the Hungarian capital.
+
+[157] At Bruck.
+
+[158] On July 20th.
+
+[159] _Le Journal des Débats_, August 4, 1919.
+
+[160] This is a larger proportion than was left to the Germans by the
+Treaty of Versailles.
+
+[161] _Le Temps_, July 8, 1919.
+
+[162] It was the habitual practice of the Conference to intrust missions
+abroad to generals who knew nothing whatever about the countries to
+which they were sent.
+
+[163] _Le Temps_, August 8, 1919.
+
+[164] Armistice of November 13, 1918, which had become void.
+
+[165] On June 13, 1919.
+
+[166] Composed of four members, one each for Britain, the United States,
+France, and Italy.
+
+[167] On July 20th.
+
+[168] Paris journals ascribed it to Mr. Balfour, although it does not
+bear the hall-mark of a diplomatist.
+
+[169] _Le Journal des Débats_, August 13, 1919.
+
+[170] Pertinax in _L'Echo de Paris_, August 10, 1919.
+
+[171] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), August 10, 1919.
+
+[172] _Le Journal des Débats_, August 13, 1919. Article by Auguste
+Gauvain.
+
+[173] General Gorton is the one who is said to have despatched the
+telegram.
+
+[174] In the beginning of September, 1919.
+
+[175] The French government having prudently refused to furnish an
+envoy, the British chose Sir George Clark.
+
+[176] On June 10, 1919.
+
+[177] The actors in this episode were not all officers and civil
+servants. They included some men in responsible positions.
+
+[178] In Teschen.
+
+[179] On Friday, April 18, 1919.
+
+[180] The Rumanians, on the contrary, had been ordered to keep to the
+old conditions, although they, too, had lost their force.
+
+[181] That is exactly what happened in the end. But the delegates would
+not believe it until it became an accomplished fact.
+
+[182] About twenty-five thousand had already left France.
+
+[183] The Ruthenians, Ukrainians, and Little Russians are racially the
+same people, just as those who speak German in northwestern Germany,
+Dutch in Holland, and Flemish in Belgium are racially close kindred. The
+main distinctions between the members of each branch are political.
+
+[184] The Messrs. Wilson, George, Clemenceau, Barons Makino and Sonnino.
+M. Clemenceau was the nominal chairman, but in reality it was President
+Wilson who conducted the proceedings.
+
+[185] Bomst is a canton in the former Province (Regierungs-besirk) of
+Posen, with about sixty thousand inhabitants.
+
+[186] Minutes of this conversation exist.
+
+[187] An interesting Russian tribe, dwelling chiefly in the provinces of
+Minsk and Grodno (excepting the extreme south), a small part of Suvalki,
+Vilna (excepting the northwest corner), the entire provinces of Vitebsk
+and Moghileff, the west part of Smolensk, and a few districts of
+Tshernigoff.
+
+[188] La Société des Études Politiques. The discourse in question was
+printed and published.
+
+[189] In Germany and Russia the same view was generally taken of the
+motives that actuated the policy of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. The most
+elaborate attempt to demonstrate its correctness was made by Cr. Bunke,
+in _The Dantziger Neueste Nachrichten_, already mentioned in this book.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+POLAND'S OUTLOOK IN THE FUTURE
+
+
+Casting a parting glance at Poland as she looked when emerging from the
+Conference in the leading-strings of the Great Western Powers, after
+having escaped from the Bolshevist dangers that compassed her round, we
+behold her about to begin her national existence as a semi-independent
+nation, beset with enemies domestic and foreign. For it would be an
+abuse of terms to affirm that Poland, or, indeed, any of the lesser
+states, is fully independent in the old sense of the word. The special
+treaty imposed on her by the Great Two obliges her to accord free
+transit to Allied goods and certain privileges to her Jewish and other
+minorities; to accept the supervision and intervention of the League of
+Nations, which the Poles contend means in their case an
+Anglo-Saxon-Jewish association; and, at the outset, at any rate, to
+recognize the French generalissimus as the supreme commander of her
+troops.
+
+Poland's frontiers and general status ought, if the scheme of her French
+protectors had been executed, to have been accommodated to the peculiar
+functions which they destined her to fill in New Europe. France's plan
+was to make of Poland a wall between Germany and Russia. The marked
+tendency of the other two Conference leaders was to transform it into a
+bridge between those two countries. And the outcome of the compromise
+between them has been to construct something which, without being
+either, combines all the disadvantages of both. It is a bridge for
+Germany and a wall for Bolshevist Russia. That is the verdict of a large
+number of Poles. Although the Europe of the future is to be a pacific
+and ethically constituted community, whose members will have their
+disputes and quarrels with one another settled by arbitration courts and
+other conciliatory tribunals, war and efficient preparation for it were
+none the less uppermost in the minds of the circumspect lawgivers. Hence
+the Anglo-Saxon agreement to defend France against unprovoked
+aggression. Hence, too, the solicitude displayed by the French to have
+the Polish state, which is to be their mainstay in eastern Europe,
+equipped with every territorial and other guaranty necessary to qualify
+it for the duties. But what the French government contrived to obtain
+for itself it failed to secure for its new Slav ally. Nay, oddly enough
+it voted with the Anglo-Saxon delegates for keeping all the lesser
+states under the tutelage of the League. The Duumvirs, having made the
+requisite concessions to France, were resolved in Poland's case to avoid
+a further recoil toward the condemned forms of the old system of
+equilibrium. Hence the various plebiscites, home-rule charters,
+subdivisions of territory, and other evidences of a struggle for reform
+along the line of least resistance, as though in the unavoidable future
+conflict between timidly propounded theories and politico-social forces
+the former had any serious chance of surviving. In politics, as in
+coinage, it is the debased metal that ousts the gold from circulation.
+
+Poland's situation is difficult; some people would call it precarious.
+She is surrounded by potential enemies abroad and at home--Germans,
+Russians, Ukrainians, Magyars, and Jews. A considerable number of
+Teutons are incorporated in her republic to-day, and also a large number
+of people of Russian race. Now, Russia and Germany, even if they
+renounce all designs of reconquering the territory which they misruled
+for such a long span of time, may feel tempted one day to recover their
+own kindred, and what they consider to be their own territory. And
+irredentism is one of the worst political plagues for all the three
+parties who usually suffer from it. If then Germany and Russia were to
+combine and attack Poland, the consequences would be serious. That
+democratic Germany would risk such a wild adventure in the near future
+is inconceivable. But history operates with long periods of time, and it
+behooves statesmanship to do likewise.
+
+A Polish statesman would start from the assumption that, as Russia and
+Germany have for the time being ceased to be efficient members of the
+European state-system, a good understanding may be come to with both of
+them, and a close intimacy cultivated with one. Resourcefulness and
+statecraft will be requisite to this consummation. For some Russians are
+still uncompromising, and would fain take back a part of what the
+revolutionary wave swept out of their country's grasp, but circumstance
+bids fair to set free a potent moderating force in the near future.
+Already it is incarnated in statesmen of the new type. In this
+connection it is instructive to pass in review the secret maneuvers by
+which the recognition of Poland's independence was, so to say, extorted
+from a Russian Minister, who was reputed at the time to be a Democrat of
+the Democrats. As some governments have now become champions of
+publicity, I venture to hope that this disclosure will be as helpful to
+those whom it concerns as was the systematic suppression of my articles
+and telegrams during the space of four years.[190]
+
+On the outbreak of the Russian revolution Poland's representatives in
+Britain, who had been ceaselessly working for the restoration of their
+country, approached the British government with a request that the
+opportunity should be utilized at once, and the new democratic Cabinet
+in Petrograd requested to issue a proclamation recognizing the
+independence of Poland. The reasons for this move having been propounded
+in detail, orally and in writing, the Foreign Secretary despatched at
+once a telegram to the Ambassador in the Russian capital, instructing
+him to lay the matter before the Russian Foreign Minister and urge him
+to lose no time in establishing the claim of the Polish provisional
+government to the sympathies of the world, and the redress of its wrongs
+by Russia. Sir George Buchanan called on Professor Milyukoff, then
+Minister of Foreign Affairs and President of the Constitutional
+Democratic party, and propounded to him the views of the British
+government, which agreed with those of France and Italy, and hoped he
+would see his way to profit by the opportunity. The answer was prompt
+and definite, and within forty-eight hours of Mr. Balfour's despatch it
+reached the Foreign Office. The gist of it was that the Minister of
+Foreign Affairs regretted his inability to deal with the problem at that
+conjuncture, owing to its great complexity and various bearings, and
+also because of his apprehension that the Poles would demand the
+incorporation of Russian lands in their reconstituted state. From this
+answer many conclusions might fairly be drawn respecting persons,
+parties, and principles on the surface of revolutionary Russia. But to
+his credit, Mr. Balfour did not accept it as final. He again telegraphed
+to the British Ambassador, instructing him to insist upon the
+recognition of Poland, as the matter was urgent, and to exhort the
+provisional government to give in good time the desired proof of the
+democratic faith that is to save Russia. Sir George Buchanan
+accomplished the task expeditiously. M. Milyukoff gave way, drafted and
+issued the proclamation. Mr. Bonar Law welcomed it in a felicitous
+speech in the House of Commons,[191] and the Entente press lauded to the
+skies the generous spirit of the new Russian government. The Russian
+people and their leaders have traveled far since then, and have rid
+themselves of much useless ballast.
+
+As Slavs the Poles might have been naturally predisposed to live in
+amity with the Russians, were it not for the specter of the past that
+stands between them. But now that Russia is a democracy in fact as well
+as in name, this is much more feasible than it ever was before, and it
+is also indispensable to the Russians. In the first place, it is
+possible that Poland may have consolidated her forces before her mighty
+neighbor has recovered the status corresponding to her numbers and
+resources. If the present estimates are correct, and the frontiers, when
+definitely traced, leave Poland a republic with some thirty-five million
+people, such is her extraordinary birth-rate and the territorial scope
+it has for development, that in the not far distant future her
+population may exceed that of France. Assuming for the sake of argument
+that armies and other national defenses will count in politics as much
+as hitherto, Poland's specific weight will then be considerable. She
+will have become not indeed a world power (to-day there are only two
+such), but a European Great Power whose friendship will be well worth
+acquiring.
+
+In the meanwhile Polish statesmen--the Poles have one in Roman
+Dmowski--may strike up a friendly accord with Russia, abandoning
+definitely and formally all claims to so-called historic Poland,
+disinteresting themselves in all the Baltic problems which concern
+Russia so closely, and envisaging the Ukraine from a point of view that
+harmonizes with hers. And if the two peoples could thus find a common
+basis of friendly association, Poland would have solved at least one of
+her Sphinx questions.
+
+As for the internal development of the nation, it is seemingly hampered
+with as many hindrances as the international. It may be likened to the
+world after creation, bearing marks of the chaos of the eve. The German
+Poles differ considerably from the Austrian, while the Russian Poles are
+differentiated from both. The last-named still show traces of recent
+servitude in their everyday avocations. They lack the push and the
+energy of purpose so necessary nowadays in the struggle for life. The
+Austrian Poles in general are reputed to be likewise easy-going, lax,
+and more brilliant than solid, while their administrative qualities are
+said to be impaired by a leaning toward Oriental methods of transacting
+business. The Polish inhabitants of the provinces hitherto under Germany
+are people of a different temperament. They have assimilated some of the
+best qualities of the Teuton without sacrificing those which are
+inherent in men of their own race. A thorough grasp of detail and a gift
+for organization characterize their conceptions, and precision,
+thoroughness, and conscientiousness are predicated of their methods. If
+it be true that the first reform peremptorily called for in the new
+republic is an administrative purge, it follows that it can be most
+successfully accomplished with the whole-hearted co-operation of the
+German Poles, whose superior education fits them to conform their
+schemes to the most urgent needs of the nation and the epoch.
+
+The next measure will be internal colonization. There are considerable
+tracts of land in what once was Russian Poland, the population of which,
+owing to the havoc of war, is abnormally sparse. Some districts, like
+that of the Pripet marshes, which even at the best of times had but five
+persons to the kilometer, are practically deserts. For the Russian army,
+when retreating before the Germans, drove before it a huge population
+computed at eight millions, who inhabited the territory to the east of
+Brest-Litovsk and northward between Lida and Minsk. Of these eight
+millions many perished on the way. A large percentage of the survivors
+never returned.[192] Roughly speaking, a couple of millions (mostly
+Poles and Jews) went back to their ruined homes. Now the Poles, who are
+one of the most prolific races in Europe, might be encouraged to settle
+on these thinly populated lands, which they could convert into
+ethnographically Polish districts within a relatively short span of
+time. These, however, are merely the ideas of a friendly observer, whose
+opinion cannot lay claim to any weight.
+
+To-day Poland's hope is not, as it has been hitherto, the nobleman, the
+professor, and the publicist, but the peasant. The members of this class
+are the nucleus of the new nation. It is from their midst that Poland's
+future representatives in politics, arts, and science will be drawn.
+Already the peasants are having their sons educated in high-schools and
+universities, of which the republic has a fair number well supplied with
+qualified teachers,[193] and they are resolute adversaries of every
+movement tainted with Bolshevism.
+
+Thus the difficulties and dangers with which new Poland will have to
+contend are redoubtable. But she stands a good chance of overcoming them
+and reaching the goal where lies her one hope of playing a noteworthy
+part in reorganized Europe. The indispensable condition of success is
+that the current of opinion and sentiment in the country shall buoy up
+reforming statesmen. These must not only understand the requirements of
+the new epoch and be alive to the necessity of penetrating public
+opinion, but also possess the courage to place high social aims at the
+head of their life and career. Statesmen of this temper are rare to-day,
+but Poland possesses at least one of them. Her resources warrant the
+conviction which her chiefs firmly entertain that she may in a
+relatively near future acquire the economic leadership of eastern
+Europe, and in population, military strength, and area equal France.
+
+Parenthetically it may be observed that the enthusiasm of the Poles for
+British institutions and for intimate relations with Great Britain has
+perceptibly cooled.
+
+In the limitations to which she is now subjected, her more optimistic
+leaders discern the temporarily unavoidable condition of a beneficent
+process of working forward toward indefinite amelioration. Their
+people's faith, that may one day raise the country above the highest
+summit of its past historical development, if it does not reconcile them
+to the present, may nerve them to the effort which shall realize that
+high consummation in the future.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[190] Most of my articles written during the last half of the war, and
+some during the armistice, were held back on grounds which were
+presumably patriotic. I share with those who were instrumental in
+keeping them from the public the moral portion of the reward which
+consists in the assumption that some high purpose was served by the
+suppression.
+
+[191] On April 26, 1917.
+
+[192] Mainly White Russians.
+
+[193] The Poles have universities in Cracow, Warsaw, Lvoff (Lemberg),
+Liublin, and will shortly open one in Posen. One Polish statesman
+entertains a novel and useful idea which will probably be tested in the
+University of Posen. Noticing that the greater the progress of technical
+knowledge the less is the advance made in the knowledge of men, which is
+perhaps the most pressing need of the new age, this statesman proposes
+to create a new type of university, where there would be two principal
+sections, one for the study of natural sciences and mathematics, and the
+other for the study of men, which would include biology, psychology,
+ethnography, sociology, philology, history, etc.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+ITALY
+
+
+Of all the problems submitted to the Conference, those raised by Italy's
+demands may truly be said to have been among the easiest. Whether placed
+in the light of the Fourteen Points or of the old system of the rights
+of the victors, they would fall into their places almost automatically.
+But the peace criteria were identical with neither of those principles.
+They consisted of several heterogeneous maxims which were invoked
+alternately, Mr. Wilson deciding which was applicable to the particular
+case under discussion. And from his judgment there was no appeal.
+
+It is of the essence of statesmanship to be able to put oneself in the
+place--one might almost say in the skin--of the foreign peoples and
+governments with which one is called upon to deal. But the feat is
+arduous and presupposes a variety of conditions which the President was
+unable to fulfil. His conception of Europe, for example, was much too
+simple. It has been aptly likened to that of the American economist who
+once remarked to the manager of an English railway: "You Britishers are
+handicapped by having to build your railway lines through cities and
+towns. We go to work diligently: we first construct the road and create
+the cities afterward."
+
+And Mr. Wilson happened just then to be in quest of a fulcrum on which
+to rest his idealistic lever. For he had already been driven by
+egotistic governments from several of his commanding positions, and
+people were gibingly asking whether the new political gospel was being
+preached only as a foil for backslidings. Thus he abandoned the freedom
+of the seas ... on which he had taken a determined stand before the
+world. Although he refused the Rhine frontier to France, he had
+reluctantly given way to M. Clemenceau in the matter of the Saar Valley,
+assenting to a monstrous arrangement by which the German inhabitants of
+that region were to be handed over to the French Republic against their
+expressed will, as a set-off for a sum in gold which Germany would
+certainly be unable to pay.[194] He doubtless foresaw that he would also
+yield on the momentous issue of Shantung and the Chino-Japanese secret
+treaty. In a word, some of his more important abstract tenets professed
+in words were being brushed aside when it came to acts, and his position
+was truly unenviable. Naturally, therefore, he seized the first
+favorable occasion to apply them vigorously and unswervingly. This was
+supplied by the dispute between Italy and Jugoslavia, two nations which
+he held, so to say, in the hollow of his hand.
+
+The latter state, still in the making, depended for its frontiers
+entirely on the fiat of the American President backed by the Premiers of
+Britain and France. And of this backing Mr. Wilson was assured. Italy,
+although more powerful militarily than Jugoslavia, was likewise
+economically dependent upon the good-will of the two English-speaking
+communities, who were assured in advance of the support of the French
+Republic. If, therefore, she could not be reasoned or cajoled into
+obeying the injunctions of the Supreme Council, she could easily be made
+malleable by other means. In her case, therefore, Mr. Wilson's ethical
+notions might be fearlessly applied. That this was the idea which
+underlay the President's policy is the obvious inference from the calm,
+unyielding way in which he treated the Italian delegation. In this
+connection it should be borne in mind that there is no more important
+distinction between all former peace settlements and that of the Paris
+Conference than the unavowed but indubitable fact that the latter rests
+upon the hegemony of the English-speaking communities of the world,
+whereas the former were based upon the balance of power. So immense a
+change could not be effected without discreetly throwing out as useless
+ballast some of the highly prized dogmas of the accepted political
+creeds, even at the cost of impairing the solidarity of the Latin races.
+This was effected incidentally. As a matter of fact, the French are not,
+properly speaking, a Latin race, nor has their solidarity with Italy or
+Spain ever been a moving political force in recent times. Italy's
+refusal to fight side by side with her Teuton allies against France and
+her backers may conceivably be the result of racial affinities, but it
+has hardly ever been ascribed to that sentimental source. Sentiment in
+politics is a myth. In any case, M. Clemenceau discerned no pressing
+reason for making painful efforts to perpetuate the Latin union, while
+solicitude for national interests hindered him from making costly
+concessions to it.
+
+Naturally the cardinal innovation of which this was a corollary was
+never invoked as the ground for any of the exceptional measures adopted
+by the Conference. And yet it was the motive for several, for although
+no allusion was made to the hegemony of Anglo-Saxondom, it was ever
+operative in the subconsciousness of the two plenipotentiaries. And in
+view of the omnipotence of these two nations, they temporarily
+sacrificed consistency to tactics, probably without conscientious
+qualms, and certainly without political misgivings. That would seem to
+be a partial explanation of the lengths to which the Conference went in
+the direction of concessions to the Great Powers' imperialist demands.
+France asked to be recognized and treated as the personification of that
+civilization for which the Allied peoples had fought. And for many
+reasons, which it would be superfluous to discuss here, a large part of
+her claim was allowed. This concession was attacked by many as connoting
+a departure from principle, but the deviation was more apparent than
+real, for under all the wrappings of idealistic catchwords lay the
+primeval doctrine of force. The only substantial difference between the
+old system and the new was to be found in the wielders of the force and
+the ends to which they intended to apply it. Force remains the granite
+foundation of the new ordering, as it had been of the old. But its
+employment, it was believed, would be different in the future from what
+it had been in the past. Concentrated in the hands of the
+English-speaking peoples, it would become so formidable a weapon that it
+need never be actually wielded. Possession of overwhelmingly superior
+strength would suffice to enforce obedience to the decrees of its
+possessors, which always will, it is assumed, be inspired by equity. An
+actual trial of strength would be obviated, therefore, at least so long
+as the relative military and economic conditions of the world states
+underwent no sensible change. To this extent the war specter would be
+exorcised and trying abuses abolished.
+
+That those views were expressly formulated and thrown into the clauses
+of a secret program is unlikely. But it seems to be a fact that the
+general outlines of such a policy were conceived and tacitly adhered to.
+These outlines governed the action of the two world-arbiters, not only
+in the dictatorial decrees issued in the name of political idealism and
+its Fourteen Points, which were so bitterly resented as oppressive by
+Italy, Rumania, Jugoslavia, Poland, and Greece, but likewise in those
+other concessions which scandalized the political puritans and gladdened
+the hearts of the French, the Japanese, the Jugoslavs, and the Jews. The
+dictatorial decrees were inspired by the delegates' fundamental aims,
+the concessions by their tactical needs--the former, therefore, were
+meant to be permanent, the latter transient.
+
+All other explanations of the Italian crisis, however well they may fit
+certain of its phases, are, when applied to the pith of the matter,
+beside the mark. Even if it were true, as the dramatist, Sem Benelli,
+wrote, that "President Wilson evidently considers our people as on the
+plane of an African colony, dominated by the will of a few ambitious
+men," that would not account for the tenacious determination with which
+the President held to his slighted theory.
+
+Italy's position in Europe was in many respects peculiar. Men still
+living remember the time when her name was scarcely more than a
+geographical expression which gradually, during the last sixty years,
+came to connote a hard-working, sober, patriotic nation. Only little by
+little did she recover her finest provinces and her capital, and even
+then her unity was not fully achieved. Austria still held many of her
+sons, not only in the Trentino, but also on the other shore of the
+Adriatic. But for thirty years her desire to recover these lost children
+was paralyzed by international conditions. In her own interests, as well
+as in those of peace, she had become the third member of an alliance
+which constrained her to suppress her patriotic feelings and allowed her
+to bend all her energies to the prevention of a European conflict.
+
+When hostilities broke out, the attitude of the Italian government was a
+matter of extreme moment to France and the Entente. Much, perhaps the
+fate of Europe, depended on whether they would remain neutral or throw
+in their lot with the Teutons. They chose the former alternative and
+literally saved the situation. The question of motive is wholly
+irrelevant. Later on they were urged to move a step farther and take an
+active part against their former allies. But a powerful body of opinion
+and sentiment in the country was opposed to military co-operation, on
+the ground that the sum total of the results to be obtained by
+quiescence would exceed the guerdon of victory won by the side of the
+Entente. The correctness of this estimate depended upon many
+incalculable factors, among which was the duration of the struggle. The
+consensus of opinion was that it would be brief, in which case the terms
+dangled before Italy's eyes by the Entente would, it was believed by the
+Cabinet, greatly transcend those which the Central Powers were prepared
+to offer. Anyhow they were accepted and the compact was negotiated,
+signed, and ratified by men whose idealism marred their practical sense,
+and whose policy of sacred egotism, resolute in words and feeble in
+action, merely impaired the good name of the government without bringing
+any corresponding compensation to the country. The world struggle lasted
+much longer than the statesmen had dared to anticipate; Italy's
+obligations were greatly augmented by Russia's defection, she had to
+bear the brunt of all, instead of a part of Austria's forces, whereby
+the sacrifices demanded of her became proportionately heavier.
+Altogether it is fair to say that the difficulties to be overcome and
+the hardships to be endured before the Italian people reached their goal
+were and still are but imperfectly realized by their allies. For the
+obstacles were gigantic, the effort heroic; alone the results shrank to
+disappointing dimensions.
+
+The war over, Italian statesmen confidently believed that those
+supererogatory exertions would be appropriately recognized by the
+Allies. And this expectation quickly crystallized into territorial
+demands. The press which voiced them ruffled the temper of
+Anglo-Saxondom by clamoring for more than it was ever likely to concede,
+and buoyed up their own nation with illusory hopes, the non-fulfilment
+of which was certain to produce national discontent. Curiously enough,
+both the government and the press laid the main stress upon territorial
+expansion, leaving economic advantages almost wholly out of account.
+
+It was at this conjuncture that Mr. Wilson made his appearance and threw
+all the pieces on the political chessboard into weird confusion. "You,"
+he virtually said, "have been fighting for the dismemberment of your
+secular enemy, Austria. Well, she is now dismembered and you have full
+satisfaction. Your frontiers shall be extended at her expense, but not
+at the expense of the new states which have arisen on her ruins. On the
+contrary, their rights will circumscribe your claims and limit your
+territorial aggrandizement. Not only can you not have all the additional
+territory you covet, but I must refuse to allot even what has been
+guaranteed to you by your secret treaty. I refuse to recognize that
+because the United States government was no party to it, was, in fact,
+wholly unaware of it until recently. New circumstances have transformed
+it into a mere scrap of paper."
+
+This language was not understood by the Italian people. For them the
+sacredness of treaties was a dogma not to be questioned, and least of
+all by the champion of right, justice, and good faith. They had welcomed
+the new order preached by the American statesman, but were unable to
+reconcile it with the tearing up of existing conventions, the
+repudiation of legal rights, the dissolution of alliances. In particular
+their treaty with France, Britain, and Russia had contributed
+materially to the victory over the common enemy, had in fact saved the
+Allies. "It was Italy's intervention," said the chief of the Austrian
+General Staff, Conrad von Hoetzendorff, "that brought about the
+disaster. Without that the Central Empires would infallibly have won the
+war."[195] And there is no reason to doubt his assertion. In truth Italy
+had done all she had promised to the Allies, and more. She had
+contributed materially to save France--wholly gratuitously. It was also
+her neutrality, which she could have bartered, but did not,[196] that
+turned the scale at Bucharest against the military intervention of
+Rumania on the side of the Teutons.[197] And without the neutrality of
+both these countries at the outset of hostilities the course of the
+struggle and of European history would have been widely different from
+what they have been. And now that the Allies had achieved their aim they
+were to refuse to perform their part of the compact in the name, too, of
+a moral principle from the operation of which three great Powers were
+dispensed. That was the light in which the matter appeared to the
+unsophisticated mind of the average Italian, and not to him alone.
+Others accustomed to abstract reasoning asked whether the best
+preparation for the future régime of right and justice, and all that
+these imply, is to transgress existing rights and violate ordinary
+justice, and what difference there is between the demoralizing influence
+of this procedure and that of professional Bolshevists. There was but
+one adequate answer to this objection, and it consisted in the
+whole-hearted and rigid application of the Wilsonian tenets to all
+nations without exception. But even the author of these tenets did not
+venture to make it.
+
+The essence of the territorial question lay in the disposal of the
+eastern shore of the Adriatic.[198] The Jugoslavs claimed all Istria and
+Dalmatia, and based their claim partly on the principle of nationalities
+and partly on the vital necessity of having outlets on that sea, and in
+particular Fiume, the most important of them all, which they described
+as essentially Croatian and indispensable as a port. The Italian
+delegates, joining issue with the Jugoslavs, and claiming a section of
+the seaboard and Fiume, argued that the greatest part of the East
+Adriatic shore would still remain Croatian, together with all the ports
+of the Croatian coast and others in southern Dalmatia--in a word, twelve
+ports, including Spalato and Ragusa, and a thousand kilometers of
+seaboard. The Jugoslavs met this assertion with the objection that the
+outlets in question were inaccessible, all except Fiume and Metkovitch.
+As for Fiume,[199] the Italian delegates contended that although not
+promised to Italy by the Treaty of London, it was historically hers,
+because, having been for centuries an autonomous entity and having as
+such religiously preserved its Italian character, its inhabitants had
+exercised their rights to manifest by plebiscite their desire to be
+united with the mother country. They further denied that it was
+indispensable to the Jugoslavs because these would receive a dozen other
+ports and also because the traffic between Croatia and Fiume was
+represented by only 7 per cent. of the whole, and even that of Croatia,
+Slavonia, and Dalmatia combined by only 13 per cent. Further, Italy
+would undertake to give all requisite export facilities in Fiume to the
+Jugoslavs.
+
+The latter traversed many of these statements, and in particular that
+which described Fiume as a separate autonomous entity and as an
+essentially Italian city. Archives were ransacked by both parties,
+ancient documents produced, analyzed, condemned as forgeries or appealed
+to as authentic proofs, chance phrases were culled from various writers
+of bygone days and offered as evidence in support of each contention.
+Thus the contest grew heated. It was further inflamed by the attitude of
+Italy's allies, who appeared to her as either covertly unfriendly or at
+best lukewarm.
+
+M. Clemenceau, who maintained during the peace negotiations the epithet
+"Tiger" which he had earned long before, was alleged to have said in the
+course of one of those conversations which were misnamed private, "For
+Italy to demand Fiume is to ask for the moon."[200] Officially he took
+the side of Mr. Wilson, as did also the British Premier, and Italy's two
+allies signified but a cold assent to those other claims which were
+covered by their own treaty. But they made no secret of their desire to
+see that instrument wholly set aside. Fiume they would not bestow on
+their ally, at least not unless she was prepared to offer an equivalent
+to the Jugoslavs and to satisfy the President of the United States.
+
+This advocacy of the claims of the Jugoslavs was bitterly resented by
+the Italians. For centuries the two peoples had been rivals or enemies,
+and during the war the Jugoslavs fought with fury against the Italians.
+For Italy the arch-enemy had ever been Austria and Austria was largely
+Slav. "Austria," they say, "was the official name given to the cruel
+enemy against whom we fought, but it was generally the Croatians and
+other Slavs whom our gallant soldiers found facing them, and it was they
+who were guilty of the misdeeds from which our armies suffered."
+Official documents prove this.[201] Orders of the day issued by the
+Austrian Command eulogize "the Serbo-Croatian battalions who vied with
+the Austro-German and Hungarian soldiers in resisting the pitfalls dug
+by the enemy to cause them to swerve from their fidelity and take the
+road to treason.[202] In the last battle which ended the existence of
+the Austro-Hungarian monarchy a large contingent of excellent Croatian
+troops fought resolutely against the Italian armies."
+
+In Italy an impressive story is told which shows how this transformation
+of the enemy of yesterday into the ally of to-day sometimes worked out.
+The son of an Italian citizen who was fighting as an aviator was killed
+toward the end of the war, in a duel fought in the air, by an Austrian
+combatant. Soon after the armistice was signed the sorrowing father
+repaired to the place where his son had fallen. He there found an
+ex-Austrian officer, the lucky victor and slayer of his son, wearing in
+his buttonhole the Jugoslav _cocarde_, who, advancing toward him with
+extended hand, uttered the greeting, "You and I are now allies."[203]
+The historian may smile at the naïveté of this anecdote, but the
+statesman will acknowledge that it characterized the relations between
+the inhabitants of the new state and the Italians. One can divine the
+feelings of these when they were exhorted to treat their ex-enemies as
+friends and allies.
+
+"Is it surprising, then," the Italians asked, "that we cannot suddenly
+conceive an ardent affection for the ruthless 'Austrians' of whose
+cruelties we were bitterly complaining a few months back? Is it strange
+that we cannot find it in our hearts to cut off a slice of Italian
+territory and make it over to them as one of the fruits of--our victory
+over them? If Italy had not first adopted neutrality and then joined the
+Allies in the war there would be no Jugoslavia to-day. Are we now to pay
+for our altruism by sacrificing Italian soil and Italian souls to the
+secular enemies of our race?" In a word, the armistice transformed
+Italy's enemy into a friend and ally for whose sake she was summoned to
+abandon some of the fruits of a hard-earned victory and a part of her
+secular aspirations. What, asked the Italian delegates, would France
+answer if she were told that the Prussians whom her matchless armies
+defeated must henceforth be looked upon as friends and endowed with some
+new colonies which would otherwise be hers? The Italian dramatist Sem
+Benelli put the matter tersely: "The collapse of Austria transforms
+itself therefore into a play of words, so much so that our people, who
+are much more precise because they languished under the Austrian yoke
+and the Austrian scourge, never call the Austrians by this name; they
+call them always Croatians, knowing well that the Croatians and the
+Slavs who constituted Austria were our fiercest taskmasters and most
+cruel executioners. It is naïve to think that the ineradicable
+characteristics and tendencies of peoples can be modified by a change of
+name and a new flag."
+
+But there was another way of looking at the matter, and the Allies,
+together with the Jugoslavs, made the most of it. The Slav character of
+the disputed territory was emphasized, the principle of nationality
+invoked, and the danger of incorporating an unfriendly foreign element
+which could not be assimilated was solemnly pointed out. But where
+sentiment actuates, reason is generally impotent. The policy of the
+Italian government, like that of all other governments, was frankly
+nationalistic; whether it was also statesman-like may well be
+questioned--indeed the question has already been answered by some of
+Italy's principal press organs in the negative.[204] They accuse the
+Cabinet of having deliberately let loose popular passions which it
+afterward vainly sought to allay, and the facts which they allege in
+support of the charge have never been denied.
+
+It was certainly to Italy's best interests to strike up a friendly
+agreement with the new state, if that were feasible, and some of the men
+in whose hands her destinies rested, feeling their responsibility, made
+a laudable attempt to come to an understanding. Signor Orlando, whose
+sagacity is equal to his resourcefulness, was one. In London he had
+talked the subject over with the Croatian leader, M. Trumbic, and
+favored the movement toward reconciliation[205] which Baron Sonnino, his
+colleague, as resolutely discouraged. A congress was accordingly held in
+Rome[206] and an accord projected. The reciprocal relations became
+amicable. The Jugoslav committee in the Italian capital congratulated
+Signor Orlando on the victory of the Piave. But owing to various causes,
+especially to Baron Sonnino's opposition, these inchoate sentiments of
+neighborliness quickly lost their warmth and finally vanished. No trace
+of them remained at the Paris Conference, where the delegates of the two
+states did not converse together nor even salute one another.
+
+President Wilson's visit to Rome, where, to use an Italian expression,
+he was welcomed by Delirium, seemed to brighten Italy's outlook on the
+future. Much was afterward made by the President's enemies of the
+subsequent change toward him in the sentiments of the Italian people.
+This is commonly ascribed to his failure to fulfil the expectations
+which his words or attitude aroused or warranted. Nothing could well be
+more misleading. Mr. Wilson's position on the subject of Italy's claims
+never changed, nor did he say or do aught that would justify a doubt as
+to what it was. In Rome he spoke to the Ministers in exactly the same
+terms as in Paris at the Conference. He apprized them in January of what
+he proposed to do in April and he even contemplated issuing a
+declaration of his Italian policy at once. But he was earnestly
+requested by the Ministers to keep his counsel to himself and to make no
+public allusion to it during his sojourn in Italy.[207] It was not his
+fault, therefore, if the Italian people cherished illusory hopes. In
+Paris Signer Orlando had an important encounter with Mr. Wilson,[208]
+who told him plainly that the allotment of the northern frontiers traced
+for Italy by the London Treaty would be confirmed, while that of the
+territory on the eastern Adriatic would be quashed. The division of the
+spoils of Austria there must, he added, be made congruously with a map
+which he handed to the Italian Premier. It was proved on examination to
+be identical with one already published by the _New Europe_.[209] Signor
+Orlando glanced at the map and in courteous phraseology unfolded the
+reasons why he could not entertain the settlement proposed. He added
+that no Italian parliament would ratify it. Thereupon the President
+turned the discussion to politico-ethical lines, pointed out the harm
+which the annexation of an alien and unfriendly element could inflict
+upon Italy, the great advantages which cordial relations with her Slav
+neighbor would confer on her, and the ease with which she might gain the
+markets of the new state. A young and small nation like the Jugoslavs
+would be grateful for an act of generosity and would repay it by lasting
+friendship--a return worth far more than the contentious territories.
+"Ah, you don't know the Jugoslavs, Mr. President," exclaimed Signor
+Orlando. "If Italy were to cede to them Dalmatia, Fiume, and eastern
+Istria they would forthwith lay claim to Trieste and Pola and, after
+Trieste and Pola, to Friuli and Gorizia."
+
+After some further discussion Mr. Wilson said: "Well, I am unable to
+reconcile with my principles the recognition of secret treaties, and as
+the two are incompatible I uphold the principles." "I, too," rejoined
+the Italian Premier, "condemn secret treaties in the future when the new
+principles will have begun to regulate international politics. As for
+those compacts which were concluded during the war they were all secret,
+not excluding those to which the United States was a party." The
+President demurred to this reservation. He conceived and put his case
+briefly as follows: Italy, like her allies, had had it in her power to
+accept the Fourteen Points, reject them, or make reserves. Britain and
+France had taken exception to those clauses which they were determined
+to reject, whereas Italy signified her adhesion to them all. Therefore
+she was bound by the principles underlying them and had forfeited the
+right to invoke a secret treaty. The settlement of the issues turning
+upon Dalmatia, Istria, Fiume, and the islands must consequently be
+taken in hand without reference to the clauses of that instrument.
+Examined on their merits and in the light of the new arrangements,
+Italy's claims could not be upheld. It would be unfair to the Jugoslavs
+who inhabit the whole country to cut them off from their own seaboard.
+Nor would such a measure be helpful to Italy herself, whose interest it
+was to form a homogeneous whole, consolidate her dominions, and prepare
+for the coming economic struggle for national well-being. The principle
+of nationality must, therefore, be allowed full play.
+
+As for Fiume, even if the city were, as alleged, an independent entity
+and desirous of being incorporated in Italy, one would still have to set
+against these facts Jugoslavia's imperative need of an outlet to the
+sea. Here the principle of economic necessity outweighs those of
+nationality and free determination. A country must live, and therefore
+be endowed with the wherewithal to support life. On these grounds,
+judgment should be entered for the Jugoslavs.
+
+The Italian Premier's answer was equally clear, but he could not
+unburden his mind of it all. His government had, it was true, adhered to
+the Fourteen Points without reservation. But the assumptions on which it
+gave this undertaking were that it would not be used to upset past
+compacts, but would be reserved for future settlements; that even had it
+been otherwise the maxims in question should be deemed relevant in
+Italy's case only if applied impartially to all states, and that the
+entire work of reorganization should rest on this ethical foundation. A
+régime of exceptions, with privileged and unprivileged nations, would
+obviously render the scheme futile and inacceptable. Yet this was the
+system that was actually being introduced. If secret treaties were to be
+abrogated, then let the convention between Japan and China be also put
+out of court and the dispute between them adjudicated upon its merits.
+If the Fourteen Points are binding, let the freedom of the seas be
+proclaimed. If equal rights are to be conferred upon all states, let the
+Monroe Doctrine be repealed. If disarmament is to become a reality, let
+Britain and America cease to build warships. Suppose for a moment that
+to-morrow Brazil or Chile were to complain of the conduct of the United
+States, the League of Nations, in whose name Mr. Wilson speaks, would be
+hindered by the Monroe Doctrine from intervening, whereas Britain and
+the United States in analogous conditions may intermeddle in the affairs
+of any of the lesser states. When Ireland or Egypt or India uplifts its
+voice against Britain, it is but a voice in the desert which awakens no
+echo. If Fiume were inhabited by American citizens who, with a like
+claim to be considered a separate entity, asked to be allowed to live
+under the Stars and Stripes, what would President Wilson's attitude be
+then? Would he turn a deaf ear to their prayer? Surely not. Why, in the
+case of Italy, does he not do as he would be done by? What it all comes
+to is that the new ordering under the flag of equality is to consist of
+superior and inferior nations, of which the former, who speak English,
+are to possess unlimited power over the latter, to decide what is good
+for them and what is bad, what is licit and what is forbidden. And
+against their fiat there is to be no appeal. In a word, it is to be the
+hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon race.
+
+It is worth noting that Signor Orlando's arguments were all derived from
+the merits of the case, not from the terms or the force of the London
+Treaty. Fiume, he said, had besought Italy to incorporate it, and had
+made this request before the armistice, at a moment when it was risky to
+proclaim attachments to the kingdom.[210] The inhabitants had invoked
+Mr. Wilson's own words: "National aspirations must be respected....
+Self-determination is not a mere phrase." "Peoples and provinces are not
+to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were
+mere chattels and pawns in a game. Every territorial settlement involved
+in this war must be made in the interest and for the benefit of the
+populations concerned, and not as a part of any adjustment for
+compromise of claims among rival states." And in his address at Mount
+Vernon the President had advocated a doctrine which is peculiarly
+applicable to Fiume--_i.e._:
+
+"The settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty,
+of economic arrangement, or of political relationship, upon the basis of
+the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately
+concerned, and not upon the basis of material interest or advantage of
+any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement, for
+the sake of its own exterior influence or mastery."[211] These maxims
+laid down by Mr. Wilson implicitly allot Fiume to Italy.
+
+Finally as to the objection that Italy's claims would entail the
+incorporation of a number of Slavs, the answer was that the percentage
+was negligible as compared with the number of foreign elements annexed
+by other states. The Poles, it was estimated, would have some 30 per
+cent. of aliens, the Czechs not less, Rumania 17 per cent., Jugoslavia
+11 per cent., France 4 per cent., and Italy only 3 per cent.
+
+In February the Jugoslavs made a strategic move, which many admired as
+clever, and others blamed as unwise. They proposed that all differences
+between their country and Italy should be submitted to Mr. Wilson's
+arbitration. Considering that the President's mind was made up on the
+subject from the beginning, and that he had decided against Italy, it
+was natural that the delegation in whose favor his decision was known to
+incline should be eager to get it accepted by their rivals. As neither
+side was ignorant of what the result of the arbitration would be, only
+one of the two could be expected to close with the offer, and the most
+it could hope by doing this was to embarrass the other. The Italian
+answer was ingenious. Their dispute, they said, was not with Serbia, who
+alone was represented at the Conference; it concerned Croatia, who had
+no official standing there, and whose frontiers were not yet determined,
+but would in due time be traced by the Conference, of which Italy was a
+member. The decision would be arrived at after an exhaustive study, and
+its probable consequences to Europe's peace would be duly considered. As
+extreme circumspection was imperative before formulating a verdict, five
+plenipotentiaries would seem better qualified than any one of them, even
+though he were the wisest of the group. To remove the question from the
+competency of the Conference, which was expressly convoked to deal with
+such issues, and submit it to an individual, would be felt as a slight
+on the Supreme Council. And so the matter dropped.
+
+Signor Orlando knew that if he had adopted the suggestion and made Mr.
+Wilson arbiter, Italy's hopes would have been promptly extinguished in
+the name of the Fourteen Points, and her example held up for all the
+lesser states to imitate. The President was, however, convinced that the
+Italian people would have ratified the arrangement with alacrity. It is
+worth recording that he was so sure of his own hold on the Italian
+masses that, when urging Signor Orlando to relinquish his demand for
+Fiume and the Dalmatian coast, he volunteered to provide him with a
+message written by himself to serve as the Premier's justification.
+Signor Orlando was to read out this document in Parliament in order to
+make it clear to the nation that the renunciation had been demanded by
+America, that it would most efficaciously promote Italy's best
+interests, and should for that reason be ratified with alacrity. Signor
+Orlando, however, declined the certificate and things took their course.
+
+In Paris the Italian delegation made little headway. Every one admired,
+esteemed, and felt drawn toward the first delegate, who, left to
+himself, would probably have secured for his country advantageous
+conditions, even though he might be unable to add Fiume to those secured
+by the secret treaty. But he was not left to himself. He had to reckon
+with his Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was as mute as an oyster and
+almost as unsociable. Baron Sonnino had his own policy, which was
+immutable, almost unutterable. At the Conference he seemed unwilling to
+propound, much less to discuss it, even with those foreign colleagues on
+whose co-operation or approval its realization depended. He actually
+shunned delegates who would fain have talked over their common interests
+in a friendly, informal way, and whose business it was to strike up an
+agreement. In fact, results which could be secured only by persuading
+indifferent or hostile people and capturing their good-will he expected
+to attain by holding aloof from all and leading the life of a hermit,
+one might almost say of a misanthrope. One can imagine the feelings, if
+one may not reproduce the utterances, of English-speaking officials,
+whose legitimate desire for a free exchange of views with Italy's
+official spokesman was thwarted by the idiosyncrasies of her own
+Minister of Foreign Affairs. In Allied circles Baron Sonnino was
+distinctly unpopular, and his unpopularity produced a marked effect on
+the cause he had at heart. He was wholly destitute of friends. He had,
+it is true, only two enemies, but they were himself and the foreign
+element who had to work with him. Italy's cause was therefore
+inadequately served.
+
+Several months' trial showed the unwisdom of Baron Sonnino's attitude,
+which tended to defeat his own policy. Italy was paid back by her allies
+in her own coin, aloofness for aloofness. After she had declined the
+Jugoslavs' ingenious proposal to refer their dispute to Mr. Wilson the
+three delegates[212] agreed among themselves to postpone her special
+problems until peace was signed with Germany, but Signor Orlando, having
+got wind of the matter, moved every lever to have them put into the
+forefront of the agenda. He went so far as to say that he would not sign
+the Treaty unless his country's claims were first settled, because that
+document would make the League of Nations--and therefore Italy as a
+member of the League--the guarantor of other nations' territories,
+whereas she herself had no defined territories for others to guarantee.
+She would not undertake to defend the integrity of states which she had
+helped to create while her own frontiers were indefinite. But in the art
+of procrastination the Triumvirate was unsurpassed, and, as the time
+drew near for presenting the Treaty to Germany, neither the Adriatic,
+the colonial, the financial, nor the economic problems on which Italy's
+future depended were settled or even broached. In the meanwhile the
+plenipotentiaries in secret council, of whom four or five were wont to
+deliberate and two to take decisions, had disagreed on the subject of
+Fiume. Mr. Wilson was inexorable in his refusal to hand the city over to
+Italy, and the various compromises devised by ingenious weavers of
+conflicting interests failed to rally the Italian delegates,
+whose inspirer was the taciturn Baron Sonnino. The
+Italian press, by insisting on Fiume as a _sine qua non_ of
+Italy's approval of the Peace Treaty and by announcing
+that it would undoubtedly be accorded, had made it
+practically impossible for the delegates to recede. The
+circumstance that the press was inspired by the government is immaterial
+to the issue. President Wilson, who had been frequently told that a word
+from him to the peoples of Europe would fire their enthusiasm and carry
+them whithersoever he wished, even against their own governments, now
+purposed wielding this unique power against Italy's plenipotentiaries.
+As we saw, he would have done this during his sojourn in Rome, but was
+dissuaded by Baron Sonnino. His intention now was to compel the
+delegates to go home and ascertain whether their inflexible attitude
+corresponded with that of their people and to draw the people into the
+camp of the "idealists." He virtually admitted this during his
+conversation with Signor Orlando. What he seems to have overlooked,
+however, is that there are time limits to every policy, and that only
+the same causes can be set in motion to produce the same results. In
+Italy the President's name had a very different sound in April from the
+clarion-like tones it gave forth in January, and the secret of his
+popularity even then was the prevalent faith in his firm determination
+to bring about a peace of justice, irrespective of all separate
+interests, not merely a peace with indulgence for the strong and rigor
+for the weak. The time when Mr. Wilson might have summoned the peoples
+of Europe to follow him had gone by irrevocably. It is worth noting that
+the American statesman's views about certain of Italy's claims, although
+originally laid down with the usual emphasis as immutable, underwent
+considerable modifications which did not tend to reinforce his
+authority. Thus at the outset he had proclaimed the necessity of
+dividing Istria between the two claimant nations, but, on further
+reflection, he gave way in Italy's favor, thus enabling Signor Orlando
+to make the point that even the President's solutions needed
+corrections. It is also a fact that when the Italian Premier insisted on
+having the Adriatic problems definitely settled before the presentation
+of the Treaty to the Germans[213] his colleagues of France and Britain
+assured him that this reasonable request would be complied with. The
+circumstance that this promise was disregarded did not tend to smooth
+matters in the Council of Five.
+
+The decisive duel between Signor Orlando and Mr. Wilson was fought out
+in April, and the overt acts which subsequently marked their tense
+relations were but the practical consequences of that. On the historic
+day each one set forth his program with a _ne varietur_ attached, and
+the President of the United States gave utterance to an estimate of
+Italian public opinion which astonished and pained the Italian Premier,
+who, having contributed to form it, deemed himself a more competent
+judge of its trend than his distinguished interlocutor. But Mr. Wilson
+not only refused to alter his judgment, but announced his intention to
+act upon it and issue an appeal to the Italian nation. The gist of this
+document was known to M. Clemenceau and Mr. Lloyd George. It has been
+alleged, and seems highly probable, that the British Premier was
+throughout most anxious to bring about a workable compromise. Proposals
+were therefore put forward respecting Fiume and Dalmatia, some of which
+were not inacceptable to the Italians, who lodged counter-proposals
+about the others. On the fate of these counter-proposals everything
+depended.
+
+On April 23d I was at the Hôtel Edouard VII, the headquarters of the
+Italian delegation, discussing the outlook and expecting to learn that
+some agreement had been reached. In an adjoining room the members of the
+delegation were sitting in conference on the burning subject, painfully
+aware that time pressed, that the Damocles's sword of Mr. Wilson's
+declaration hung by a thread over their heads, and that a spirit of
+large compromise was indispensable. At three o'clock Mr. Lloyd George's
+secretary brought the reply of the Council of Three to Italy's maximum
+of concessions. Only one point remained in dispute, I was told, but that
+point hinged upon Fiume, and, by a strange chance, it was not mentioned
+in the reply which the secretary had just handed in. The Italian
+delegation at once telephoned to the British Premier asking him to
+receive the Marquis Imperiali, who, calling shortly afterward, learned
+that Fiume was to be a free city and exempt from control. It was when
+the marquis had just returned that I took leave of my hosts and received
+the assurance that I should be informed of the result. About half an
+hour later, on receipt of an urgent message, I hastened back to the
+Italian headquarters, where consternation prevailed, and I learned that
+hardly had the delegates begun to discuss the contentious clause when a
+copy of the _Temps_ was brought in, containing Mr. Wilson's appeal to
+the Italian people "over the heads of the Italian government."
+
+The publication fell like a powerful explosive. The public were at a
+loss to fit in Mr. Wilson's unprecedented action with that of his
+British and French colleagues. For if in the morning he sent his appeal
+to the newspapers, it was asked, why did he allow his Italian colleagues
+to go on examining a proposal on which he manifestly assumed that they
+were no longer competent to treat? Moreover a rational desire to settle
+Italy's Adriatic frontiers, it was observed, ought not to have lessened
+his concern about the larger issues which his unwonted procedure was
+bound to raise. And one of these was respect for authority, the loss of
+which was the taproot of Bolshevism. Signor Orlando replied to the
+appeal in a trenchant letter which was at bottom a reasoned protest
+against the assumed infallibility of any individual and, in particular,
+of one who had already committed several radical errors of judgment.
+What the Italian Premier failed to note was the consciousness of
+overwhelming power and the will to use it which imparted its specific
+mark to the whole proceeding. Had he realized this element, his
+subsequent tactics would perhaps have run on different lines.
+
+The suddenness with which the President carried out his purpose was
+afterward explained as the outcome of misinformation. In various Italian
+cities, it had been reported to him, posters were appearing on the walls
+announcing that Fiume had been annexed. Moreover, it was added, there
+were excellent grounds for believing that at Rome the Italian Cabinet
+was about to issue a decree incorporating it officially, whereby things
+would become more tangled than ever. Some French journals gave credit to
+these allegations, and it may well be that Mr. Wilson, believing them,
+too, and wanting to be beforehand, took immediate action. This, however,
+is at most an explanation; it hardly justifies the precipitancy with
+which the Italian plenipotentiaries were held up to the world as men who
+were misrepresenting their people. As a matter of fact careful inquiry
+showed that all those reports which are said to have alarmed the
+President were groundless. Mr. Wilson's sources of information
+respecting the countries on which he was sitting in judgment were often
+as little to be depended on as presumably were the decisions of the
+special commissions which he and Mr. Lloyd George so unceremoniously
+brushed aside.
+
+On the following morning Signori Orlando and Sonnino called on the
+British Premier in response to his urgent invitation. To their surprise
+they found Mr. Wilson and M. Clemenceau also awaiting them, ready, as it
+might seem, to begin the discussion anew, curious in any case to observe
+the effect of the declaration. But the Italian Premier burned his boats
+without delay or hesitation. "You have challenged the authority of the
+Italian government," he said, "and appealed to the Italian people. Be it
+so. It is now become my duty to seek out the representatives of my
+people in Parliament and to call upon them to decide between Mr. Wilson
+and me." The President returned the only answer possible, "Undoubtedly
+that is your duty." "I shall inform Parliament then that we have allies
+incapable of agreeing among themselves on matters that concern us
+vitally." Disquieted by the militant tone of the Minister, Mr. Lloyd
+George uttered a suasive appeal for moderation, and expressed the hope
+that in his speech to the Italian Chamber, Signor Orlando would not
+forget to say that a satisfactory solution may yet be found. He would
+surely be incapable of jeopardizing the chances of such a desirable
+consummation. "I will make the people arbiters of the whole situation,"
+the Premier announced, "and in order to enable them to judge with full
+knowledge of the data, I herewith ask your permission to communicate my
+last memorandum to the Council of Four. It embodies the pith of the
+facts which it behooves the Parliament to have before it. In the
+meantime, the Italian government withdraws from the Peace Conference."
+On this the painful meeting terminated and the principal Italian
+plenipotentiaries returned to Rome. In France a section of the press
+sympathized with the Italians, while the government, and in particular
+M. Clemenceau, joined Mr. Wilson, who had promised to restore the
+sacredness of treaties[214] in exhorting Signor Orlando to give up the
+Treaty of London. The clash between Mr. Wilson and Signor Orlando and
+the departure of the Italian plenipotentiaries coincided with the
+arrival of the Germans in Versailles, so that the Allies were faced with
+the alternative of speeding up their desultory talks and improvising a
+definite solution or giving up all pretense at unanimity in the presence
+of the enemy. One important Paris journal found fault with Mr. Wilson
+and his "Encyclical," and protested emphatically against his way of
+filling every gap in his arrangements by wedging into it his League of
+Nations. "Can we harbor any illusion as to the net worth of the League
+of Nations when the revised text of the Covenant reveals it shrunken to
+the merest shadow, incapable of thought, will, action, or justice?...
+Too often have we made sacrifices to the Wilsonian doctrine."[215] ...
+Another press organ compared Fiume to the Saar Valley and sympathized
+with Italy, who, relying on the solidarity of her allies, expected to
+secure the city.[216]
+
+While those wearisome word-battles--in which the personal element played
+an undue part--were being waged in the twilight of a secluded Valhalla,
+the Supreme Economic Council decided that the seized Austrian vessels
+must be pooled among all the Allies. When the untoward consequences of
+this decision were flashed upon the Italians and the Jugoslavs, the
+rupture between them was seen to be injurious to both and profitable to
+third parties. For if the Austrian vessels were distributed among all
+the Allied peoples, the share that would fall to those two would be of
+no account. Now for the first time the adversaries bestirred themselves.
+But it was not their diplomatists who took the initiative. Eager for
+their respective countries' share of the spoils of war, certain
+business men on both sides met,[217] deliberated, and worked out an
+equitable accord which gave four-fifths of the tonnage to Italy and the
+remainder to the Jugoslavs, who otherwise would not have obtained a
+single ship.[218] They next set about getting the resolution of the
+Economic Council repealed, and went on with their conversations.[219]
+The American delegation was friendly, promised to plead for the repeal,
+and added that "if the accord could be extended to the Adriatic problem
+Mr. Wilson would be delighted and would take upon himself to ratify it
+_even without the sanction of the Conference_.[220] Encouraged by this
+promise, the delegates made the attempt, but as the Italian Premier had
+for some unavowed reason limited the intercourse of the negotiators to a
+single day, on the expiry of which he ordered the conversation to
+cease,[221] they failed. Two or three days later the delegates in
+question had quitted Paris.
+
+What this exchange of views seems to have demonstrated to open-minded
+Italians was that the Jugoslavs, whose reputation for obstinacy was a
+dogma among all their adversaries and some of their friends, have chinks
+in their panoply through which reason and suasion may penetrate.
+
+When the Italian withdrew from the Conference he had ample reason for
+believing that in his absence peace could not be signed, and many
+thought that, by departing, he was giving Mr. Wilson a Roland for his
+Oliver. But this supposed tactical effect formed no part of Orlando's
+deliberate plan. It was a coincidence to be utilized, nothing more. Mr.
+Wilson had left him no choice but to quit France and solicit the verdict
+of his countrymen. But Mr. Wilson's colleagues were aghast at the
+thought that the Pact of London, by which none of the Allies might
+conclude a separate peace, rendered it indispensable that Italy's
+recalcitrant plenipotentiaries should be co-signatories, or at any rate
+consenting parties. About this interpretation of the Pact there was not
+the slightest doubt. Hence every one feared that the signing of the
+Peace Treaty would be postponed indefinitely because of the absence of
+the Italian plenipotentiaries from the Conference. That certainly was
+the belief of the remaining delegates. There was no doubt anywhere that
+the presence or the express assent of the Italians was a _sine qua non_
+of the legality of the Treaty. It certainly was the conviction of the
+French press, and was borne out by the most eminent jurists throughout
+the world.[222] That the Italian delegates might refuse to sign, as
+Signor Orlando had threatened, until Italy's affairs were arranged
+satisfactorily was taken for granted, and the remaining members of the
+inner Council set to work to checkmate this potential maneuver and
+dispense with her co-operation. This aim was attained during the absence
+of the Italian delegation by the decree that the signature of any three
+of the Allied and Associated governments would be deemed adequate. The
+legality and even the morality of this provision were challenged by
+many.
+
+But it may be maintained that the imperative nature of the task which
+confronted the Conference demanded a chart of ideas and principles
+different from that by which Old World diplomacy had been guided and
+that respect for the letter of a compact should not be allowed to
+destroy its spirit. There is much to be said for this contention, which
+was, however, rejected by Italian jurists as destructive of the
+sacredness of treaties. They also urged that even if it were permissible
+to dash formal obstacles aside in order to clear the path for the
+furtherance of a good cause, it is also indispensable that the result
+should be compassed with the smallest feasible sacrifice of principle.
+Hopes were accordingly entertained by the Italian delegates that, on
+their return to Paris, at least a formal declaration might be made that
+Italy's signature was indispensable to the validity of the Treaty. But
+they were not, perhaps could not, be fulfilled at that conjuncture.
+
+Advantage was taken in other ways of the withdrawal of Italy's
+representatives from the Conference. For example, a clause of the Treaty
+with Germany dealing with reparations was altered to Italy's detriment.
+Another which turned upon Austro-German relations was likewise modified.
+Before the delegates left for Rome it had been settled that Germany
+should be bound over to respect Austria's independence. This obligation
+was either superfluous, every state being obliged to respect the
+independence of every other, or else it had a cryptic meaning which
+would only reveal itself in the application of the clause. As soon as
+the Conference was freed from the presence of the Italians the formula
+was modified, and Germany was plainly forbidden to unite with Austria,
+even though Austria should expressly desire amalgamation. As this
+enactment runs directly counter to the principle of self-determination,
+the Italian Minister Crespi raised his voice in energetic protest
+against this and the financial changes,[223] whereupon the Triumvirs,
+giving way on the latter point, consented to restore the primitive text
+of the financial condition.[224] Germany is obliged to supply France
+with seven million tons of coal every year by way of restitution for
+damage done during the war. At the price of fifty francs a ton, the
+money value of this tribute would be three hundred and fifty million
+francs, of which Italy would be entitled to receive 30 per cent. But
+during the absence of the Italian representatives a supplementary clause
+was inserted in the Treaty[225] conferring a special privilege on France
+which renders Italy's claim of little or no value. It provides that
+Germany shall deliver annually to France an amount of coal equal to the
+difference between the pre-war production of the mines of Pas de Calais
+and the Nord, destroyed by the enemy, and the production of the mines of
+the same area during each of the coming years, the maximum limit to be
+twenty million tons. As this contribution takes precedence of all
+others, and as Germany, owing to insufficiency of transports and other
+causes, will probably be unable to furnish it entirely, Italy's claim is
+considered practically valueless.
+
+The reception of the delegates in Rome was a triumph, their return to
+Paris a humiliation. For things had been moving fast in the meanwhile,
+and their trend, as we said, was away from Italy's goal. Public opinion
+in their own country likewise began to veer round, and people asked
+whether they had adopted the right tactics, whether, in fine, they were
+the right men to represent their country at that crisis of its history.
+There was no gainsaying the fact that Italy was completely isolated at
+the Conference. She had sacrificed much and had garnered in relatively
+little. The Jugoslavs had offered her an alliance--although this kind of
+partnership had originally been forbidden by the Wilsonian discipline;
+the offer was rejected and she was now certain of their lasting enmity.
+Venizelos had also made overtures to Baron Sonnino for an understanding,
+but they elicited no response, and Italy's relations with Greece lost
+whatever cordiality they might have had. Between France and Italy the
+threads of friendship which companionship in arms should have done much
+to strengthen were strained to the point of snapping. And worst,
+perhaps, of all, the Italian delegates had approved the clause
+forbidding Germany to unite with Austria.
+
+That the fault did not lie wholly in the attitude of the Allies is
+obvious. The Italian delegates' lack of method, one might say of unity,
+was unquestionably a contributory cause of their failure to make
+perceptible headway at the Conference. A curious and characteristic
+incident of the slipshod way in which the work was sometimes done
+occurred in connection with the disposal of the Palace Venezia, in Rome,
+which had belonged to Austria, but was expropriated by the Italian
+government soon after the opening of hostilities. The heirs of the
+Hapsburg Crown put forward a claim to proprietary rights which was
+traversed by the Italian government. As the dispute was to be laid
+before the Conference, the Roman Cabinet invited a _juris consult_
+versed in these matters to argue Italy's case. He duly appeared,
+unfolded his claim congruously with the views of his government, but
+suddenly stopped short on observing the looks of astonishment on the
+faces of the delegates. It appears that on the preceding day another
+delegate of the Economic Conference, also an Italian, had unfolded and
+defended the contrary thesis--namely, that Austria's heirs had
+inherited her right to the Palace of Venezia.[226]
+
+Passing to more momentous matters, one may pertinently ask whether too
+much stress was not laid by the first Italian delegation upon the
+national and sentimental sides of Italy's interests, and too little on
+the others. Among the Great Powers Italy is most in need of raw
+materials. She is destitute of coal, iron, cotton, and naphtha. Most of
+them are to be had in Asia Minor. They are indispensable conditions of
+modern life and progress. To demand a fair share of them as guerdon for
+having saved Europe, and to put in her claim at a moment when Europe was
+being reconstituted, could not have been construed as imperialism. The
+other Allies had possessed most of those necessaries in abundance long
+before the war. They were adding to them now as the fruits of a victory
+which Italy's sacrifices had made possible. Why, then, should she be
+left unsatisfied? Bitterly though the nation was disappointed by failure
+to have its territorial claims allowed, it became still more deeply
+grieved when it came to realize that much more important advantages
+might have been secured if these had been placed in the forefront of the
+nation's demands. Emigration ground for Italy's surplus population,
+which is rapidly increasing, coal and iron for her industries might
+perhaps have been obtained if the Italian plan of campaign at the
+Conference had been rightly conceived and skilfully executed. But this
+realistic aspect of Italy's interests was almost wholly lost sight of
+during the waging of the heated and unfruitful contests for the
+possession of town and ports, which, although sacred symbols of
+Italianism, could not add anything to the economic resources which will
+play such a predominant part in the future struggle for material
+well-being among the new and old states. There was a marked propensity
+among Italy's leaders at home and in Paris to consider each of the
+issues that concerned their country as though it stood alone, instead of
+envisaging Italy's economic, financial, and military position after the
+war as an indivisible problem and proving that it behooved the Allies in
+the interests of a European peace to solve it satisfactorily, and to
+provide compensation in one direction for inevitable gaps in the other.
+This, to my thinking, was the fundamental error of the Italian and
+Allied statesmen for which Europe may have to suffer. That Italy's
+policy cannot in the near future return to the lines on which it ran
+ever since the establishment of her national unity, whatever her allies
+may do or say, will hardly be gainsaid. Interests are decisive factors
+of foreign policy, and the action of the Great Powers has determined
+Italy's orientation.
+
+Italy undoubtedly gained a great deal by the war, into which she entered
+mainly for the purpose of achieving her unity and securing strong
+frontiers. But she signed the Peace Treaty convinced that she had not
+succeeded in either purpose, and that her allies were answerable for her
+failure. It was certainly part of their policy to build up a strong
+state on her frontier out of a race which she regards as her adversary
+and to give it command of some of her strategic positions. And the overt
+bearing manner in which this policy was sometimes carried out left as
+much bitterness behind as the object it aimed at. It is alleged that the
+Italian delegates were treated with an economy of consideration which
+bordered on something much worse, while the arguments officially invoked
+to non-suit them appeared to them in the light of bitter sarcasms.
+President Wilson, they complained, ignored his far-resonant principle
+of self-determination when Japan presented her claim for Shantung, but
+refused to swerve from it when Italy relied on her treaty rights in
+Dalmatia. And when the inhabitants of Fiume voted for union with the
+mother country, the President abandoned that principle and gave judgment
+for Jugoslavia on other grounds. He was right, but disappointing, they
+observed, when he told his fellow-citizens that his presence in Europe
+was indispensable in order to interpret his conceptions, for no other
+rational being could have construed them thus.
+
+The withdrawal of the Italian delegates was construed as an act of
+insubordination, and punished as such. The Marquis de Viti de Varche has
+since disclosed the fact that the Allied governments forthwith reduced
+the credits accorded to Italy during hostilities, whereupon hardships
+and distress were aggravated and the peasantry over a large area of the
+country suffered intensely.[227] For Italy is more dependent on her
+allies than ever, owing to the sacrifices which she offered up during
+the war, and she was made to feel her dependence painfully. The military
+assistance which they had received from her was fraught with financial
+and economic consequences which have not yet been realized by the
+unfortunate people who must endure them. Italy at the close of
+hostilities was burdened with a foreign debt of twenty milliards of
+lire, an internal debt of fifty millards, and a paper circulation four
+times more than what it was in pre-war days.[228] Raw materials were
+exhausted, traffic and production were stagnant, navigation had almost
+ceased, and the expenditure of the state had risen to eleven milliards
+a year.[229]
+
+According to the figures published by the Statistical Society of Berne,
+the general rise in prices attributed to the war hit Italy much harder
+than any of her allies.[230] The consequences of this and other
+perturbations were sinister and immediate. The nation, bereft of what it
+had been taught to regard as its right, humiliated in the persons of its
+chiefs, subjected to foreign guidance, insufficiently clad, underfed,
+and with no tangible grounds for expecting speedy improvement, was
+seething with discontent. Frequent strikes merely aggravated the general
+suffering, which finally led to riots, risings, and the shedding of
+blood. The economic, political, and moral crisis was unprecedented. The
+men who drew Italy into the war were held up to public opprobrium
+because in the imagination of the people the victory had cost them more
+and brought them in less than neutrality would have done. One of the
+principal orators of the Opposition, in a trenchant discourse in the
+Italian Parliament, said, "The Salandra-Sonnino Cabinet led Italy into
+the war blindfolded."[231]
+
+After the return of the Italian delegation to Paris various fresh
+combinations were devised for the purpose of grappling with the Adriatic
+problem. One commended itself to the Italians as a possible basis for
+discussion. In principle it was accepted. A declaration to this effect
+was made by Signor Orlando and taken cognizance of by M. Clemenceau, who
+undertook to lay the matter before Mr. Wilson, the sole arbitrator in
+Italian affairs. He played the part of Fate throughout. Days went by
+after this without bringing any token that the Triumvirate was
+interested in the Adriatic. At last the Italian Premier reminded his
+French colleague that the latest proposal had been accepted in
+principle, and the Italian plenipotentiaries were awaiting Mr. Wilson's
+pleasure in the matter. Accordingly, M. Clemenceau undertook to broach
+the matter to the American statesman without delay. The reply, which was
+promptly given, dismayed the Italians. It was in the form of one of
+those interpretations which, becoming associated with Mr. Wilson's name,
+shook public confidence in certain of the statesman-like qualities with
+which he had at first been credited. The construction which he now put
+upon the mode of voting to be applied to Fiume, including this city--in
+a large district inhabited by a majority of Jugoslavs--imparted to the
+project as the Italians had understood it a wholly new aspect. They
+accordingly declared it inacceptable. As after that there seemed to be
+nothing more for the Italian Premier to do in Paris, he left, was soon
+afterward defeated in the Chamber, and resigned together with his
+Cabinet. The vote of the Italian Parliament, which appeared to the
+continental press in the light of a protest of the nation against the
+aims and the methods of the Conference, closed for the time being the
+chapter of Italy's endeavor to complete her unity, secure strong
+frontiers, and perpetuate her political partnership with France and her
+intimate relations with the Entente. Thenceforward the English-speaking
+states might influence her overt acts, compel submission to their
+behests, and generally exercise a sort of guardianship over her, because
+they are the dispensers of economic boons, but the union of hearts, the
+mutual trust, the cement supplied by common aims are lacking.
+
+One of the most telling arguments employed by President Wilson to
+dissuade various states from claiming strategic positions, and in
+particular Italy from insisting on the annexation of Fiume and the
+Dalmatian coast, was the effective protection which the League of
+Nations would confer on them.[232] Strategical considerations would, it
+was urged, lose all their value in the new era, and territorial
+guaranties become meaningless and cumbersome survivals of a dead epoch.
+That was the principal weapon with which he had striven to parry the
+thrusts of M. Clemenceau and the touchstone by which he tested the
+sincerity of all professions of faith in his cherished project of
+compacting the nations of the world in a vast league of peace-loving,
+law-abiding communities. But the faith of France's leaders differed
+little from unbelief. Guaranties first and the protection of the League
+afterward was the French formula, around which many fierce battles royal
+were fought. In the end Mr. Wilson, having obtained the withdrawal of
+the demand for the Rhine frontier, gave in, and the Covenant was
+reinforced by a compact which in the last analysis is a military
+undertaking, a unilateral Triple Alliance, Great Britain and the United
+States undertaking to hasten to France's assistance should her territory
+be wantonly invaded by Germany. The case thus provided for is extremely
+improbable. The expansion of Germany, when the auspicious hour strikes,
+will presumably be inaugurated on wholly new lines, against which
+armies, even if they can be mobilized in time, will be of little avail.
+But if force were resorted to, it is almost certain to be used in the
+direction where the resistance is least--against France's ally, Poland.
+This, however, is by the way. The point made by the Italians was that
+the League of Nations being thus admittedly powerless to discharge the
+functions which alone could render strategic frontiers unnecessary, can
+consequently no longer be relied upon as an adequate protection against
+the dangers which the possession of the strongholds she claimed on the
+Adriatic would effectively displace. Either the League, it was argued,
+can, as asserted, protect the countries which give up commanding
+positions to potential enemies, or it cannot. In the former hypothesis
+France's insistence on a military convention is mischievous and
+immoral--in the latter Italy stands in as much need of the precautions
+devised as her neighbor. But her spokesmen were still plied with the
+threadbare arguments and bereft of the countervailing corrective. And
+faith in the efficacy of the League was sapped by the very men who were
+professedly seeking to spread it.
+
+The press of Rome, Turin, and Milan pointed to the loyalty of the
+Italian people, brought out, they said, in sharp relief by the
+discontent which the exclusive character of that triple military accord
+engendered among them. As kinsmen of the French it was natural for
+Italians to expect that they would be invited to become a party to this
+league within the League. As loyal allies of Britain and France they
+felt desirous of being admitted to the alliance. But they were excluded.
+Nor was their exasperation allayed by the assurance of their press that
+this was no alliance, but a state of tutelage. An alliance, it was
+explained, is a compact by which two or more parties agree to render one
+another certain services under given conditions, whereas the convention
+in question is a one-sided undertaking on the part of Britain and the
+United States to protect France if wantonly attacked, because she is
+unable efficaciously to protect herself. It is a benefaction. But this
+casuistry fell upon deaf ears. What the people felt was the
+disesteem--the term in vogue was stronger--in which they were held by
+the Allies, whom they had saved perhaps from ruin.
+
+By slow degrees the sentiments of the Italian nation underwent a
+disquieting change. All parties and classes united in stigmatizing the
+behavior of the Allies in terms which even the literary eminence of the
+poet d'Annunzio could not induce the censors to let pass. "The Peace
+Treaty," wrote Italy's most influential journal, "and its correlate
+forbode for the near future the Continental hegemony of France
+countersigned by the Anglo-American alliance."[233] Another widely
+circulated and respected organ described the policy of the Entente as a
+solvent of the social fabric, constructive in words, corrosive in acts,
+"mischievous if ever there was a mischievous policy. For while raising
+hopes and whetting appetites, it does nothing to satisfy them; on the
+contrary, it does much to disappoint them. In words--a struggle for
+liberty, for nations, for the equality of peoples and classes, for the
+well-being of all; in acts--the suppression of the most elementary and
+constitutional liberty, the overlordship of certain nations based on the
+humiliation of others, the division of peoples into exploiters and
+exploited--the sharpening of social differences--the destruction of
+collective wealth, and its accumulation in a few blood-stained hands,
+universal misery, and hunger."[234]
+
+Although it is well understood that Italy's defeat at the Conference was
+largely the handiwork of President Wilson, the resentment of the Italian
+nation chose for its immediate objects the representatives of France and
+Britain. The American "associates" were strangers, here to-day and gone
+to-morrow, but the Allies remain, and if their attitude toward Italy, it
+was argued, had been different, if their loyalty had been real, she
+would have fared proportionately as well as they, whatever the American
+statesmen might have said or done.
+
+The Italian press breathed fiery wrath against its French ally, who so
+often at the Conference had met Italy's solicitations with the odious
+word "impossible." Even moderate organs of public opinion gave free vent
+to estimates of France's policy and anticipations of its consequences
+which disturbed the equanimity of European statesmen. "It is
+impossible," one of these journals wrote, "for France to become the
+absolute despot of Europe without Italy, much less against Italy. What
+transcended the powers of Richelieu, who was a lion and fox combined,
+and was beyond the reach of Bonaparte, who was both an eagle and a
+serpent, cannot be achieved by "Tiger" Clemenceau in circumstances so
+much less favorable than those of yore. We, it is true, are isolated,
+but then France is not precisely embarrassed by the choice of friends."
+The peace was described as "Franco-Slav domination with its headquarters
+in Prague, and a branch office in Agram." M. Clemenceau was openly
+charged with striving after the hegemony of the Continent for his
+country by separating Germany from Austria and surrounding her with a
+ring of Slav states--Poland, Jugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and perhaps the
+non-Slav kingdom of Rumania. All these states would be in the
+leading-strings of the French Republic, and Austria would be linked to
+it in a different guise. And in order to effect this resuscitation of
+the Hapsburg state under the name of "Danubian federation," Mr. Wilson,
+it was asserted, had authorized a deliberate violation of his own
+principle of self-determination, and refused to Austria the right of
+adopting the régime which she preferred. It was, in truth, an odd
+compromise, these critics continued, for an idealist of the President's
+caliber, on whose every political action the scrutinizing gaze of the
+world was fixed. One could not account for it as a sacrifice made for a
+high ethical aim--one of those ends which, according to the old maxim,
+hallows the means. It seemed an open response to a secret instigation or
+impulse which was unconnected with any recognized or avowable principle.
+Even the Socialist organs swelled the chorus of the accusers. _Avanti_
+wrote, "We are Socialists, yet we have never believed that the American
+President with his Fourteen Points entered into the war for the highest
+aims of humanity and for the rights of peoples, any more than we believe
+at present that his opposition to the aspirations of the Italian state
+on the Adriatic are inspired by motives of idealism."[235]
+
+The fate of the disputed territories on the Adriatic was to be the
+outcome of self-determination. Poland's claims were to be left to the
+self-determination of the Silesian and Ruthenian populations. Rumania
+was told that her suit must remain in abeyance until it could be tested
+by the same principle, which would be applied in the form of a
+plebiscite. For self-determination was the cornerstone of the League of
+Nations, the holiest boon for which the progressive peoples of the world
+had been pouring out their life-blood and substance for nearly five
+years. But when Italy invoked self-determination, she was promptly
+non-suited. When Austria appealed to it she was put out of court. And to
+crown all, the world was assured that the Fourteen Points had been
+triumphantly upheld. This depravation of principles by the triumph of
+the little prudences of the hour spurred some of the more impulsive
+critics to ascribe it to influences less respectable than those to which
+it may fairly be attributed.
+
+The directing Powers were hypersensitive to the oft-repeated charge of
+meddling in the internal affairs of other nations. They were never
+tired of protesting their abhorrence of anything that smacked of
+interference. Among the numerous facts, however, which they could
+neither deny nor reconcile with their professions, the following was
+brought forward by the Italians, who had a special interest to draw
+public attention to it. It had to do with the abortive attempt to
+restore the Hapsburg monarchy in Hungary as the first step toward the
+formation of a Danubian federation. "It is certain," wrote the principal
+Italian journal, "that the Archduke Joseph's _coup d'état_ did not take
+place, indeed (given the conditions in Budapest) could not take place,
+without the Entente's connivance. The official _communiqués_ of Budapest
+and Vienna, dated August 9th, recount on this point precise details
+which no one has hitherto troubled to deny. The Peidl government was
+scarcely three days in power, and, therefore, was not in a position to
+deserve either trust or distrust, when the heads of the 'order-loving
+organizations' put forward, to justify the need of a new crisis, the
+complaints of the heads of the Entente Missions as to the anarchy
+prevailing in Hungary and the urgency of finding 'some one' who could
+save the country from the abyss. Then a commission repaired to Alscuth,
+where it easily persuaded the Archduke to come to Budapest. Here he at
+once visited all the heads of missions and spent the whole day in
+negotiations. '_As a result of negotiations with Entente
+representatives, the Archduke Joseph undertook a solution of the
+crisis_.' He then called together the old state police and a volunteer
+army of eight thousand men. The Rumanian garrison was kept ready. The
+Peidl government naturally did not resist at all. At 10 P.M. on August
+7th all the Entente Missions held a meeting, _to which the Archduke
+Joseph and the new Premier were invited_. General Gorton presided. _The
+Conference lasted two hours and reached an agreement on all questions.
+All the heads of Missions assured the new government of their warmest
+support_."[236]
+
+Another case of unwarranted interference which stirred the Italians to
+bitter resentment turned upon the obligation imposed on Austria to
+renounce her right to unite with Germany. "It is difficult to discern in
+the policy of the Entente toward Austria anything more respectable than
+obstinacy coupled with stupidity," wrote the same journal. "But there is
+something still worse. It is impossible not to feel indignant with a
+coalition which, after having triumphed in the name of the loftiest
+ideas ... treats German-Austria no better than the Holy Alliance treated
+the petty states of Italy. But the Congress of Vienna acted in harmony
+with the principle of legitimism which it avowed and professed, whereas
+the Paris Conference violates without scruple the canons by which it
+claims to be guided.
+
+"Not a whit more decorous is the intervention of the Supreme Council in
+the internal affairs of Germany--a state which, according to the spirit
+and the letter of the Versailles Treaty, is sovereign and not a
+protectorate. The Conference was qualified to dictate peace terms to
+Germany, but it wanders beyond the bounds of its competency when it
+construes those terms and arrogates to itself--on the strength of forced
+and equivocal interpretations--the right of imposing upon a nation which
+is neither militarily nor juridically an enemy a constitutional reform.
+Whether Germany violates the Treaty by her Constitution is a question
+which only a judicial finding of the League of Nations can fairly
+determine."[237]
+
+It would be impolitic to overlook and insincere to belittle the effects
+of this incoherency upon the relations between France and Italy. Public
+opinion in the Peninsula characterized the attitude of Prance as
+deliberately hostile. The Italians at the Conference eagerly scrutinized
+every act and word of their French colleagues, with a view to
+discovering grounds for dispelling this view. But the search is reported
+to have been worse than vain. It revealed data which, although
+susceptible of satisfactory explanations, would, if disclosed at that
+moment, have aggravated the feeling of bitterness against France, which
+was fast gathering. Signor Orlando had recourse to the censor to prevent
+indiscretions, but the intuition of the masses triumphed over
+repression, and the existing tenseness merged into resentment. The way
+in which Italians accounted for M. Clemenceau's attitude was this.
+Although Italy has ceased to be the important political factor she once
+was when the Triple Alliance was in being, she is still a strong
+continental Power, capable of placing a more numerous army in the field
+than her republican sister, and her population continues to increase at
+a high rate. In a few years she will have outstripped her rival. France,
+too, has perhaps lost those elements of her power and prestige which she
+derived from her alliance with Russia. Again, the Slav ex-ally, Russia,
+may become the enemy of to-morrow. In view of these contingencies France
+must create a substitute for the Rumanian and Italian allies. And as
+these have been found in the new Slav states, Poland, Czechoslovakia,
+and Jugoslavia, she can afford to dispense with making painful
+sacrifices to keep Italy in countenance.
+
+A trivial incident which affords a glimpse of the spirit prevailing
+between the two kindred peoples occurred at St.-Germain-en-Laye, where
+the Austrian delegates were staying. They had been made much of in
+Vienna by the Envoy of the French Republic there, M. Allizé, whose
+mission it was to hinder Austria from uniting with the Reich. Italy's
+policy was, on the contrary, to apply Mr. Wilson's principle of
+self-determination and allow the Austrians to do as they pleased in that
+respect. A fervent advocate of the French orthodox doctrine--a
+publicist--repaired to the Austrian headquarters at St.-Germain for the
+purpose, it is supposed, of discussing the subject. Now intercourse of
+any kind between private individuals and the enemy delegates was
+strictly forbidden, and when M. X. presented himself, the Italian
+officer on duty refused him admission. He insisted. The officer was
+inexorable. Then he produced a written permit signed by the Secretary of
+the Conference, M. Dutasta. How and why this exception was made in his
+favor when the rule was supposed to admit of no exceptions was not
+disclosed. But the Italian officer, equal to the occasion, took the
+ground that a military prohibition cannot be canceled by a civilian, and
+excluded the would-be visitor.
+
+The general trend of France's European policy was repugnant to Italy.
+She looked on it as a well-laid scheme to assume a predominant rôle on
+the Continent. That, she believed, was the ultimate purpose of the veto
+on the union of Austria and Germany, of the military arrangements with
+Britain and the United States, and of much else that was obnoxious to
+Italy. Austria was to be reconstituted according to the federative plans
+of the late Archduke Franz Ferdinand, to be made stronger than before as
+a counterpoise to Italy, and to be at the beck and call of France. Thus
+the friend, ally, sister of yesterday became the potential enemy of
+to-morrow. That was the refrain of most of the Italian journals, and
+none intoned it more fervently than those which had been foremost in
+bringing their country into the war. One of these, a Conservative organ
+of Lombardy, wrote: "Until yesterday, we might have considered that two
+paths lay open before us, that of an alliance with France and that of
+an independent policy. But we can think so no longer. To offer our
+friendship to-day to the people who have already chosen their own road
+and established their solidarity with our enemies of yesterday and
+to-morrow would not be to strike out a policy, but to decide on an
+unseemly surrender. It would be tantamount to reproducing in an
+aggravated form the situation we occupied in the alliance with Germany.
+Once again we should be engaged in a partnership of which one of the
+partners was in reality our enemy. France taking the place of Germany,
+and Jugoslavia that of Austria, the situation of the old Triple Alliance
+would be not merely reproduced, but made worse in the reproduction,
+because the _Triplice_ at least guaranteed us against a conflict which
+we had grounds for apprehending, whereas the new alliance would tie our
+hands for the sake of a little Balkan state which, single-handed, we are
+well able to keep in its place.
+
+"We have had enough of a policy which has hitherto saddled us with all
+the burdens of the alliance without bestowing on us any advantage--which
+has constrained us to favor all the peoples whose expansion dovetailed
+with French schemes and to combat or neglect those others whose
+consolidation corresponded to our interests--which has led us to support
+a great Poland and a great Bohemia and to combat the Ukraine, Hungary,
+Bulgaria, Rumania, Spain, to whose destinies the French, but not we,
+were indifferent."[238] A press organ of Bologna denounced the atrocious
+and ignominious sacrifice "which her allies imposed on Italy by means of
+economic blackmailing and violence with a whip in one hand and a chunk
+of bread in the other."[239]
+
+Sharp comments were provoked by the heavy tax on strangers in Tunisia
+imposed by the French government,[240] on strangers, mostly Italians,
+who theretofore had enjoyed the same rights as the French and Tunisians.
+"Suddenly," writes the principal Italian journal, "and just when it was
+hoped that the common sacrifices they had made had strengthened the ties
+between the two nations, the governor of Tunisia issued certain orders
+which endangered the interests of foreigners and the effects of which
+will be felt mainly by Italians, of whom there are one hundred and
+twenty thousand in Tunisia.[241] First there came an order forbidding
+the use of any language but French in the schools. Now the tax referred
+to in the House of Lords gives the Tunisian government power to levy an
+impost on the buying and selling of property in Tunisia. The new tax,
+which is to be levied over and above pre-existing taxes, ranged from 59
+per cent. of the value when it is not assessed at a higher sum than one
+hundred thousand lire to 80 per cent. when its estimated value is more
+than five hundred thousand lire." The article terminates with the remark
+that boycotting is hardly a suitable epilogue to a war waged for common
+ideals and interests.
+
+These manifestations irritated the French and were taken to indicate
+Italy's defection. It was to no purpose that a few level-headed men
+pointed out that the French government was largely answerable for the
+state of mind complained of. "Pertinax," in the _Echo de Paris_, wrote
+"that the alliance, in order to subsist and flourish, should have
+retained its character as an Anti-German League, whereas it fell into
+the error of masking itself as a Society of Nations and arrogated to
+itself the right of bringing before its tribunal all the quarrels of the
+planet."[242] Italy's allies undoubtedly did much to forfeit her
+sympathies and turn her from the alliance. It was pointed out that when
+the French troops arrived in Italy the Bulletin of the Italian command
+eulogized their efforts almost daily, but when the Italian troops went
+to France, the _communiqués_ of the French command were most chary of
+allusions to their exploits, yet the Italian army contributed more dead
+to the French front than did the French army to the Italian front.[243]
+At the Peace Conference, as we saw, when the terms with Germany were
+being drafted, Italy's problems were set aside on the grounds that there
+was no nexus between them. The Allies' interests, which were dealt with
+as a whole during the war, were divided after the armistice into
+essential and secondary interests, and those of Italy were relegated to
+the latter class. Subsequently France, Britain, and the United States,
+without the co-operation or foreknowledge of their Italian friends,
+struck up an alliance from which they excluded Italy, thereby vitiating
+the only arguments that could be invoked in favor of such a coalition.
+When peace was about to be signed they one-sidedly revoked the treaty
+which they had concluded in London, rendering the consent of all Allies
+necessary to the validity of the document, and decreed that Italy's
+abstention would make no difference. When the instrument was finally
+signed, Mr. Wilson returned to the United States, Mr. Lloyd George to
+England, and the Marquis of Saionji to Japan, without having settled any
+of Italy's problems. Italy, her needs, her claims, and her policy thus
+appear as matters of little account to the Great Powers. Naturally, the
+Italian people were disappointed, and desirous of seeking new friends,
+the old ones having forsaken them.
+
+It would be difficult to exaggerate the consequences which this attitude
+of the Allies toward Italy may have on European politics generally. Her
+most eminent statesman, Signor Tittoni, who succeeded Baron Sonnino,
+transcending his country's mortifications, exerted himself tactfully and
+not unsuccessfully to lubricate the mechanism of the alliance, to ease
+the dangerous friction and to restore the tone. And he seems to have
+accomplished in these respects everything which a sagacious statesman
+could do. But to arrest the operation of psychological laws is beyond
+the power of any individual. In order to appreciate the Italian point of
+view, it is nowise necessary to approve the exaggerated claims put
+forward by her press in the spring of 1919. It is enough to admit that
+in the light of the Wilsonian doctrine they were not more incompatible
+with that doctrine than the claims made by other Powers and accorded by
+the Supreme Council.
+
+To sum up, Italy acquired the impression that association with her
+recent allies means for her not only sacrifices in their hour of need,
+but also further sacrifices in their hour of triumph. She became
+reluctantly convinced that they regard interests which she deems vital
+to herself as unconnected with their own. And that was unfortunate. If
+at some fateful conjuncture in the future her allies on their part
+should gather the impression that she has adjusted her policy to those
+interests which are so far removed from theirs, they will have
+themselves to blame.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[194] This clause, which figured in the draft Treaty, as presented to
+the Germans, provoked such emphatic protests from all sides that it was
+struck out in the revised version.
+
+[195] In an interview given to the Correspondenz Bureau of Vienna by
+Conrad von Hoetzendorff. Cf. _Le Temps_, July 19, 1919.
+
+[196] The Prime Minister, Salandra, declared that to have made
+neutrality a matter of bargaining would have been to dishonor Italy.
+
+[197] King Carol was holding a crown council at the time. Bratiano had
+spoken against the King's proposal to throw in the country's lot with
+Germany. Carp was strongly for carrying out Rumania's treaty
+obligations. Some others hesitated, but before it could be put to the
+vote a telegram was brought in announcing Italy's resolve to maintain
+neutrality. The upshot was Rumania's refusal to follow her allies.
+
+[198] On the eastern Adriatic, the Treaty of London allotted to Italy
+the peninsula of Istria, without Fiume, most of Dalmatia, exclusive of
+Spalato, the chief Dalmatian islands and the Dodecannesus.
+
+[199] The present population of Fiume is computed at 45,227 souls, of
+whom 33,000 are Italians, 10,927 Slavs, and 1,300 Magyars.
+
+[200] Another delegate is reported to have answered: "As we need Italy's
+friendship, we should pay the moderate price asked and back her claim to
+have the moon."
+
+[201] A number of orders of the day eulogizing individual Slav officers
+and collective military entities were quoted by the advocates of Italy's
+cause at the Conference.
+
+[202] Official _communiqué_ of June 17, 1918.
+
+[203] _Journal de Genève_, April 25, 1919.
+
+[204] Cf. _Il Corriere della Sera_ and _Il Secolo_ of May 26, 1919.
+
+[205] In the Senate he defended this attitude on March 4,1919, and
+expressed a desire to dispel the misunderstanding between the two
+peoples.
+
+[206] In April, 1919.
+
+[207] This fact has since been made public by Enrico Ferri in a
+remarkable discourse pronounced in the parliament at Rome (July 9,
+1919). It was Baron Sonnino who deprecated the publication of any
+statement on the subject by President Wilson. Cf. _La Stampa_, July 10,
+1919.
+
+[208] On January 10, 1919.
+
+[209] It gave eastern Friuli to Italy, including Gorizia, split Istria
+into two parts, and assigned Trieste and Pola also to Italy, but under
+such territorial conditions that they would be exposed to enemy
+projectiles in case of war.
+
+[210] The National Council of Fiume issued its proclamation before it
+had become known that the battle of Vittorio Veneto was begun--_i.e._,
+October 30, 1918.
+
+[211] Speech delivered at Mount Vernon on July 4, 1918.
+
+[212] Of the United States, France, and Great Britain.
+
+[213] Between April 5th and 12th.
+
+[214] In his address to the representatives of organized labor in
+January, 1918.
+
+[215] _L'Echo de Paris_, April 29, 1919.
+
+[216] _Le Gaulois_, April 29, 1919.
+
+[217] These meetings were held from March 28 till April 23, 1919.
+
+[218] See Marco Borsa's article in _Il Secolo_, June 18, 1919; also
+_Corriere della Sera_, June 19, 1919.
+
+[219] From May 5 to 16, 1919.
+
+[220] _Il Secolo_, June 19, 1919.
+
+[221] On April 23, 1919.
+
+[222] "Can and will our allies treat our absence as a matter of no
+moment? Can and will they violate the formal undertaking which forbids
+the belligerents to conclude a diplomatic peace?... The London
+Declaration prohibits categorically the conclusion of any separate peace
+with any enemy state. France and England cannot sign peace with Germany
+if Italy does not sign it.... The situation is grave and abnormal, for
+our allies it is also grave and abnormal. Italy is isolated, and
+nations, especially those of continental Europe, which are not overrich,
+flee solitude as nature abhors a vacuum."--_Corriere della Sera_, April
+26, 1919. Again: "'The Treaty of London' restrains France and England
+from concluding peace without Italy. And Italy is minded not to conclude
+peace with Germany before she herself has received
+satisfaction."--_Journal de Genève_, April 25, 1919.
+
+[223] On May 6, 1919, at Versailles.
+
+[224] Cf. _Corriere della Sera_, May 10, 1919.
+
+[225] Annex W of the Revised Treaty.
+
+[226] This incident was revealed by Enrico Ferri, in his remarkable
+speech in the Italian Parliament on July 9, 1919. Cf. _La Stampa_, July
+10, 1919, page 2.
+
+[227] Cf. _The Morning Post_, July 9, 1919.
+
+[228] On July 10th the Italian Finance Minister, in his financial
+statement, announced that the total cost of the war to Italy would
+amount to one hundred milliard lire. He added, however, that her share
+of the German indemnity would wipe out her foreign debt, while a
+progressive tax on all but small fortunes would meet her internal
+obligations. Cf. _Corriere della Sera_, July 11 and 12, 1919.
+
+[229] Cf. _Avanti_, July 19, 1919.
+
+[230] Shown in percentages, the rise in the cost of living was: United
+States, 220 per cent.; England, 240 per cent.; Switzerland, 257 per
+cent.; France, 368 per cent.; Italy, 481 per cent.
+
+[231] Enrico Ferri, on July 9, 1919. Cf. _La Stampa_, July 10, 1919.
+
+[232] At a later date the President reiterated the grounds of his
+decision. In his Columbus speech (September 4, 1919) he asserted that
+"Italy desired Fiume for strategic military reasons, which the League of
+Nations would make unnecessary." (_The New York Herald_ (Paris edition),
+September 6, 1919.) But the League did not render strategic precautions
+unnecessary to France.
+
+[233] _Corriere della Sera_, May 11, 1919.
+
+[234] _La Stampa_, July 16, 1919.
+
+[235] _Avanti_, April 27, 1919. Cf. _Le Temps_, April 28, 1919.
+
+[236] _Corriere della Sera_, August 9, 1919.
+
+[237] _Corriere della Sera_, September 3, 1919.
+
+[238] Quoted in _La Stampa_ of July 20, 1919.
+
+[239] _Ibidem_.
+
+[240] _Corriere d' Italia_, June 29, 1919.
+
+[241] Cf. _Modern Italy_, July 12, 1919 (page 298).
+
+[242] _Echo de Paris_, July 7, 1919.
+
+[243] Cf. "An Italian Exposé," published by _The Morning Post_, July 5,
+1919.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+JAPAN
+
+
+Among the solutions of the burning questions which exercised the
+ingenuity and tested the good faith of the leading Powers at the Peace
+Conference, none was more rapidly reached there, or more bitterly
+assailed outside, than those in which Japan was specially interested.
+The storm that began to rage as soon as the Supreme Council's decision
+on the Shantung issue became known did not soon subside. Far from that,
+it threatened for a time to swell into a veritable hurricane. This
+problem, like most of those which were submitted to the forum of the
+Conference, may be envisaged from either of two opposite angles of
+survey; from that of the future society of justice-loving nations, whose
+members are to forswear territorial aggrandizement, special economic
+privileges, and political sway in, or at the expense of, other
+countries; or from the traditional point of view, which has always
+prevailed in international politics and which cannot be better described
+than by Signor Salandra's well-known phrase "sacred egotism." Viewed in
+the former light, Japan's demand for Shantung was undoubtedly as much a
+stride backward as were those of the United States and France for the
+Monroe Doctrine and the Saar Valley respectively. But as the three Great
+Powers had set the example, Japan was resolved from the outset to rebel
+against any decree relegating her to the second-or third-class nations.
+The position of equality occupied by her government among the
+governments of other Great Powers did not extend to the Japanese nation
+among the other nations. But her statesmen refused to admit this
+artificial inferiority as a reason for descending another step in the
+international hierarchy and they invoked the principle of which Britain,
+France, and America had already taken advantage.
+
+The Supreme Council, like Janus of old, possessed two faces, one
+altruistic and the other egotistic, and, also like that son of Apollo,
+held a key in its right hand and a rod in its left. It applied to the
+various states, according to its own interest or convenience, the
+principles of the old or the new Covenant, and would fain have
+dispossessed Japan of the fruits of the campaign, and allotted to her
+the rôle of working without reward in the vineyard of the millennium,
+were it not that this policy was excluded by reasons of present
+expediency and previous commitments. The expediency was represented by
+President Wilson's determination to obtain, before returning to
+Washington, some kind of a compact that might be described as the
+constitution of the future society of nations, and by his belief that
+this instrument could not be obtained without Japan's adherence, which
+was dependent on her demand for Shantung being allowed. And the previous
+commitments were the secret compacts concluded by Japan with Britain,
+France, Russia, and Italy before the United States entered the war.
+
+Nippon's rôle in the war and the circumstances that shaped it are
+scarcely realized by the general public. They have been purposely thrust
+in the background. And yet a knowledge of them is essential to those who
+wish to understand the significance of the dispute about Shantung, which
+at bottom was the problem of Japan's international status. Before
+attempting to analyze them, however, it may not be amiss to remark that
+during the French press campaign conducted in the years 1915-16, with
+the object of determining the Tokio Cabinet to take part in the military
+operations in Europe, the question of motive was discussed with a degree
+of tactlessness which it is difficult to account for. It was affirmed,
+for example, that the Mikado's people would be overjoyed if the Allied
+governments vouchsafed them the honor of participating in the great
+civilizing crusade against the Central Empires. That was proclaimed to
+be such an enviable privilege that to pay for it no sacrifice of men or
+money would be exorbitant. Again, the degree to which Germany is a
+menace to Japan was another of the texts on which Entente publicists
+relied to scare Nippon into drastic action, as though she needed to be
+told by Europeans where her vital interests lay, from what quarters they
+were jeopardized, and how they might be safeguarded most successfully.
+So much for the question of tact and form. Japan has never accepted the
+doctrine of altruism in politics which her Western allies have so
+zealously preached. Until means have been devised and adopted for
+substituting moral for military force in the relations of state with
+state, the only reconstruction of the world in which the Japanese can
+believe is that which is based upon treaties and the pledged word. That
+is the principle which underlies the general policy and the present
+strivings of our Far Eastern ally.
+
+One of the characteristic traits of all Nippon's dealings with her
+neighbors is loyalty and trustworthiness. Her intercourse with Russia
+before and after the Manchurian campaign offers a shining example of all
+the qualities which one would postulate in a true-hearted neighbor and a
+stanch and chivalrous ally. I had an opportunity of watching the
+development of the relations between the two governments for many years
+before they quarreled, and subsequently down to 1914, and I can state
+that the praise lavished by the Tsar's Ministers on their Japanese
+colleagues was well deserved. And for that reason it may be taken as an
+axiom that whatever developments the present situation may bring forth,
+the Empire of Nippon will carry out all its engagements with scrupulous
+exactitude, in the spirit as well as the letter.
+
+To be quite frank, then, the Japanese are what we should term realists.
+Consequently their foreign policy is inspired by the maxims which
+actuated all nations down to the year 1914, and still move nearly all of
+them to-day. In fact, the only Powers that have fully and
+authoritatively repudiated them as yet are Bolshevist Russia, and to a
+large extent the United States. Holding thus to the old dispensation,
+Japan entered the war in response to a definite demand made by the
+British government. The day before Britain declared war against Germany
+the British Ambassador at Tokio officially inquired whether his
+government could count upon the active co-operation of the Mikado's
+forces in the campaign about to begin. On August 4th Baron Kato, having
+in the meanwhile consulted his colleagues, answered in the affirmative.
+Three days later another communication reached Tokio from London,
+requesting the _immediate_ co-operation of Japan, and on the following
+day it was promised. The motive for this haste was credibly asserted to
+be Britain's apprehension lest Germany should transfer Kiaochow to
+China, and reserve to herself, in virtue of Article V of the Convention
+of 1898, the right of securing after the war "a more suitable territory"
+in the Middle Empire or Republic. Thereupon they began operations which
+were at first restricted to the China seas, but were afterward extended
+to the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and finally to the Mediterranean. The
+only task that fell to their lot on land was that of capturing Kiaochow.
+But whatever they set their hands to they carried out thoroughly, and
+to the complete satisfaction of their European allies.
+
+For many years the people of Nippon have been wending slowly, but with
+tireless perseverance and unerring instinct, toward their far-off goal,
+which to the unbiased historian will seem not merely legitimate but
+praiseworthy. Their intercourse with Russia was the story of one long
+laborious endeavor to found a common concern which should enable Japan
+to make headway on her mission. Russia was just the kind of partner
+whose co-operation was especially welcome, seeing that it could be had
+without the hitches and set-backs attached to that of most other Great
+Powers. The Russians were never really intolerant in racial matters, nor
+dangerous in commercial rivalry. They intermarried freely with all the
+so-called inferior races and tribes in the Tsardom, and put all on an
+equal footing before the law. Twenty-three years ago I paid a visit to
+my friend General Tomitch, the military governor of Kars, and I found
+myself sitting at his table beside the Prefect of the city, who was a
+Mohammedan. The individual Russian is generally free from racial
+prejudices; he has no sense of the "yellow peril," and no objection to
+receive the Japanese as a comrade, a colleague, or a son-in-law.
+
+And the advances made by Ito and others would have been reciprocated by
+Witte and Lamsdorff were it not that the Tsar, interested in
+Bezobrazoff's Yalu venture, subordinated his policy to those vested
+interests, and compelled Japan to fight. The master-idea of the policy
+of Ito, with whom I had two interesting conversations on the subject,
+was to strike up a close friendship with the Tsardom, based on community
+of durable interests, and to bespeak Russia's help for the hour of storm
+and stress which one day might strike. The Tsar's government was
+inspired by analogous motives. Before the war was terminated I repaired
+to London on behalf of Russia, in order to propose to the Japanese
+government, in addition to the treaty of peace which was about to be
+discussed at Portsmouth, an offensive and defensive alliance, and to ask
+that Prince Ito be sent as first plenipotentiary, invested with full
+powers to conclude such a treaty.
+
+M. Izvolsky's policy toward Japan, frank and statesman-like, had an
+offensive and a defensive alliance for its intended culmination, and the
+treaties and conventions which he actually concluded with Viscount
+Motono, in drafting which I played a modest part, amounted almost to
+this. The Tsar's opposition to the concessions which represented
+Russia's share of the compromise was a tremendous obstacle, which only
+the threat of the Minister's resignation finally overcame. And
+Izvolsky's energy and insistence hastened the conclusion of a treaty
+between them to maintain and respect the _status quo_ in Manchuria, and,
+in case it was menaced, to concert with each other the measures they
+might deem necessary for the maintenance of the _status quo_. And it was
+no longer stipulated, as it had been before, that these measures must
+have a pacific character. They were prepared to go farther. And I may
+now reveal the fact that the treaty had a secret clause, providing for
+the action which Russia afterward took in Mongolia.
+
+These transactions one might term the first act of the international
+drama which is still proceeding. They indicate, if they did not shape,
+the mold in which the bronze of Japan's political program was cast. It
+necessarily differed from other politics, although the maxims underlying
+it were the same. Japan, having become a Great Power after her war with
+China, was slowly developing into a world Power, and hoped to establish
+her claim to that position one day. It was against that day that she
+would fain have acquired a puissant and trustworthy ally, and she left
+nothing undone to deserve the whole-hearted support of Russia. In the
+historic year of 1914, many months before the storm-cloud broke, the War
+Minister Sukhomlinoff transferred nearly all the garrisons from Siberia
+to Europe, because he had had assurances from Japan which warranted him
+in thus denuding the eastern border of troops. During the campaign, when
+the Russian offensive broke down and the armies of the enemy were
+driving the Tsar's troops like sheep before them, Japan hastened to the
+assistance of her neighbor, to whom she threw open her military
+arsenals, and many private establishments as well. And when the
+Petrograd Cabinet was no longer able to meet the financial liabilities
+incurred, the Mikado's advisers devised a generous arrangement on lines
+which brought both countries into still closer and more friendly
+relations.
+
+The most influential daily press organ in the Tsardom, the _Novoye
+Vremya_, wrote: "The war with Germany has supplied our Asiatic neighbor
+with an opportunity of proving the sincerity of her friendly assurances.
+She behaves not merely like a good friend, but like a stanch military
+ally.... In the interests of the future tranquil development of Japan a
+more active participation of the Japanese is requisite in the war of the
+nations against the world-beast of prey. An alliance with Russia for the
+attainment of this object would be an act of immense historic
+significance."[244]
+
+Ever since her entry into the community of progressive nations, Japan's
+main aspiration and striving has been to play a leading and a civilizing
+part in the Far East, and in especial to determine China by advice and
+organization to move into line with herself, adopt Western methods and
+apply them to Far-Eastern aims. And this might well seem a legitimate as
+well as a profitable policy, and a task as noble as most or those to
+which the world is wont to pay a tribute of high praise. It appeared all
+the more licit that the Powers of Europe, with the exception of Russia,
+had denied full political rights to the colored alien. He was placed in
+a category apart--an inferior class member of humanity.
+
+"In Japan, and as yet in Japan alone, do we find the Asiatic welcoming
+European culture, in which, if a tree may fairly be judged by its fruit,
+is to be found the best prospect for the human personal liberty, in due
+combination with restraints of law sufficient to, but not in excess of,
+the requirements of the general welfare. In this particular
+distinctiveness of characteristic, which has thus differentiated the
+receptivity of the Japanese from that of the continental Asiatic, we may
+perhaps see the influence of the insular environment that has permitted
+and favored the evolution of a strong national personality; and in the
+same condition we may not err in finding a promise of power to preserve
+and to propagate, by example and by influence, among those akin to her,
+the new policy which she has adopted, and by which she has profited,
+affording to them the example which she herself has found in the
+development of Eastern peoples."[245]
+
+Now that is exactly what the Japanese aimed at accomplishing. They were
+desirous of contributing to the intellectual and moral advance of the
+Chinese and other backward peoples of the Far East, in the same way as
+France is laudably desirous of aiding the Syrians, or Great Britain the
+Persians. And what is more, Japan undertook to uphold the principle of
+the open door, and generally to respect the legitimate interests of
+European peoples in the Far East.
+
+But the white races had economic designs of their own on China, and one
+of the preliminary conditions of their execution was that Japan's
+aspirations should be foiled. Witte opened the campaign by inaugurating
+the process of peaceful penetration, but his remarkable efforts were
+neutralized and defeated by his own sovereign. The Japanese, after the
+Manchurian campaign, which they had done everything possible to avoid,
+contrived wholly to eliminate Russian aggression from the Far East. The
+feat was arduous and the masterly way in which it was tackled and
+achieved sheds a luster on Japanese statesmanship as personified by
+Viscount Motono. The Tsardom, in lieu of a potential enemy, was
+transformed into a stanch and powerful friend and ally, on whom Nippon
+could, as she believed, rely against future aggressors. Russia came to
+stand toward her in the same political relationship as toward France.
+Japanese statesmen took the alliance with the Tsardom as a solid and
+durable postulate of their foreign policy.
+
+All at once the Tsardom fell to pieces like a house of cards, and the
+fragments that emerged from the ruins possessed neither the will nor the
+power to stand by their Far Eastern neighbors. The fruits of twelve
+years' statesmanship and heavy sacrifices were swept away by the Russian
+revolution, and Japan's diplomatic position was therefore worse beyond
+compare than that of the French Republic in July, 1917, because the
+latter was forthwith sustained by Great Britain and the United States,
+with such abundance of military and economic resources as made up in the
+long run for that of Russia. Japan, on the other hand, has as yet no
+substitute for her prostrate ally. She is still alone among Powers some
+of whom decline to recognize her equality, while others are ready to
+thwart her policy and disable her for the coming race.
+
+The Japanese are firm believers in the law of causality. Where they
+desire to reap, there they first sow. They invariably strive to deal
+with a situation while there is still time to modify it, and they take
+pains to render the means adequate to the end. Unlike the peoples of
+western Europe and the United States, the Japanese show a profound
+respect for the principles of authority and inequality, and reserve the
+higher functions in the community for men of the greatest ability and
+attainments. It is a fact, however, that individual liberty has made
+perceptible progress in the population, and is still growing, owing to
+the increase of economic well-being and the spread of general and
+technical education. But although socialism is likewise spreading fast,
+I feel inclined to think that in Japan a high grade of instruction and
+of social development on latter-day lines will be found compatible with
+that extraordinary cohesiveness to which the race owes the position
+which it occupies among the communities of the world. The soul of the
+individual Japanese may be said to float in an atmosphere of
+collectivity, which, while leaving his intellect intact, sways his
+sentiments and modifies his character by rendering him impressible to
+motives of an order which has the weal of the race for its object.
+
+Japan has borrowed what seemed to her leaders to be the best of
+everything in foreign countries. They analyzed the military, political,
+and industrial successes of their friends and enemies, satisfactorily
+explained and duly fructified them. They use the school as the seed-plot
+of the state, and inculcate conceptions there which the entire community
+endeavors later on to embody in acts and institutions. And what the
+elementary school has begun, the intermediate, the technical, and the
+high schools develop and perfect, aided by the press, which is
+encouraged by the state.
+
+Japan's ideal cannot be offhandedly condemned as immoral, pernicious, or
+illegitimate. Its partizans pertinently invoke every principle which
+their Allies applied to their own aims and strivings. And men of deeper
+insight than those who preside over the fortunes of the Entente to-day
+recognize that Europeans of high principles and discerning minds, who
+perceive the central issues, would, were they in the position of the
+Japanese statesmen, likewise bend their energies to the achievement of
+the same aims.
+
+The Japanese argue their case somewhat as follows:
+
+"We are determined to help China to put herself in line with ourselves,
+and to keep her from falling into anarchy. And no one can honestly deny
+our qualifications. We and they have very much in common, and we
+understand them as no Anglo-Saxon or other foreign people can. On the
+one hand our own past experience resembles that of the Middle Kingdom,
+and on the other our method of adapting ourselves to the new
+international conditions challenged and received the ungrudging
+admiration of a world disposed to be critical. The Peking treaties of
+May, 1915, between China and Japan, and the pristine drafts of them
+which were modified before signature, enable the outsider to form a
+fairly accurate opinion of Japan's economic and political program, which
+amounts to the application of a Far Eastern Monroe Doctrine.
+
+"What we seek to obtain in the Far East is what the Western Powers have
+secured throughout the remainder of the globe: the right to contribute
+to the moral and intellectual progress of our backward neighbors, and to
+profit by our exertions. China needs the help which we are admittedly
+able to bestow. To our mission no cogent objection has ever been
+offered. No Cabinet in Tokio has ever looked upon the Middle Realm as a
+possible colony for the Japanese. The notion is preposterous, seeing
+that China is already over-populated. What Japan sorely needs are
+sources whence to draw coal and iron for industrial enterprise. She also
+needs cotton and leather."
+
+In truth, the ever-ready command of these raw materials at their
+sources, which must be neither remote nor subject to potential enemies,
+is indispensable to the success of Japan's development. But for the
+moment the English-speaking nations have a veto upon them, in virtue of
+possession, and the embargo put by the United States government upon the
+export of steel during the war caused a profound emotion in Nippon. For
+the shipbuilding works there had increased in number from nine before
+the war to twelve in 1917, and to twenty-eight at the beginning of 1918,
+with one hundred slips capable of producing six hundred thousand tons of
+net register. The effect of that embargo was to shut down between 70 and
+80 per cent. of the shipbuilding works of the country, and to menace
+with extinction an industry which was bringing in immense profits.
+
+It was with these antecedents and aims that Japan appeared before the
+Conference in Paris and asked, not for something which she lacked
+before, but merely for the confirmation of what she already possessed by
+treaty. It must be admitted that she had damaged her cause by the manner
+in which that treaty had been obtained. To say that she had intimidated
+the Chinese, instead of coaxing them or bargaining with them, would be a
+truism. The fall of Tsingtao gave her a favorable opportunity, and she
+used and misused it unjustifiably. The demands in themselves were open
+to discussion and, if one weighs all the circumstances, would not
+deserve a classification different from some of those--the protection of
+minorities or the transit proviso, for example--imposed by the greater
+on the lesser nations at the Conference. But the mode in which they were
+pressed irritated the susceptible Chinese and belied the professions
+made by the Mikado's Ministers. The secrecy, too, with which the Tokio
+Cabinet endeavored to surround them warranted the worst construction.
+Yuan Shi Kai[246] regarded the procedure as a deadly insult to himself
+and his country. And the circumstance that the Japanese government
+failed either to foresee or to avoid this amazing psychological blunder
+lent color to the objections of those who questioned Japan's
+qualifications for the mission she had set herself. The wound inflicted
+on China by that exhibition of insolence will not soon heal. How it
+reacted may be inferred from the strenuous and well-calculated
+opposition of the Chinese delegation at the Conference.
+
+Nor was that all. In the summer of 1916 a free fight occurred between
+Chinese and Japanese soldiers in Cheng-cha-tun, the rights and wrongs of
+which were, as is usual in such cases, obscure. But the Okuma Cabinet,
+assuming that the Chinese were to blame, pounced upon the incident and
+made it the base of fresh demands to China,[247] two of which were
+manifestly excessive. That China would be better off than she is or is
+otherwise likely to become under Japanese guidance is in the highest
+degree probable. But in order that that guidance should be effective it
+must be accepted, and this can only be the consequence of such a policy
+of cordiality, patience, and magnanimity as was outlined by my friend,
+the late Viscount Motono.[248]
+
+At the Conference the policy of the Japanese delegates was clear-cut and
+coherent. It may be summarized as follows: the Japanese delegation
+decided to give its entire support to the Allies in all matters
+concerning the future relations of Germany and Russia, western Europe,
+the Balkans, the African colonies, as well as financial indemnities and
+reparations. The fate of the Samoan Archipelago must be determined in
+accord with Britain and the United States. New Guinea should be allotted
+to Australia. As the Marshall, Caroline, and Ladrone Islands, although
+of no intrinsic value, would constitute a danger in Germany's hands,
+they should be taken over by Japan. Tsingtao and the port of Kiaochow
+should belong to Japan, as well as the Tainan railway. Japan would
+co-operate with the Allies in maintaining order in Siberia, but no Power
+should arrogate to itself a preponderant voice in the matter of
+obtaining concessions or other interests there. Lastly, the principle of
+the open door was to be upheld in China, Japan being admittedly the
+Power which is the most interested in the establishment and maintenance
+of peace in the Far East.
+
+At the Conference, when the Kiaochow dispute came up for discussion, the
+Japanese attitude, according to their Anglo-Saxon and French colleagues,
+was calm and dignified, their language courteous, their arguments were
+put with studied moderation, and their resolve to have their treaty
+rights recognized was inflexible. Their case was simple enough, and
+under the old ordering unanswerable. The only question was whether it
+would be invalidated by the new dispensation. But as the United States
+had obtained recognition for its Monroe Doctrine, Britain for the
+supremacy of the sea, and France for the occupation of the Saar Valley
+and the suspension of the right of self-determination in the case of
+Austria, it was obvious that Japan had abundant and cogent arguments for
+her demands, which were that the Chinese territory once held by Germany,
+and since wrested from that Power by Japan, be formally retroceded to
+Japan, whose claim to it rested upon the right of conquest and also
+upon the faith of treaties which she had concluded with China. At the
+same time she expressly and spontaneously disclaimed the intention of
+keeping that territory for herself. Baron Makino said at the Peace
+Table:
+
+"The acquisition of territory belonging to one nation which it is the
+intention of the country acquiring it to exploit to its sole advantage
+is not conducive to amity or good-will." Japan, although by the fortune
+of war Germany's heir to Kiaochow, did not purpose retaining it for the
+remaining term of the lease; she had, in fact, already promised to
+restore it to China. She maintained, however, that the conditions of
+retrocession should form the subject of a general settlement between
+Tokio and Peking.
+
+The Chinese delegation, which worked vigorously and indefatigably and
+won over a considerable number of backers, argued that Kiaochow had
+ceased to belong to Germany on the day when China declared war on that
+state, inasmuch as all their treaties, including the lease of Kiaochow,
+were abrogated by that declaration, and the ownership of every rood of
+Chinese territory held by Germany reverted in law to China, and should
+therefore be handed over to her, and not to Japan. To this plea Baron
+Makino returned the answer that with the surrender of Tsingtao to Japan
+in 1914[249] the whole imperial German protectorates of Shantung had
+passed to that Power, China being still a neutral. Consequently the
+entry of China into the war in 1917 could not affect the status of the
+province which already belonged to Nippon by right of conquest. As a
+matter of alleged fact, this capture of the protectorates by the
+Japanese had been specially desired by the British government, in order
+to prevent Germany from ceding it to China. If that move meant
+anything, therefore, it meant that neither China nor Germany had or
+could have any hold on the territory once it was captured by Japan.
+Further, this conquest was effected at the cost of vast sums of money
+and two thousand Japanese lives.
+
+Nor was that all. In the year 1915[250] China signed an agreement with
+Japan, undertaking "to recognize all matters that may be agreed upon
+between the Japanese government and the German government respecting the
+disposition of all the rights, interests, and concessions which, in
+virtue of treaties or otherwise, Germany possesses _vis-à-vis_ China, in
+relation to the province of Shantung." This treaty, the Chinese
+delegates answered, was extorted by force. Japan, having vainly sought
+to obtain it by negotiations that lasted nearly four months, finally
+presented an ultimatum,[251] giving China forty-eight hours in which to
+accept it. She had no alternative. But at least she made it known to the
+world that she was being coerced. It was on the day on which that
+document was signed that the Japanese representative in Peking sent a
+spontaneous declaration to the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs,
+promising to return the leased territory to China on condition that all
+Kiaochow be opened as a commercial port, that a Japanese settlement be
+established, and also an international settlement, if the Powers desired
+it, and that an arrangement be made beforehand between the Chinese and
+Japanese governments with regard to "the disposal of German public
+establishments and populations, and with regard to other conditions and
+procedures."
+
+The Japanese further invoked another and later agreement, which was,
+they alleged, signed by the Chinese without demur.[252] This accord,
+coming after the entry of China into the war, was tantamount to the
+renunciation of any rights which China might have believed she possessed
+as a corollary of her belligerency. It also disposed, the Japanese
+argued, of her contention that the territory in question is
+indispensable and vital to her--a contention which Japan met with the
+promise to deliver it up--and which was invalidated by China's refusal
+to fight for it in the year 1914. This latter argument was controverted
+by the Chinese assertion that they were ready and willing to declare war
+against Germany at the outset, but that their co-operation was refused
+by the Entente, and subsequently by Japan. This allegation is credible,
+if we remember the eagerness exhibited by the British government that
+Japan should lose no time in co-operating with her allies, the
+representations made by the British Ambassador to Baron Kato on the
+subject,[253] and the alleged motive to prevent the retrocession of
+Shantung to China by the German government.
+
+The arguments of China and Japan were summarily put in the following
+questions by a delegate of each country: "Yes or no, does Kiaochow,
+whose population is exclusively Chinese, form an integral part of the
+Chinese state? Yes or no, was Kiaochow brutally occupied by the Kaiser
+in the teeth of right and justice and to the detriment of the peace of
+the Far East, and it may be of the world? Yes or no, did Japan enter the
+war against the aggressive imperialism of the German Empire, and for the
+purpose of arranging a lasting peace in the Far East? Yes or no, was
+Kiaochow captured by the English and Japanese troops in 1914 with the
+sole object of destroying a dangerous naval base? Yes or no, was China's
+co-operation against Germany, which was advocated and offered by
+President Yuan Shi Kai in August, 1914, refused at the instigation of
+Japan?"[254]
+
+The Japanese catechism ran thus: "Yes or no, was Kiaochow a German
+possession in the year 1914? Yes or no, was the world, including the
+United States, a consenting party to the occupation of that province by
+the Germans? Why did China, who to-day insists that that port is
+indispensable to her, cede it to Germany? Why in 1914 did she make no
+effort to recover it, but leave this task to the Japanese army? Further,
+who can maintain that juridically the last war abolished _ipso facto_
+all the cessions of territory previously effected? Turkey formerly ceded
+Cyprus to Great Britain. Will it be argued that this cession is
+abrogated and that Cyprus must return to Turkey directly and
+unconditionally? The Conference announced repeatedly that it took its
+stand on justice and the welfare of the peoples. It is in the name of
+the welfare of the peoples, as well as in the name of justice, that we
+assert our right to take over Kiaochow. The harvest to him whose hands
+soweth the seed."[255]
+
+If we add to all these conflicting data the circumstance that Great
+Britain, France, and Russia had undertaken[256] to support Japan's
+demands at the Conference, and that Italy had promised to raise no
+objection, we shall have a tolerable notion of the various factors of
+the Chino-Japanese dispute, and of its bearings on the Peace Treaty and
+on the principles of the Covenant. It was one of the many illustrations
+of the incompatibility of the Treaty and the Covenant, the respective
+scopes of which were radically and irreconcilably different. The
+Supreme Council had to adjudicate upon the matter from the point of view
+either of the Treaty or of the Covenant; as part of a vulgar bargain of
+the old, unregenerate days, or as an example of the self-renunciation of
+the new ethical system. The majority of the Council was pledged to the
+former way of contemplating it, and, having already promulgated a number
+of decrees running counter to the Covenant doctrine in favor of their
+own peoples, could not logically nor politically make an exception to
+the detriment of Japan.
+
+What actually happened at the Peace Table is still a secret, and
+President Wilson, who knows its nature, holds that it is in the best
+interests of humanity that it should so remain! The little that has as
+yet been disclosed comes mainly from State-Secretary Lansing's answers
+to the questions put by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
+America's second delegate, in answer to the questions with which he was
+there plied, affirmed that "President Wilson alone approved the Shantung
+decision, that the other members of the American delegation made no
+protest against it, and that President Wilson alone knows whether Japan
+has guaranteed to return Shantung to China."[257] Another eminent
+American, who claims to have been present when President Wilson's act
+was officially explained to the Chinese delegates, states that the
+President, disclosing to them his motives, pleaded that political
+exigencies, the menace that Japan would abandon the Conference, and the
+rumor that England herself might withdraw, had constrained him to accept
+the Shantung settlement in order to save the League.[258] Rumors appear
+to have played an undue part in the Conference, influencing the judgment
+or the decisions of the Supreme Council. The reader will remember that
+it was a rumor to the effect that the Italian government had already
+published a decree annexing Fiume that is alleged to have precipitated
+the quarrel between Mr. Wilson and the first Italian delegation. It is
+worth noting that the alleged menace that Japan would quit the
+Conference if her demands were rejected was not regarded by Secretary
+Lansing as serious. "Could Japan's signature to the League have been
+obtained without the Shantung decision?" he was asked. "I think so," he
+answered.
+
+The decision caused tremendous excitement among the Chinese and their
+numerous friends. At first they professed skepticism and maintained that
+there must be some misunderstanding, and finally they protested and
+refused to sign the Treaty. One of the American journals published in
+Paris wrote: "Shantung was at least a moral explosion. It blew down the
+front of the temple, and now everybody can see that behind the front
+there was a very busy market. The morals were the morals of a horse
+trade. If the muezzin were loud and constant in his calls to prayer, it
+probably was to drown the sound of the dickering in the market. There is
+no longer any obligation upon this nation to accept the Covenant as a
+moral document. It is not."[259]
+
+All that may be perfectly true, but it sounds odd that the discovery
+should not have been made until Japan's claim was admitted formally to
+take over Shantung, after she had solemnly promised to restore it to
+China. The Covenant was certainly transgressed long before this, and
+much more flagrantly than by President Wilson's indorsement of Japan's
+demand for the formal retrocession of Shantung. But by those infractions
+nobody seemed scandalized. _Quod licet Jovi non licet bovi._ Debts of
+gratitude had to be paid at the expense of the Covenant, and people
+closed their eyes or their lips. It was not until the Japanese asked for
+something which all her European allies considered to be her right that
+an outcry was raised and moral principles were invoked.
+
+The Japanese press was nowise jubilant over the finding of the Supreme
+Council. The journals of all parties argued that their country was
+receiving no more than had already been guaranteed to it by China, and
+ratified by the Allies before the Peace Conference met, and to have
+obtained what was already hers by rights of conquest and of treaties was
+anything but a triumph. What Japan desired was to have herself
+recognized practically, not merely in theory, as the nation which is the
+most nearly interested in China, and therefore deserving of a special
+status there. In other words, she aimed at the proclamation of something
+in the nature of a Far Eastern doctrine analogous to that of Monroe. As
+priority of interest had been conceded to her by the Ishii-Lansing
+Agreement with the United States, it was in this sense that her press
+was fain to construe the clause respecting non-interference with
+"regional understandings."
+
+That policy is open. The principles underlying it, always tenable, were
+never more so than since the Peace Conference set the Great Powers to
+direct the lesser states. Moreover, Japan, it is argued, knows by
+experience that China has always been a temptation to the Western
+peoples. They sent expeditions to fight her and divided her territory
+into zones of influence, although China was never guilty of an
+aggressive attitude toward them, as she was toward Japan. They were
+actuated by land greed and all that that implies, and if China were
+abandoned to her own resources to-morrow she would surely fall a prey to
+her Western protectors. In this connection they point to an incident
+which took place during the Conference, when Signor Tittoni demanded
+that Italy should receive the Austrian concession in Tientsin, which
+adjoins the Italian concession. But Viscount Chinda protested and the
+demand was ruled out. To sum up, the broad maxim underlying Japan's
+policy as defined by her own representatives is that in the resettlement
+of the world the principle adopted, whether the old or the new, shall be
+applied fairly and impartially at least to all the Great Powers.
+
+Every world conflict has marked the close of one epoch and the opening
+of another. Into the melting-pot on the fire kindled by the war many
+momentous problems have been flung, any one of which would have sufficed
+to bring about a new political, economic, and social constellation.
+Japan's advance along the road of progress is one of these far-ranging
+innovations. She became a Great Power in the wars against China and
+Russia, and is qualifying for the part of a World Power to-day. And her
+statesmen affirm that in order to achieve her purpose she will recoil
+from no sacrifice except those of honor and of truth.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[244] _Novoye Vremya_, June 13-26, 1915.
+
+[245] Cf. _The Problem of Asia_ (Capt. A.T. Mahan), pp. 150-151.
+
+[246] The late President of the Chinese Republic.
+
+[247] These demands were (1) an apology from the Chinese authorities;
+(2) an indemnity for the killed and wounded; (3) the policing of certain
+districts of Manchuria by the Japanese; and (4) the employment of
+Japanese officers to train Chinese troops in Manchuria.
+
+[248] Minister of Foreign Affairs. He repudiated his predecessor's
+policy.
+
+[249] November 8th.
+
+[250] May 25, 1915.
+
+[251] On May 6, 1915.
+
+[252] On September 24, 1918.
+
+[253] On August 7, 1914.
+
+[254] Cf. _Le Matin_, April 25, 1919.
+
+[255] _Le Matin_, April 23, 1919.
+
+[256] "His Majesty's Government accede with pleasure to the requests of
+the Japanese Government for assurances that they will support Japan's
+claims in regard to the disposal of Germany's rights in Shantung, and
+possessions in islands north of the Equator, on the occasion of a Peace
+Conference, it being understood that the Japanese Government will, in
+the event of a peace settlement, treat in the same spirit Great
+Britain's claims to German islands south of the Equator." (Signed)
+Conyngham Greene, British Ambassador, Tokio, February 16, 1917. France
+gave a similar assurance in writing on March 1, 1917, and the Russian
+government had made a like declaration on February 20, 1917.
+
+[257] As a matter of fact, the entire world knew and knows that she had
+guaranteed the retrocession. Baron Makino declared it at the Conference.
+Cf. _The_ (London) _Times_, February 13, 1919; also on May 5, 1919; and
+Viscount Uchida confirmed it on May 17, 1919. It had also been stated in
+the Japanese ultimatum to Germany, August 15, 1914, and repeated by
+Viscount Uchida at the beginning of August, 1919.
+
+[258] Mr. Thomas Millard, some of whose letters were published by _The
+New York Times_. Cf. _Le Temps_, July 29, 1919.
+
+[259] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 20, 1919.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+ATTITUDE TOWARD RUSSIA
+
+
+In their dealings with Russia the principal plenipotentiaries
+consistently displayed the qualities and employed the standards, maxims,
+and methods which had stood them in good stead as parliamentary
+politicians. The betterment of the world was an idea which took a
+separate position in their minds, quite apart from the other political
+ideas with which they usually operated. Overflowing with verbal
+altruism, they first made sure of the political and economic interests
+of their own countries, safeguarding or extending these sources of
+power, after which they proceeded to try their novel experiment on
+communities which they could coerce into obedience. Hence the aversion
+and opposition which they encountered among all the nations which had to
+submit to the yoke, and more especially among the Russians.
+
+Russia's opposition, widespread and deep-rooted, is natural, and history
+will probably add that it was justified. It starts from the assumption,
+which there is no gainsaying, that the Conference was convoked to make
+peace between the belligerents and that whatever territorial changes it
+might introduce must be restricted to the countries of the defeated
+peoples. From all "disannexations" not only the Allies' territories, but
+those of neutrals, were to be exempted. Repudiate this principle and the
+demands of Ireland, Egypt, India to the benefits of self-determination
+became unanswerable. Belgium's claim to Dutch Limburg and other
+territorial oddments must likewise be allowed. Indeed, the plea actually
+put forward against these was that the Conference was incompetent to
+touch any territory actually possessed by either neutral or Allied
+states. Ireland, Egypt, and Dutch Limburg Were all domestic matters with
+which the Conference had no concern.
+
+Despite this fundamental principle Russia, the whilom Ally, without
+whose superhuman efforts and heroic sacrifices her partners would have
+been pulverized, was tacitly relegated to the category of hostile and
+defeated peoples, and many of her provinces lopped off arbitrarily and
+without appeal. None of her representatives was convoked or consulted on
+the subject, although all of them, Bolshevist and anti-Bolshevist, were
+at one in their resistance to foreign dictation.
+
+The Conference repeatedly disclaimed any intention of meddling in the
+internal affairs of any other state, and the Irish, the Egyptian, and
+several other analogous problems were for the purposes of the Conference
+included in this category. On what intelligible grounds, then, were the
+Finnish, the Lettish, the Esthonian, the Georgian, the Ukrainian
+problems excluded from it? One cannot conceive a more flagrant violation
+of the sovereignty of a state than the severance and disposal of its
+territorial possessions against its will. It is a frankly hostile act,
+and as such was rightly limited by the Conference to enemy countries.
+Why, then, was it extended to the ex-Ally? Is it not clear that if
+reconstituted Russia should regard the Allied states as enemies and
+choose the potential enemies of these as its friends, it will be
+legitimately applying the principles laid down by the Allies themselves?
+No expert in international law and no person of average common sense
+will seriously maintain that any of the decisions reached in Paris are
+binding on the Russia of the future. No problem which concerns two
+equal parties can be rightfully decided by only one of them. The
+Conference which declared itself incompetent to impose on Holland the
+cession to Belgium even of a small strip of territory on one of the
+banks of the Belgian river Scheldt cannot be deemed authorized to sign
+away vast provinces that belonged to Russia. Here the plea of the
+self-determination of peoples possesses just as much or as little
+cogency as in the case of Ireland and Egypt.
+
+President Wilson and Mr. Lloyd George had inaugurated their East
+European policy by publicly proclaiming that Russia was the key to the
+world situation, and that the peace would be no peace so long as her
+hundred and fifty million inhabitants were left floundering in chaotic
+confusion, under the upas shade of Bolshevism. They had also held out
+hopes to their great ex-ally of efficient help and practical counsel.
+And there ended what may be termed the constructive side of their
+conceptions.
+
+It was followed by no coherent action. Discourses, promises, maneuvers,
+and counter-maneuvers were continuous and bewildering, but of systematic
+policy there was none. Statesmanship in the higher sense of the word was
+absent from every decision the delegates took and from every suggestion
+they proffered. Nor was it only by omission that they sinned. Their
+invincible turn for circuitous methods, to which severer critics give a
+less sonorous name, was manifested _ad nauseam_. They worked out cunning
+little schemes which it was hard to distinguish from intrigues, and
+which, if they had not been foiled in time, would have made matters even
+worse than they are. From the outset the British government was for
+summoning Bolshevist delegates to the Conference. A note to this effect
+was sent by the London Foreign Office to the Allied governments about a
+fortnight before the delegates began their work of making peace. But
+the suggestion was withdrawn at the instance of the French, who doubted
+whether the services of systematic lawbreakers would materially conduce
+to the establishment of a new society of law-abiding states. Soon
+afterward another scheme cropped up, this time for the appointment of an
+Inter-Allied committee to watch over Russia's destinies and serve as a
+sort of board of Providence. The representatives of the anti-Bolshevist
+governments resented this notion bitterly. They remarked that they could
+not be fairly asked to respect decisions imposed on them exactly as
+though they were vanquished enemies like the Germans. The British and
+American delegates were swayed in their views mainly by the assumptions
+that all central Russia was in the power of Lenin; that his army was
+well disciplined and powerful; that he might contrive to hold the reins
+of government and maintain anarchism indefinitely, and that the
+so-called constructive elements were inclined toward reaction.
+
+In other words, the delegates accepted two sets of premises, from which
+they drew two wholly different sets of conclusions. Now they felt
+impelled to act on the one, now on the other, but they could never make
+up their minds to carry out either. They agreed that Bolshevism is a
+potent solvent of society, fraught with peril to all organized
+communities, yet they could not resolve to use joint action to extirpate
+it.[260] They recognized that so long as it lasted there was no hope of
+establishing a community of nations, but they discarded military
+intervention on grounds of their own internal policy, and because it ran
+counter to the principle of self-determination. Over against that
+principle, however, one had to set the circumstance that they were
+already intermeddling in Russian affairs in Archangel, Murmansk,
+Odessa, and elsewhere, and that they ended by creating a new state and
+government in northwestern Russia, against which Kolchak and Denikin
+vehemently protested.
+
+In mitigation of judgment it is only fair to take into account the
+tremendous difficulties that faced them; their unfamiliarity with the
+Russian problem; the want of a touchstone by which to test the
+overwhelming mass of conflicting information which poured in upon them;
+their constitutional lack of moral courage, and the circumstance that
+they were striving to reconcile contradictories. Without chart or
+compass they drifted into strange and sterile courses, beginning with
+the Prinkipo incident and ending with the written examination to which
+they naïvely subjected Kolchak in order to legalize international
+relations, which could not truly be described as either war or peace.
+Neither the causes of Bolshevism in its morbid manifestations nor the
+unformulated ideas underlying whatever positive aspect it may be
+supposed to possess, nor the conditions governing its slow but
+perceptible evolution, were so much as glanced at, much less studied, by
+the statesmen who blithely set about dealing with it now by military
+force, now by economic pressure, and fitfully by tentative forbearance
+and hints to its leaders of forthcoming recognition.
+
+One cannot thus play fast and loose with the destinies of a community
+composed of one hundred and fifty million people whose members are but
+slackly linked together by a few tenuous social bonds, without
+forfeiting the right to offer them real guidance. And a blind man is a
+poor guide to those who can see. Alone the Americans were equipped with
+carefully tabulated statistics and huge masses of facts which they
+poured out as lavishly as coal-heavers hurl the contents of their sacks
+into the cellar. But they put them to no practical use. Losing
+themselves in a labyrinth of details, they failed to get a
+comprehensive view of the whole. The other delegations lacked both data
+and general ideas. And all the Allies were destitute of a powerful army
+in the East, and therefore of the means of asserting the authority which
+they assumed.
+
+They one and all dealt in vague theories and deceptive analogies, paying
+little heed to the ever-shifting necessities of time, place, and
+peoples, and indeed to the only conditions under which any new maxims
+could be fruitfully applied. And even such rules as they laid down were
+restricted and modified in accordance with their own countries'
+interests or their unavowed aims, without specific warrant or
+explanation. No account was taken of the historical needs or aspirations
+of the people for whom they were legislating, as though all nations were
+of the same age, capable of the same degree of culture, and impressible
+to identical motives. It never seemed to have crossed their minds that
+races and peoples, like individuals, have a soul, or that what is meat
+to one may be poison to another.
+
+One of the most Ententophil and moderate press organs in France put the
+matter forcibly and plainly as follows: "The governments of Washington
+and of London are aware that we are immutably attached to the alliance
+with them. But we owe them the truth. Far too often they make a bad
+choice of the agents whose business it is to keep them informed, and
+they affect too much disdain for friendly suggestions which emanate from
+any other source. American agents, in particular, civil as well as
+military, explore Europe much as their forebears 'prospected' the Far
+West, and they look upon the most ancient nations of Europe as Iroquois,
+Comanches, or Aztecs. They are astounded at not finding everything on
+the old Continent as in New York or Chicago, and they set to work to
+reform Europe according to the rules in force in Oklahoma or Colorado.
+Now we venture respectfully to point out to them that methods differ
+with countries. In the United States the Colonists were wont to set fire
+to the forests in order to clear and fertilize the land. Certain
+American agents recommend the employment in Europe of an analogous
+procedure in political matters. They rejoice to behold the Russian and
+Hungarian forests burst into flame. In Lenin, Trotzky, Bela Kuhn, they
+appreciate useful pioneers of the new civilization. We crave their
+permission to view these things from another side. In old Europe one
+cannot set fire to the forests without at the same time burning villages
+and cities."[261]
+
+Before and during the armistice I was in almost constant touch with all
+Russian parties within the country and without, and received detailed
+accounts of the changing conditions of the people, which, although
+conflicting in many details, enabled me to form a tolerably correct
+picture of the trend of things and to forecast what was coming.
+
+Among other communications I received proposals from Moscow with the
+request that I should present them to one of the British delegates, who
+was supposed to be then taking an active interest, or at any rate
+playing a prominent part, in the reconstruction of Russia, less for her
+own sake than for that of the general peace. But as it chanced, the
+eminent statesman lacked the leisure to take cognizance of the proposal,
+the object of which was to hit upon such a _modus vivendi_ with Russia
+as would enable her united peoples to enter upon a normal course of
+national existence without further delay. Incidentally it would have put
+an end to certain conversations then going forward with a view to a
+friendly understanding between Russia and Germany. It would also, I had
+reason to believe, have divided the speculative Bolshevist group from
+the extreme bloodthirsty faction, produced a complete schism in the
+party, and secured an armistice which would have prevented the Allies'
+subsequent defeats at Murmansk, Archangel, and Odessa. Truth prompts me
+to add that these desirable by-results, although held out as inducements
+and characterized as readily attainable, were guaranteed only by the
+unofficial pledge of men whose good faith was notoriously doubtful.
+
+The document submitted to me is worth summarizing. It contained a lucid,
+many-sided, and plausible account of the Russian situation. Among other
+things, it was a confession of the enormity of the crimes perpetrated,
+on both sides, it said, which it ascribed largely to the brutalizing
+effects of the World War, waged under disastrous conditions unknown in
+other lands. Myriads of practically unarmed men had been exposed during
+the campaign to wholesale slaughter, or left to die in slow agonies
+where they fell, or were killed off by famine and disease, for the
+triumph of a cause which they never understood, but had recently been
+told was that of foreign capitalists. In the demoralization that ensued
+all restraints fell away. The entire social fabric, from groundwork to
+summit, was rent, and society, convulsed with bestial passions, tore its
+own members to pieces. Russia ran amuck among the nations. That was the
+height of war frenzy. Since then, the document went on, passion had
+abated sensibly and a number of well-intentioned men who had been swept
+onward by the current were fast coming to their senses, while others
+were already sane, eager to stem it and anxious for moral sympathy from
+outside.
+
+From out of the revolutionary welter, the _exposé_ continued, certain
+hopeful phenomena had emerged symptomatic of a new spirit. Conditions
+conducive to equality existed, although real equality was still a
+somewhat remote ideal. But the tendencies over the whole sphere of
+Russian social, moral, and political life had undergone remarkable and
+invigorating changes in the direction of "reasonable democracy." Many
+wholesome reforms had been attempted, and some were partially realized,
+especially in elementary instruction, which was being spread clumsily,
+no doubt, as yet, but extensively and equally, being absolutely
+gratuitous.[262]
+
+Various other so-called ameliorations were enumerated in this obviously
+partial _exposé_, which was followed by an apology for certain prominent
+individuals, who, having been swept off their feet by the revolutionary
+floods, would gladly get back to firm land and help to extricate the
+nation from the Serbonian bog in which it was sinking. They admitted a
+share of the responsibility for having set in motion a vast juggernaut
+chariot, which, however, they had arrested, but hoped to expiate past
+errors by future zeal. At the same time they urged that it was not they
+who had demoralized the army or abolished the death penalty or thrown
+open the sluice-gates to anarchist floods. On the contrary, they claimed
+to have reorganized the national forces, reintroduced the severest
+discipline ever known, appointed experienced officers, and restored
+capital punishment. Nor was it they, but their predecessors, they added,
+who had ruined the transport service of the country and caused the food
+scarcity.
+
+These individuals would, it was said, welcome peace and friendship with
+the Entente, and give particularly favorable consideration to any
+proposal coming from the English-speaking peoples, in whom they were
+disposed to place confidence under certain simple conditions. The need
+for these conditions would not be gainsaid by the British and American
+governments if they recalled to mind the treatment which they had
+theretofore meted out to the Russian people. At that moment no Russian
+of any party regarded or could regard the Allies without grounded
+suspicions, for while repudiating interference in domestic affairs, the
+French, Americans, and British were striving hard to influence every
+party in Russia, and were even believed to harbor designs on certain
+provinces, such as the Caucasus and Siberia. Color was imparted to these
+misgivings by the circumstance that the Allied governments were openly
+countenancing the dismemberment of the country by detaching non-Russian
+and even Russian elements from the main body. It behooved the Allies to
+dissipate this mistrust by issuing a statement of their policy in
+unmistakable terms, repudiating schemes for territorial gains,
+renouncing interference in domestic affairs and complicity in the work
+of disintegrating the country. Russia and her affairs must be left to
+Russians, who would not grudge economic concessions as a reasonable
+_quid pro quo_.
+
+The proposal further insisted that the declaration of policy should be
+at once followed by the despatch of two or three well-known persons
+acquainted with Russia and Russian affairs, and enjoying the confidence
+of European peoples, to inquire into the conditions of the country and
+make an exhaustive report. This mission, it was added, need not be
+official, it might be intrusted to individuals unattached to any
+government.
+
+If a satisfactory answer to this proposal were returned within a
+fortnight, an armistice and suspension of the secret _pourparlers_ with
+Germany would, I was told, have followed. That this compact would have
+led to a settlement of the Russian problems is more than any one,
+however well informed, could vouch for, but I had some grounds for
+believing the move to be genuine and the promises overdone. No
+reasonable motive suggested itself for a vulgar hoax. Moreover, the
+overture disclosed two important facts, one of which was known at the
+time only to the Bolshevist government--namely, that secret
+_pourparlers_ were going forward between Berlin and Moscow for the
+purpose of arriving at a workable understanding between the two
+governments, and that the Allied troops at Odessa, Archangel, and
+Murmansk were in a wretched plight and in direr need of an armistice
+than the Bolsheviki.[263]
+
+I mentioned the matter summarily to one of the delegates, who evinced a
+certain interest in it and promised to discuss it at length later on
+with a view to action. Another to whom I unfolded it later thought it
+would be well if I myself started, together with two or three others,
+for Moscow, Petrograd, Ekaterinodar, and other places, and reported on
+the situation. But weeks went by and nothing was done.[264]
+
+I had interesting talks with some influential delegates on the eve of
+the invitation issued to all _de facto_ governments of Russia to
+forgather at Prinkipo for a symposium. They admitted frankly at the time
+that they had no policy and were groping in the dark, and one of them
+held to the dogma that no light from outside was to be expected. They
+gave me the impression that underlying the impending summons was the
+conviction that Bolshevism, divested of its frenzied manifestations, was
+a rough and ready government calumniously blackened by unscrupulous
+enemies, criminal perhaps in its outbursts, but suited in its feasible
+aims to the peculiar needs of a peculiar people, and therefore as worthy
+of being recognized as any of the others. It was urged that it had
+already lasted a considerable time without provoking a counter-movement
+worthy of the name; that the stories circulating about the horrors of
+which it was guilty were demonstrably exaggerated; that many of the
+bloody atrocities were to be ascribed to crazy individuals on both
+sides; that the witnesses against Lenin were partial and untrustworthy;
+that something should be done without delay to solve a pressing problem,
+and that the Conference could think of nothing better, nor, in fact, of
+any alternative.
+
+To me the principal scheme seemed a sinister mistake, both in form and
+in substance. In form, because it nullified the motives which determined
+the help given to the Greeks, Poles, and Serbs, who were being urged to
+crush the Bolshevists, and left the Allies without good grounds for
+keeping their own troops in Archangel, Odessa, and northern Russia to
+stop the onward march of Bolshevism. Some governments had publicly
+stigmatized the Bolshevists as cutthroats; one had pledged itself never
+to have relations with them, but the Prinkipo invitation bespoke a
+resolve to cancel these judgments and declarations and change their tack
+as an improvement on doing nothing at all. The scheme was also an error
+in substance, because the sole motive that could warrant it was the hope
+of reconciling the warring parties. And that hope was doomed to
+disappointment from the outset.
+
+According to the Prinkipo project, which was attributed to President
+Wilson,[265] an invitation was to be issued to all organized groups
+exercising or attempting to exercise political authority or military
+control in Siberia and northern Russia, to send representatives to
+confer with the delegates of the Allied and Associated Powers on
+Prince's Islands. It is difficult to discuss the expedient seriously.
+One feels like a member of the little people of yore, who are reported
+to have consulted an oracle to ascertain what they must do to keep from
+laughing during certain debates on public affairs. It exposed its
+ingenuous authors to the ridicule of the world and made it clear to the
+dullest apprehension that from that quarter, at any rate, the Russian
+people, as a whole, must expect neither light nor leading, nor
+intelligent appreciation of their terrible plight. There is a sphere of
+influence in the human intellect between the reason and the imagination,
+the boundary line of which is shadowy. That sphere would seem to be the
+source whence some of the most extraordinary notions creep into the
+minds of men who have suddenly come into a position of power which they
+are not qualified to wield--the _nouveaux puissants_ of the world of
+politics.
+
+To the credit of the Supreme Council it never let offended dignity stand
+between itself and the triumph of any of the various causes which it
+successively took in hand. Time and again it had been addressed by the
+Russian Bolshevist government in the most opprobrious terms, and accused
+not merely of clothing political expediency in the garb of spurious
+idealism, but of giving the fore place in political life to sordid
+interests, over which a cloak of humanitarianism had been deftly thrown.
+One official missive from the Bolshevist government to President Wilson
+is worth quoting from:[266] "We should like to learn with more precision
+how you conceive the Society of Nations? When you insist on the
+independence of Belgium, of Serbia, of Poland, you surely mean that the
+masses of the people are everywhere to take over the administration of
+the country. But it is odd that you did not also require the
+emancipation of Ireland, of Egypt, of India, and of the Philippines....
+
+"As we concluded peace with the German Kaiser, for whom you have no more
+consideration than we have for you, so we are minded to make peace with
+you. We propose, therefore, the discussion, in concert with our allies,
+of the following questions: (1) Are the French and English governments
+ready to give up exacting the blood of the Russian people if this people
+consent to pay them ransom and to compensate them in that way? (2) If
+the answer is in the affirmative, what ransom would the Allies want
+(railway concessions, gold mines, or territories)?
+
+"We also look forward to your telling us exactly whether the future
+Society of Nations will be a joint stock enterprise for the exploitation
+of Russia, and in particular--as your French allies require--for forcing
+Russia to refund the milliards which their bankers furnished to the
+Tsarist government, or whether the Society of Nations will be something
+different...."
+
+As soon as the Prinkipo motion was passed by the delegates I was
+informed by telephone, and I lost no time in communicating the tidings
+to Russia's official representatives in Paris. The plan astounded them.
+They could hardly believe that, while hopefully negotiating with the
+anti-Bolshevists, the Conference was desirous at the same time of
+opening _pourparlers_ with the Leninists, between whom and them
+antagonism was not merely political, but personal and vindictive, like
+that of two Albanians in a blood feud. I suggested that the scheme
+should be thwarted at its inception, and that for this purpose I should
+be authorized by the representatives of the four[267] constructive
+governments in Russia to make known their decision. I was accordingly
+empowered to announce to the world that they would categorically refuse
+to send any representatives to confer with the assassins of their
+kinsmen and the destroyers of their country, and that under no
+circumstances would they swerve from that attitude. Having received the
+authorization, I cabled to the United States and Britain that the
+projected meeting would come to naught, owing to the refusal of all
+constructive elements to agree to any compromise with the Bolsheviki;
+that in the opinion of Russia's representatives in Paris the advance
+made by the plenipotentiaries would strengthen the Bolshevist movement,
+render the civil war more merciless than before, and raise up formidable
+difficulties to the establishment of the League of Nations.
+
+But the plenipotentiaries did not yet give up their cause as lost. By
+way of "saving their face," they unofficially approached the Russian
+Ministers in Paris, whom they had not deigned to consult on the subject
+before making the plunge, and exhorted them to give at least a formal
+assent to the proposal, which would commit them to nothing and would
+enable them to withdraw without loss of dignity. They, on their part,
+undertook to smooth the road to the best of their ability. Thus it would
+be unnecessary, they explained, for the Ministers of the constructive
+governments or their substitutes to come into contact with the slayers
+of their kindred; they would occupy different wings of the hotel at
+Prinkipo, and never meet their adversaries. The delegates would see to
+that. "Then why should we go there at all if discussion be superfluous?"
+asked the Russians. "Because the Allied governments desire to ascertain
+the condition of Russia and your conception of the measures that would
+contribute to ameliorate it," was the reply. "Prince's Islands is not
+the right place to study the Russian situation, nor is it reasonable to
+expect us to journey thither in order to tell subordinates, who have no
+knowledge of our country, what we can tell them and their principals in
+Paris in greater detail and with confirmatory documents. Moreover, the
+delegates you have appointed have no qualification to judge of Russia's
+plight and potentialities. They know neither the country nor its
+language nor its people nor its politics, yet you want us to travel all
+the way to Turkey to tell them what we think, in order that they should
+return from Turkey to Paris and report to your Ministers what we said
+and what we could have unfolded directly to the Ministers themselves
+long ago and are ready to propound to them to-day or to-morrow.
+
+"The project is puerile and your tactics are baleful. Your Ministers
+branded the Bolshevists as criminals, and the French government publicly
+announced that it would enter into no relations with them. In spite of
+that, all the Allied governments have now offered to enter into
+relations with them. Now you admit that you made a slip, and you promise
+to correct it if only we consent to save your face and go on a
+wild-goose chase to Prinkipo. But for us that journey would be a
+recantation of our principles. That is why we are unable to make it."
+
+The Prinkipo incident, which began in the region of high politics, ended
+in comedy. A number of more or less witty epigrams were coined at the
+expense of the plenipotentiaries, the scheme, set in a stronger light
+than it was meant to endure, assumed a grotesque shape, and its
+promoters strove to consign it as best they could to oblivion. But the
+Sphinx question of Russia's future remained, and the penalties for
+failure to solve it aright waxed more and more deterrent. The supreme
+arbiters had cognizance of them, had, in fact, enumerated them when
+proclaiming the impossibility of establishing a durable peace or a solid
+League of Nations as long as Russia continued to be a prey to anarchy.
+But even with the prizes and penalties before their eyes to entice and
+spur them, they proved unequal to the task of devising an intelligent
+policy. Fitful and incoherent, their efforts were either incapable of
+being realized or, when feasible, were mischievous. Thus, by degrees,
+they hardened the great Slav nation against the Entente.
+
+The reader will be prepared to learn that the overtures made to the
+Bolsheviki kindled the anger of the patriotic Russians at home, who had
+been looking to the Western nations for salvation and making veritable
+holocausts in order to merit it. Every observer could perceive the
+repercussion of this sentiment in Paris, and I received ample proofs of
+it from Siberia. There the leaders and the population unhesitatingly
+turned for assistance to Japan. For this there were excellent reasons.
+The only government which throughout the war knew its own mind and
+pursued a consistent and an intelligible policy toward Russia was that
+of Tokio. This point is worth making at a time when Japan is regarded as
+a Laodicean convert to the invigorating ideas of the Western peoples, at
+heart a backslider and a potential schismatic. She is charged with
+making interest the mainspring of her action in her intercourse with
+other nations. The charge is true. Only a Candide would expect to see
+her moved by altruism and self-denial, in a company which penalizes
+these virtues. Community of interests is the link that binds Japan to
+Britain. A like bond had subsisted between her and Tsarist Russia. I
+helped to create it. Her statesmen, who have no taste for sonorous
+phraseology, did not think it necessary to give it a more fashionable
+name. This did not prevent the Japanese from being chivalrously loyal to
+their allies under the strain of powerful temptations, true to the
+spirit and the letter of their engagements. But although they made no
+pretense to lofty purpose, their political maxims differ nowise from
+those of the great European states, whose territorial, economic, and
+military interests have been religiously safeguarded by the Treaty of
+Versailles. True, the statesmen of Tokio shrink from the hybrid
+combination of two contradictions linked together by a sentimental
+fallacy. Their unpopularity among Anglo-Saxons is the result of
+speculations about their future intentions; in other words, they are
+being punished, as certain of the delegates at the Conference have been
+eulogized, not for what they actually did, but for what it is assumed
+they are desirous of achieving. Toward Russia they played the same game
+that their allies were playing there and in Europe, only more frankly
+and systematically. They applied the two principal maxims which lie at
+the root of international politics to-day--_do ut des_, and the nation
+that is capable of leading others has the right and the duty to lead
+them. And they established a valuable reputation for fulfilling their
+compacts conscientiously. Nippon, then, would have helped her Russian
+neighbors, and she expected to be helped by them in return. Have not the
+Allies, she asked, compelled Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Jugoslavia to
+pay them in cash for their emancipation?
+
+Russians, who have no color prejudices, hit it off with the Japanese, by
+whom they are liked in return. That the two peoples should feel drawn to
+each other politically is, therefore, natural, and that they will strike
+up economic agreements in the future seems to many inevitable and
+legitimate. One such agreement was on the point of being signed between
+them and the anti-Bolshevists of Omsk immediately after, and in
+consequence of, the Allies' ill-considered invitation to Lenin and
+Trotzky to delegate representatives to Prinkipo. This convention, I have
+reason to believe, was actually drafted, and was about to be signed. And
+the adverse influence that suddenly made itself felt and hindered the
+compact came not from Russia, but from western Europe. It would be
+unfruitful to dwell further on this matter here, beyond recording the
+belief of many Russians that the zeal of the English-speaking peoples
+for the well-being of Siberia, where they intend to maintain troops
+after having withdrawn them from Europe, is the counter-move to Japan's
+capacity and wish to co-operate with the population of that rich
+country. This assumption may be groundless, but it will surprise only
+those who fail to note how often the flag of principle is unfurled over
+economic interests.
+
+The delegates were not all discouraged by their discomfiture over the
+Prinkipo project. Some of them still hankered after an agreement with
+the Bolshevists which would warrant them in including the Russian
+problem among the tasks provisionally achieved. President Wilson
+despatched secret envoys to Moscow to strike up an accord with
+Lenin,[268] but although the terms which Mr. Bullitt obtained were those
+which had in advance been declared satisfactory, he drew back as soon as
+they were agreed to. And he assigned no reason for this change of
+attitude. Whether the brightening of the prospects of Kolchak and
+Denikin had modified his judgment on the question of expediency must
+remain a matter of conjecture. It is hardly necessary, however, to point
+out once more that this sudden improvisation of schemes which were
+abandoned again at the last moment tended to lower the not particularly
+high estimate set by the ethnic wards of the Anglo-Saxon peoples on the
+moral guidance of their self-constituted guardians.
+
+An ardent champion of the Allied nations in France wrote: "We have never
+had a Russian policy which was all of one piece. We have never
+synthetized any but contradictory conceptions. This is so true that one
+may safely affirm that if Russian patriotism has been sustained by our
+velleities of action, Russian destructiveness has been encouraged by our
+velleities of desertion. We joined, so to say, both camps, and our
+velleities of desertion occasionally getting the upper hand of our
+velleities of action ... we carry out nothing."[269]
+
+Toward Kolchak and Denikin the attitude of the Supreme Council varied
+considerably. It was currently reported in Paris that the Admiral had
+had the misfortune to arouse the displeasure of the two Conference
+chiefs by some casual manifestation of a frame of mind which was
+resented, perhaps a movement of independence, to which distance or the
+medium of transmission imparted a flavor of disrespect. Anyhow, the
+Russian leader was for some time under a cloud, which darkened the
+prospects of his cause. And as for Denikin, he appeared to the other
+great delegate as a self-advertising braggart.
+
+These mental portraits were retouched as the fortune of war favored the
+pair. And their cause benefited correspondingly. To this improvement
+influences at work in London contributed materially. For the
+anti-Bolshevist currents which made themselves felt in certain state
+departments in that capital, where there were several irreconcilable
+policies, were powerful and constant. By the month of May the Conference
+had turned half-heartedly from Lenin and Trotzky to Kolchak and Denikin,
+but its mode of negotiating bore the mark peculiar to the diplomacy of
+the new era of "open covenants openly arrived at." The delegates in
+Paris communicated with the two leaders in Russia "over the heads" and
+without the knowledge of their authorized representatives in Paris, just
+as they had issued peremptory orders to "the Rumanian government at
+Bucharest" over the heads of its chiefs, who were actually in the French
+capital.
+
+The proximate motives that determined several important decisions of
+the Secret Council, although of no political moment, are of sufficient
+psychological interest to warrant mention. They shed a light on the
+concreteness, directness, and simplicity of the workings of the
+statesmen's minds when engaged in transacting international business.
+For example, the particular moment for the recognition of new
+communities as states was fixed by wholly extrinsical circumstances. A
+food-distributer, for instance, or the Secretary of a Treasury, wanted a
+receipt for expenditure abroad from the people that benefited by it. As
+a document of this character presupposes the existence of a state and a
+government, the official dispenser of food or money was loath to go to
+the aid of any nation which was not a state or which lacked a properly
+constituted government. Hence, in some cases the Conference had to
+create both on the spur of the moment. Thus the reason why Finland's
+independence received the hall-mark of the Powers when it did was
+because the United States government was generously preparing to give
+aid to the Finns and had to get in return proper receipts signed by
+competent authorities representing the state.[270] Had it not been for
+this immediate need of valid receipts, the act of recognition might have
+been postponed in the same way as was the marking off of the frontiers.
+And like considerations led to like results in other cases.
+Czechoslovakia's independence was formally recognized for the same
+reason, as one of its leading men frankly admitted.
+
+One of the serious worries of the Conference chiefs in their dealings
+with Russia was the lack of a recognized government there, qualified to
+sign receipts for advances of money and munitions. And as they could not
+resolve to accord recognition to any of the existing administrations,
+they hit upon the middle course, that of promoting the anti-Bolshevists
+to the rank of a community, not, indeed, sovereign or independent, but
+deserving of every kind of assistance except the despatch of Allied
+troops. Assistance was already being given liberally, but the necessity
+was felt for justifying it formally. And the two delegates went to work
+as though they were hatching some dark and criminal plot. Secretly
+despatching a message to Admiral Kolchak, they put a number of questions
+to him which he was not qualified to answer without first consulting his
+official advisers in Paris. Yet these advisers were not apprised by the
+Secret Council of what was being done. Nay, more, the French Foreign
+Office was not notified. By the merest chance I got wind of the matter
+and published the official message.[271] It summoned the Admiral to bind
+himself to convene a Constituent Assembly as soon as he arrived in
+Moscow; to hold free elections; to repudiate definitely the old régime
+and all that it implied; to recognize the independence of Poland and
+Finland, whose frontiers would be determined by the League of Nations;
+to avail himself of the advice and co-operation of the League in coming
+to an understanding with the border states, and to acquiesce in the
+decision of the Peace Conference respecting the future status of
+Bessarabia. Kolchak's answer was described as clear when "decipherable,"
+and to his credit, he frankly declined to forestall the will of the
+Constituent Assembly respecting those border states which owed their
+separate existence to the initiative of the victorious governments. But
+the Secret Council of the Conference accepted his answer, and relied
+upon it as an adequate reason for continuing the assistance which they
+had been giving him theretofore.
+
+About the person of Kolchak it ought to be superfluous to say more than
+that he is an upright citizen of energy and resolution, as patriotic as
+Fabricius, as disinterested and unambitious as Cincinnatus. To his
+credit account, which is considerable, stands his wonder-working faith
+in the recuperative forces of his country when its fortunes were at
+their lowest ebb. With buoyancy and confidence he set himself the task
+of rescuing his fellow-countrymen when it looked as hopeless as that of
+Xenophon at Cunaxa. He created an army out of nothing, induced his men
+by argument, suasion, and example to shake off the virus of indiscipline
+and sacrifice their individual judgment and will to the well-being of
+their fellows. He enjoined nothing upon others that he himself was not
+ready to undertake, and he exposed himself time and again to risks
+greater far than any general should deliberately incur. Whether he
+succeeds or fails in his arduous enterprise, Kolchak, by his preterhuman
+patience and sustained energy and courage, has deserved exceptionally
+well of his country, and could afford to ignore the current legends that
+depict him in the crying colors of a reactionary, even though they were
+accepted for the time by the most exalted among the Great Unversed in
+Russian affairs. One may dissent from his policy and object to some of
+his lieutenants and to many of his partizans, but from the
+single-minded, patriotic soldier one cannot withhold a large meed of
+praise. Kolchak's defects are mostly exaggerations of his qualities. His
+remarkable versatility is purchased at the price of fitfulness, his
+energy displays itself in spurts, and his impulsiveness impairs at times
+the successful execution of a plan which requires unflagging constancy.
+His judgment of men is sometimes at fault, but he would never hesitate
+to confer a high post upon any man who deserved it. He is democratic in
+the current sense of the word, but neither a doctrinaire nor a faddist.
+A disciplinarian and a magnetic personality withal, he charms as
+effectually as he commands his soldiers. He is enlightened enough, like
+the great Western world-menders in their moments of theorizing, to
+discountenance secrecy and hole-and-corner agreements, and, what is
+still more praiseworthy, he is courageous enough to practise the
+doctrine.
+
+When the revolution broke out Kolchak was at Sebastopol. The telegram
+conveying the sensational tidings of the outbreak was kept secret by all
+military commanders--except himself. He unhesitatingly summoned the
+soldiers and sailors, apprised them of what had taken place, gave them
+an insight into the true meaning of the violent upheaval, and asked them
+to join with him in a heroic endeavor to influence the course of things,
+in the direction of order and consolidation. He gaged aright the
+significance of the revolution and the impossibility of confining it
+within any bounds, political, moral, or geographical. But he reasoned
+that a band of resolute patriots might contrive to wrest something for
+the country from the hands of Fate. It was with this faith and hope that
+he set to work, and soon his valiant army, the reclaimed provinces, and
+the improved Russian outlook were eloquent witnesses to his worth, whose
+testimony no legendary reports, however well received in the West, could
+weaken.
+
+How ingrained in the plenipotentiaries was their proneness for what, for
+want of a better word, may be termed conspirative and circuitous action
+may be inferred from the record of their official and unofficial
+conversations and acts. When holding converse with Kolchak's authorized
+agents in Paris they would lay down hard conditions, which were
+described as immutable; and yet when communicating with the Admiral
+direct they would submit to him terms considerably less irksome, unknown
+to his Paris advisers, thus mystifying both and occasioning friction
+between them. In many cases the contrast between the two sets of demands
+was disconcerting, and in all it tended to cause misunderstandings and
+complicate the relations between Kolchak and his Paris agents. But he
+continued to give his confidence to his representatives, although they
+were denied that of the delegates. It would, of course, be grossly
+unfair to impute anything like disingenuousness to plenipotentiaries
+engaged upon issues of this magnitude, but it was an unfortunate
+coincidence that they were known to regard some of the members of the
+Russian Council in Paris with disfavor, and would have been glad to see
+them superseded. When Nansen's project to feed the starving population
+of Russia was first mooted, Kolchak's Ministers in Paris were approached
+on the subject, and the Allies' plan was propounded to them so
+defectively or vaguely as to give them the impression that the
+co-operation of the Bolshevist government was part of the program. They
+were also allowed to think that during the work of feeding the people
+the despatch of munitions and other military necessaries to Kolchak and
+his army would be discontinued. Naturally, the scheme, weighted with
+these two accompaniments, was unacceptable to Kolchak's representatives
+in Paris. But, strange to say, in the official notification which the
+plenipotentiaries telegraphed at the same time to the Admiral direct,
+neither of these obnoxious riders was included, so that the proposal
+assumed a different aspect.
+
+Another example of these singular tactics is supplied by their
+_pourparlers_ with the Admiral's delegates about the future
+international status of Finland, whose help was then being solicited to
+free Petrograd from the Bolshevist yoke. The Finns insisted on the
+preliminary recognition of their complete independence by the Russians.
+Kolchak's representatives shrank from bartering any territories which
+had belonged to the state on their own sole responsibility. None the
+less, as the subject was being theoretically threshed out in all its
+bearings, the members of the Russian Council in Paris inquired of the
+Allies whether the Finns had at least renounced their pretensions to the
+province of Karelia. But the spokesmen of the Conference replied
+elusively, giving them no assurance that the claim had been
+relinquished. Thereupon they naturally concluded that the Finns either
+still maintained their demand or else had not yet modified their former
+decision on the matter, and they deemed it their duty to report in this
+sense to their chief. Yet the plenipotentiaries, in their message on the
+subject to Kolchak, which was sent about the same time, assured him that
+the annexation of Karelia was no longer insisted upon, and that the
+Finns would not again put forward the claim! One hardly knows what to
+think of tactics like these. In their talks with the spokesmen of
+certain border states of Russia the official representatives of the
+three European Powers at the Conference employed language that gave rise
+to misunderstandings which may have untoward consequences in the future.
+One would like to believe that these misunderstandings were caused by
+mere slips of the tongue, which should not have been taken literally by
+those to whom they were addressed; but in the meanwhile they have become
+not only the source of high, possibly delusive, hopes, but the basis of
+elaborate policies. For example, Esthonian and Lettish Ministers were
+given to understand that they would be permitted to send diplomatic
+legations to Petrograd as soon as Russia was reconstituted, a mode of
+intercourse which presupposes the full independence of all the countries
+concerned. A constitution was also drawn up for Esthonia by one of the
+Great Powers, which started with the postulate that each people was to
+be its own master. Consequently, the two nations in question were
+warranted in looking forward to receiving that complete independence.
+And if such was, indeed, the intention of the Great Powers, there is
+nothing further to be said on the score of straightforwardness or
+precision. But neither in the terms submitted to Kolchak nor in those to
+which his Paris agents were asked to give their assent was the
+independence of either country as much as hinted at.[272]
+
+These may perhaps seem trivial details, but they enable us to estimate
+the methods and the organizing arts of the statesmen upon whose skill in
+resource and tact in dealing with their fellows depended the new
+synthesis of international life and ethics which they were engaged in
+realizing. It would be superfluous to investigate the effect upon the
+Russians, or, indeed, upon any of the peoples represented in Paris, of
+the Secret Council's conspirative deliberations and circuitous
+procedure, which were in such strong contrast to the "open covenants
+openly arrived at" to which in their public speeches they paid such high
+tribute.
+
+The main danger, which the Allies redoubted from failure to restore
+tranquillity in Russia, was that Germany might accomplish it and, owing
+to her many advantages, might secure a privileged position in the
+country and use it as a stepping-stone to material prosperity, military
+strength, and political ascendancy. This feat she could accomplish
+against considerable odds. She would achieve it easily if the Allies
+unwittingly helped her, as they were doing.
+
+Unfortunately the Allied governments had not much hope of succeeding.
+If they had been capable of elaborating a comprehensive plan, they no
+longer possessed the means of executing it. But they devised none. "The
+fact is," one of the Conference leaders exclaimed, "we have no policy
+toward Russia. Neither do we possess adequate data for one."
+
+They strove to make good this capital omission by erecting a paper wall
+between Germany and her great Slav neighbor. The plan was simple. The
+Teutons were to be compelled to disinterest themselves in the affairs of
+Russia, with whose destinies their own are so closely bound up. But they
+soon realized that such a partition is useless as a breakwater against
+the tidal wave of Teutondom, and Germany is still destined to play the
+part of Russia's steward and majordomo.
+
+How could it be otherwise? Germany and Russia are near neighbors. Their
+economic relations have been continuous for ages, and the Allies have
+made them indispensable in the future; Russia is ear-marked as Germany's
+best colony. The two peoples are become interdependent. The Teuton will
+recognize the Slav as an ally in economics, and will pay himself
+politically. Who will now thwart or check this process? Russia must
+live, and therefore buy and sell, barter and negotiate. Can a parchment
+treaty hinder or invalidate her dealings? Can it prevent an admixture of
+politics in commercial arrangements, seeing that they are but two
+aspects of one and the same transaction? It is worthy of note that a
+question which goes to the quick of the matter was never mooted. It is
+this: Is it an essential element of the future ordering of the world
+that Germany shall play no part whatever in its progress? Is it to be
+assumed that she will always content herself with being treated as the
+incorrigible enemy of civilization? And, if not, what do all these
+checks and barriers amount to?
+
+In Russia there are millions of Germans conversant with the language,
+laws, and customs of the people. Many of them have been settled there
+for generations. They are passionately attached to their race, and
+neither unfriendly nor useless to the country of their adoption. The
+trade, commerce, and industry of the European provinces are largely in
+their hands and in those of their forerunners and helpers, the Jews. The
+Russo-German and Jewish middlemen in the country have their faces ever
+turned toward the Fatherland. They are wont to buy and sell there. They
+always obtained their credit in Berlin, Dresden, or Frankfurt. They
+acted as commercial travelers, agents, brokers, bankers, for Russians
+and Germans. They are constantly going and coming between the two
+countries. How are these myriads to be fettered permanently and kept
+from eking out a livelihood in the future on the lines traced by
+necessity or interest in the past? The Russians, on their side, must
+live, and therefore buy and sell. Has the Conference or the League the
+right or power to dictate to them the persons or the people with whom
+alone they may have dealings? Can it narrow the field of Russia's
+political activities? Some people flatter themselves that it can. In
+this case the League of Nations must transform itself into an alliance
+for the suppression of the German race.
+
+Burning indignation and moral reprobation were the sentiments aroused
+among the high-minded Allies by the infamous Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
+For that mockery of a peace, even coming from an enemy, transcended the
+bounds of human vengeance. It was justly anathematized by all Entente
+peoples as the loathsome creation of a frenzied people. But shortly
+afterward the Entente governments themselves, their turn having come,
+wrought what Russians of all parties regard as a political patchwork of
+variegated injustice more odious far, because its authors claimed to be
+considered as the devoted friends of their victims and the champions of
+right. Whereas the Brest-Litovsk Treaty provided for a federative Slav
+state, with provincial diets and a federal parliament, the system
+substituted by the Allies consisted in carving up Russia into an
+ever-increasing number of separate states, some of which cannot live by
+themselves, in debarring the inhabitants from a voice in the matter, in
+creating a permanent agency for foreign intervention, and ignoring
+Russia's right to reparation from the common enemy. The Russians were
+not asked even informally to say what they thought or felt about what
+was being done. This province and that were successively lopped off in a
+lordly way by statesmen who aimed at being classed as impartial
+dispensers of justice and sowers of the seeds of peace, but were
+unacquainted with the conditions and eschewed investigation. Here, at
+all events, the usual symptoms of hesitancy and procrastination were
+absent. Swift resolve and thoroughness marked the disintegrating action
+by which they unwittingly prepared the battlefields of the future.
+
+Nobody acquainted with Russian psychology imagines that the feelings of
+a high-souled people can be transformed by gifts of food, money, or
+munitions made to some of their fellow-countrymen. How little likely
+Russians are to barter ideal boons for material advantages may be
+gathered from an incident worth noting that occurred in the months of
+April and May, when the fall of the capital into the hands of the
+anti-Bolshevists was confidently expected.
+
+At that time, as it chanced, the one thing necessary for their success
+against Bolshevism was the capture of Petrograd. If that city, which,
+despite its cosmopolitan character, still retained its importance as the
+center of political Russia, could be wrested from the tenacious grasp
+of Lenin and Trotzky, the fall of the anarchist dictators was, people
+held, a foregone conclusion. The friends of Kolchak accordingly pressed
+every lever to set the machinery in motion for the march against Peter's
+city. And as, of all helpers, the Finns and Esthonians were admittedly
+the most efficacious, conversations were begun with their leaders. They
+were ready to drive a bargain, but it must be a hard and lucrative one.
+They would march on Petrograd for a price. The principal condition which
+they laid down was the express and definite recognition of their
+complete independence within frontiers which it would be unfruitful here
+to discuss. The Kolchak government was ready to treat with the Finnish
+Cabinet, as the _de facto_ government, and to recognize Finland's
+present status for what it is in international law; but as they could
+not give what they did not possess, their recognition must, they
+explained, be like their own authority, provisional. A similar reply was
+made to the Esthonians; to this those peoples demurred. The Russians
+stood firm and the negotiations fell through. It is to be supposed that
+when they have recovered their former status they will prove more
+amenable to the blandishments of the Allies than they were to the
+powerful bribe dangled before their eyes by the Esthonians and the
+Finns?
+
+But if the improvised arrangements entailing dismemberment which the
+Great Powers imposed on Russia during her cataleptic trance are revised,
+as they may be, whenever she recovers consciousness and strength, what
+course will events then follow? If she seeks to regather under her wing
+some of the peoples whose complete independence the League of Nations
+was so eager to guarantee, will that body respond to the appeal of these
+and fly to their assistance? Russia, who has not been consulted, will
+not be as bound by the canons of the League, and one need not be a
+prophet to foretell the reluctance of Western armies to wage another war
+in order to prevent territories, of which some of the plenipotentiaries
+may have heard as little as of Teschen, becoming again integral parts of
+the Slav state. Europe may then see its political axis once more shifted
+and its outlook obscured. Thus the system of equilibrium, which was
+theoretically abolished by the Fourteen Points, may be re-established by
+the hundred and one economico-political changes which Russia's recovery
+will contribute to bring about.
+
+A decade is but a twinkling in the history of a nation. Within a few
+years Russia may once more be united. The army that will have achieved
+this feat will constitute a formidable weapon in the hands of the state
+that wields it. As everything, even military strength, is relative, and
+as the armies of the rest of Europe will not be impatient to fight in
+the East, and will therefore count for considerably less than their
+numbers, there will be no real danger of an invasion. Russia is a
+country easy to get into, but hard to get out of, and military success
+against its armies there would in verity be a victory without glory,
+annexation, indemnities, or other appreciable gains.
+
+It is hard to believe that the distinguished statesmen of the Conference
+took these eventualities fully into account before attempting to reshape
+amorphous Russia after their own vague ideal. But whether we assess
+their work by the standards of political science or of international
+ethics, or explain it as a series of well-meant expedients begotten by
+the practical logic of momentary convenience, we must confess that its
+gifted authors lacked a direct eye for the wayward tides of national and
+international movements; were, in fact, smitten by political blindness,
+and did the best they could in these distressing circumstances.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[260] From whatever angle this Russian business is viewed, the policy of
+the Allies, if it can be dignified with that name, seems to be a
+compound of weakness, ineptitude, and shilly-shally."--Cf. _The
+Westminster Gazette_, July 5, 1919.
+
+[261] Cf. _Journal des Débats_, August 13, 1919. Article by M. Auguste
+Gauvain.
+
+[262] There can be no doubt that the Bolshevist government under
+Lunatcharsky has made a point of furthering the arts, sciences, and
+elementary instruction. All reports from foreign travelers and from
+eminent Russians--one of these my university fellow-student, now
+perpetual secretary of the Academy--agree about this silver lining to a
+dark cloud.
+
+[263] This latter fact was doubtless known to the British government,
+which decided as early as March to recall the British troops from
+northern Russia.
+
+[264] I published the facts in _The Daily Telegraph_, April 21, and _The
+Public Ledger_ of Philadelphia, April 10, 1919.
+
+[265] Colonel House is said to have dissociated himself from the
+President on this occasion.
+
+[266] It was sent at the end of October, 1918, and to my knowledge was
+not published in full.
+
+[267] Omsk, Ekaterinodar, Archangel, and the Crimea. The last-named
+disappeared soon afterward.
+
+[268] See Chapter IV "Censorship and Secrecy," p. 132.
+
+[269] Pertinax in _L'Echo de Paris_, July 5, 1919.
+
+[270] This admission was made to a distinguished member of the
+Diplomatic Corps.
+
+[271] In _The Daily Telegraph_, June 19, 1919, and in _The Public
+Ledger_ of Philadelphia.
+
+[272] In July M. Pichon told the Esthonian delegates that France
+recognized the independence of their country in principle. But this
+declaration was not taken seriously, either by the Russians or by the
+French.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+BOLSHEVISM
+
+
+What is Bolshevism? A generic term that stands for a number of things
+which have little in common. It varies with the countries where it
+appears. In Russia it is the despotism of an organized and unscrupulous
+group of men in a disorganized community. It might also be termed the
+frenzy of a few epileptics running amuck among a multitude of
+paralytics. It is not so much a political doctrine or a socialist theory
+as a psychic disease of a section of the community which cannot be cured
+without leaving permanent traces and perhaps modifying certain organic
+functions of the society affected. For some students at a distance who
+make abstraction from its methods--as a critic appreciating the
+performance of "Hamlet" might make abstraction from the part of the
+Prince of Denmark--it is a modification of the theory of Karl Marx, the
+newest contribution to latter-day social science. In Russia, at any
+rate, the general condition of society from which it sprang was
+characterized not by the advance of social science, but by a psychic
+disorder the germs of which, after a century of incubation, were brought
+to the final phase of development by the war. In its origins it is a
+pathological phenomenon.
+
+Four and a half years of an unprecedented campaign which drained to
+exhaustion the financial and economic resources of the European
+belligerents upset the psychical equilibrium of large sections of their
+populations. Goaded by hunger and disease to lawless action, and no
+longer held back by legal deterrents or moral checks, they followed the
+instinct of self-preservation to the extent of criminal lawlessness.
+Familiarity with death and suffering dispelled the fear of human
+punishment, while numbness of the moral sense made them insensible to
+the less immediate restraints of a religious character. These phenomena
+are not unusual concomitants of protracted wars. History records
+numerous examples of the homecoming soldiery turning the weapons
+destined for the foreign foe against political parties or social classes
+in their own country. In other European communities for some time
+previously a tendency toward root-reaching and violent change was
+perceptible, but as the state retained its hold on the army it remained
+a tendency. In the case of Russia--the country where the state, more
+than ordinarily artificial and ill-balanced, was correspondingly
+weak--Fate had interpolated a blood-stained page of red and white terror
+in the years 1906-08. Although fitful, unorganized, and abortive, that
+wild splutter was one of the foretokens of the impending cataclysm, and
+was recognized as such by the writer of these pages. During the
+foregoing quarter of a century he had watched with interest the sowing
+of the dragon's teeth from which was one day to spring up a race of
+armed and frenzied men. Few observers, however, even in the Tsardom,
+gaged the strength or foresaw the effects of the anarchist propaganda
+which was being carried on suasively and perseveringly, oftentimes
+unwittingly, in the nursery, the school, the church, the university, and
+with eminent success in the army and the navy. Hence the widespread
+error that the Russian revolution was preceded by no such era of
+preparation as that of the encylopedists in France.
+
+Recently, however, publicists have gone to the other extreme and
+asserted that Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gorky, and a host of other Russian
+writers were apostles of the tenets which have since received the name
+of Bolshevism, and that it was they who prepared the Russian upheaval
+just as it was the authors of the "Encyclopedia" who prepared the French
+Revolution. In this sweeping form the statement is misleading. Russian
+literature during the reigns of the last three Tsars--with few
+exceptions, like the writings of Leskoff--was unquestionably a vehicle
+for the spread of revolutionary ideas. But it would be a gross
+exaggeration to assert that the end deliberately pursued was that form
+of anarchy which is known to-day as Bolshevism, or, indeed, genuine
+anarchy in any form. Tolstoy and Gorky may be counted among the
+forerunners of Bolshevism, but Dostoyevsky, whom I was privileged to
+know, was one of its keenest antagonists. Nor was it only anarchism that
+he combated. Like Leskoff, he was an inveterate enemy of political
+radicalism, and we university students bore him a grudge in consequence.
+In his masterly delineation[273] of a group of "reformers," in
+particular of Verkhovensky--whom psychic tendency, intellectual anarchy,
+and political crime bring under the category of Bolshevists--he
+foreshadowed the logical conclusion, and likewise the political
+consummation, of the corrosive doctrines which in those days were
+associated with the name of Bakunin. In the year 1905-06, when the
+upshot of the conflict between Tsarism and the revolution was still
+doubtful, Count Witte and I often admired the marvelous intuition of the
+great novelist, whose gallery of portraits in the "Devils" seemed to
+have become suddenly endowed with life, and to be conspiring, shooting,
+and bomb-throwing in the streets of Moscow, Petersburg, Odessa, and
+Tiflis. The seeds of social revolution sown by the novelists, essayists,
+and professional guides of the nation were forced by the wars of 1904
+and 1914 into rapid germination.
+
+As far back as the year 1892, in a work published over a pseudonym, the
+present writer described the rotten condition of the Tsardom, and
+ventured to foretell its speedy collapse.[274] The French historian
+Michelet wrote with intuition marred by exaggeration and acerbity: "A
+barbarous force, a law-hating world, Russia sucks and absorbs all the
+poison of Europe and then gives it off in greater quantity and deadlier
+intensity. When we admit Russia, we admit the cholera, dissolution,
+death. That is the meaning of Russian propaganda. Yesterday she said to
+us, 'I am Christianity.' To-morrow she will say, 'I am socialism.' It is
+the revolting idea of a demagogy without an idea, a principle, a
+sentiment, of a people which would march toward the west with the gait
+of a blind man, having lost its soul and its will and killing at random,
+of a terrible automaton like a dead body which can still reach and slay.
+
+"It might commove Europe and bespatter it with blood, but that would not
+hinder it from plunging itself into nothingness in the abysmal ooze of
+definite dissolution."
+
+Russia, then, led by domiciled aliens without a fatherland, may be truly
+said to have been wending steadily toward the revolutionary vortex long
+before the outbreak of hostilities. Her progress was continuous and
+perceptible. As far back as the year 1906 the late Count Witte and
+myself made a guess at the time-distance which the nation still had to
+traverse, assuming the rate of progress to be constant, before reaching
+the abyss. This, however, was mere guesswork, which one of the many
+possibilities--and in especial change in the speed-rate--might belie. In
+effect, events moved somewhat more quickly than we anticipated, and it
+was the World War and its appalling concomitants that precipitated the
+catastrophe.
+
+As circumstances willed it, certain layers of the people of central
+Europe were also possessed by the revolutionary spirit at the close of
+the World War. In their case hunger, hardship, disease, and moral shock
+were the avenues along which it moved and reached them. This coincidence
+was fraught with results more impressive than serious. The governments
+of both these great peoples had long been the mainstays of monarchic
+tradition, military discipline, and the principle of authority. The
+Teutons, steadily pursuing an ideal which lay at the opposite pole to
+anarchy, had risked every worldly and well-nigh every spiritual
+possession to realize it. It was the hegemony of the world. This
+aspiration transfigured, possessed, fanaticized them. Teutondom became
+to them what Islam is to Mohammedans of every race, even when they shake
+off religion. They eschewed no means, however iniquitous, that seemed to
+lead to the goal. They ceased to be human in order to force Europe to
+become German. Offering up the elementary principles of morality on the
+altar of patriotism, they staked their all upon the single venture of
+the war. It was as the throw of a gambler playing for his soul with the
+Evil One. Yet the faith of these materialists waxed heroic withal, like
+their self-sacrifice. And in the fiery ardor of their enthusiasm, hard
+concrete facts were dissolved and set floating as illusions in the
+ambient mist. Their wishes became thoughts and their fears were
+dispelled as fancies. They beheld only what they yearned for, and when
+at last they dropped from the dizzy height of their castles in cloudland
+their whole world, era, and ideal was shattered. Unavailing remorse,
+impotent rage, spiritual and intense physical exhaustion completed their
+demoralization. The more harried and reckless among them became
+frenzied. Turning first against their rulers, then against one another,
+they finally started upon a work of wanton destruction relieved by no
+creative idea. It was at this time-point that they endeavored to join
+hands with their tumultuous Eastern neighbors, and that the one word
+"Bolshevism" connoted the revolutionary wave that swept over some of the
+Slav and German lands. But only for a moment. One may safely assert, as
+a general proposition, that the same undertaking, if the Germans and the
+Russians set their hands to it, becomes forthwith two separate
+enterprises, so different are the conceptions and methods of these two
+peoples. Bolshevism was almost emptied of its contents by the Germans,
+and little left of it but the empty shell.
+
+Comparisons between the orgasms of collective madness which accompanied
+the Russian welter, on the one hand, and the French Revolution, on the
+other, are unfruitful and often misleading. It is true that at the
+outset those spasms of delirium were in both cases violent reactions
+against abuses grown well-nigh unbearable. It is also a fact that the
+revolutionists derived their preterhuman force from historic events
+which had either denuded those abuses of their secular protection or
+inspired their victims with wonder-working faith in their power to sweep
+them away. But after this initial stage the likeness vanishes. The
+French Revolution, which extinguished feudalism as a system and the
+nobility as a privileged class, speedily ceased to be a mere dissolvent.
+In its latter phases it assumed a constructive character. Incidentally
+it created much that was helpful in substance if not beautiful in form,
+and from the beginning it adopted a positive doctrine as old as
+Christianity, but new in its application to the political sphere. Thus,
+although it uprooted quantities of wheat together with the tares, its
+general effect was to prepare the ground for a new harvest. It had a
+distinctly social purpose, which it partially realized. Nor should it
+be forgotten that in the psychological sphere it kindled a transient
+outburst of quasi-religious enthusiasm among its partizans, imbued them
+with apostolic zeal, inspired them with a marvelous spirit of
+self-abnegation, and nerved their arms to far-resonant exploits. And the
+forces which the revolution thus set free changed many of the forms of
+the European world, but without reshaping it after the image of the
+ideal.
+
+Has the withering blight known as Bolshevism any such redeeming traits
+to its credit account? The consensus of opinion down to the present
+moment gives an emphatic, if summary, answer in the negative. Every
+region over which it swept is blocked with heaps of unsightly ruins, It
+has depreciated all moral values. It passed like a tornado, spending its
+energies in demolition. Of construction hardly a trace has been
+discerned, even by indulgent explorers.[275] One might liken it to a
+so-called possession by the spirit of evil, wont of yore to use the
+human organs as his own for words of folly and deeds of iniquity.
+Bolshevism has operated uniformly as a quick solvent of the social
+organism. Doubtless European society in 1917 sorely needed purging by
+drastic means, but only a fanatic would say that it deserved
+annihilation.
+
+It has been variously affirmed that the political leaven of these
+destructive ferments in eastern and central Europe was wholesome. Slavs
+and Germans, it is argued, stung by the bankruptcy of their political
+systems, resolved to alter them on the lines of universal suffrage and
+its corollaries, but were carried farther than they meant to go. This
+mild judgment is based on a very partial survey of the phenomena. The
+improvement in question was the work, not of the Bolshevists, but of
+their adversaries, the moderate reformers. And the political strivings
+of these had no organic nexus with the doctrine which emanated from the
+nethermost depths in which vengeful pariahs, outlaws, and benighted
+nihilists were floundering before suffocating in the ooze of anarchism.
+Neither can one discern any degree of kinship between Spartacists like
+Eichhorn or Lenin and moderate reformers as represented, say, by Theodor
+Wolff and Boris Savinkoff. The two pairs are sundered from each other by
+the distance that separates the social and the anti-social instinct.
+Those are vulgar iconoclasts, these are would-be world-builders. That
+the Russian, or, indeed, the German constitutional reformers should have
+hugged the delusion that while thrones were being hurled to the ground,
+and an epoch was passing away in violent convulsions, a few alterations
+in the electoral law would restore order and bring back normal
+conditions to the agonizing nations, is an instructive illustration of
+the blurred vision which characterizes contemporary statesmen. The
+Anglo-Saxon delegates at the Conference were under a similar delusion
+when they undertook to regenerate the world by a series of merely
+political changes.
+
+No one who has followed attentively the work of the constitution-makers
+in Weimar can have overlooked their readiness to adopt and assimilate
+the positive elements of a movement which was essentially destructive.
+In this respect they displayed a remarkable degree of open-mindedness
+and receptivity. They showed themselves avid of every contribution which
+they could glean from any source to the work of national reorganization,
+and even in Teutonized Bolshevism they apparently found helpful hints of
+timely innovations. One may safely hazard the prediction that these
+adaptations, however little they may be relished, are certain to spread
+to the Western peoples, who will be constrained to accept them in the
+long run, and Germany may end by becoming the economic leader of
+democratic Europe. The law of politico-social interchange and
+assimilation underlying this phenomenon, had it been understood by the
+statesmen of the Entente, might have rendered them less desirous of
+seeing the German organism tainted with the germs of dissolution. For
+what Germany borrows from Bolshevism to-day western Europe will borrow
+from Germany to-morrow. And foremost among the new institutions which
+the revolution will impose upon Europe is that of the Soviets,
+considerably modified in form and limited in functions.
+
+"In the conception of the Soviet system," writes the most influential
+Jewish-German organ in Europe, "there is assuredly something
+serviceable, and it behooves us to familiarize ourselves therewith.
+Psychologically, it rests upon the need felt by the working-man to be
+something more than a mere cog in the industrial mechanism. The first
+step would consist in conferring upon labor committees juridical
+functions consonant with latter-day requirements. These functions would
+extend beyond those exercised by the labor committees hitherto. How far
+they could go without rendering the industrial enterprise impossible is
+a matter for investigation.... This is not merely a wish of the
+extremists; it is a psychological requirement, and therefore it
+necessitates the establishment of a closer nexus between legislation and
+practical life which unhappily is become so complicated. And this need
+is not confined to the laboring class. It is universal. Therefore, what
+is good for the one is meet for the other."[276]
+
+The Soviet system adapted to modern existence is one--and probably the
+sole--legacy of Bolshevism to the new age.
+
+During the Peace Conference Bolshevism played a large part in the
+world's affairs. By some of the eminent lawgivers there it was feared as
+a scourge; by others it was wielded as a weapon, and by a third set it
+was employed as a threat. Whenever a delegate of one of the lesser
+states felt that he was losing ground at the Peace Table, and that his
+country's demands were about to be whittled down as extravagant, he
+would point significantly to certain "foretokens" of an outbreak of
+Bolshevism in his country and class them as an inevitable consequence of
+the nation's disappointment. Thus the representative of nearly every
+state which had a territorial program declared that that program must be
+carried out if Bolshevism was to be averted there. "This or else
+Bolshevism" was the peroration of many a delegate's _exposé_. More
+redoubtable than political discontent was the proselytizing activity of
+the leaders of the movement in Russia.
+
+Of the two pillars of Bolshevism one is a Russian, the other a Jew, the
+former, Ulianoff (better known as Lenin), the brain; the other,
+Braunstein (called Trotzky), the arm of the sect. Trotzky is an
+unscrupulous despot, in whose veins flows the poison of malignity. His
+element is cruelty, his special gift is organizing capacity. Lenin is a
+Utopian, whose fanaticism, although extensive, has well-defined limits.
+In certain things he disagrees profoundly with Trotzky. He resembles a
+religious preacher in this, that he created a body of veritable
+disciples around himself. He might be likened to a pope with a college
+of international cardinals. Thus he has French, British, German,
+Austrian, Czech, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Japanese, Hindu, Chinese,
+Buryat, and many other followers, who are chiefs of proselytizing
+sections charged with the work of spreading the Bolshevik evangel
+throughout the globe, and are working hard to discharge their duties.
+Lenin, however, dissatisfied with the measures of success already
+attained, is constantly stimulating his disciples to more strenuous
+exertions. He shares with other sectarian chiefs who have played a
+prominent part in the world's history that indefinable quality which
+stirs emotional susceptibility and renders those who approach him more
+easily accessible to ideas toward which they began by manifesting
+repugnance. Lenin is credibly reported to have made several converts
+among his Western opponents.
+
+The plenipotentiaries, during the first four months, approached
+Bolshevism from a single direction, unvaried by the events which it
+generated or the modifications which it underwent. They tested it solely
+by its accidental bearings on the one aim which they were intent on
+securing--a formal and provisional resettlement of Europe capable of
+being presented to their respective parliaments as a fair achievement.
+With its real character, its manifold corollaries, its innovating
+tendencies over the social, political, and ethnical domain, they were
+for the time being unconcerned. Without the slightest reference to any
+of these considerations they were ready to find a place for it in the
+new state system with which they hoped to endow the world. More than
+once they were on the point of giving it official recognition. There was
+no preliminary testing, sifting, or examining by these empiricists, who,
+finding Bolshevism on their way, and discerning no facile means of
+dislodging or transforming it, signified their willingness under easy
+conditions to hallmark and incorporate it as one of the elements of the
+new ordering. From the crimes laid to its charge they were prepared to
+make abstraction. The barbarous methods to which it owed its very
+existence they were willing to consign to oblivion. And it was only a
+freak of circumstance that hindered this embodiment of despotism from
+beginning one of their accepted means of rendering the world safe for
+democracy.
+
+Political students outside the Conference, going farther into the
+matter, inquired whether there was any kernel of truth in the doctrines
+of Lenin, any social or political advantage in the practices of
+Braunstein (Trotzky), and the conclusions which they reached were
+negative.[277] But inquiries of this theoretical nature awakened no
+interest among the empiricists of the Supreme Council. For them
+Bolshevism meant nothing more than a group of politicians, who directed,
+or misdirected, but certainly represented the bulk of the Russian
+people, and who, if won over and gathered under the cloak of the
+Conference, would facilitate its task and bear witness to its triumph.
+This inference, drawn by keen observers from many countries and parties,
+is borne out by the curious admissions and abortive acts of the
+principal plenipotentiaries themselves.
+
+In its milder manifestations on the social side Russian Bolshevism
+resembles communism, and may be described as a social revolution
+effected by depriving one set of people--the ruling and intelligent
+class--of power, property, and civil rights, putting another and less
+qualified section in their place, and maintaining the top-heavy
+structure by force ruthlessly employed. Far-reaching though this change
+undoubtedly is, it has no nexus with Marxism or kindred theories. Its
+proximate causes were many: such, for example, as the breakdown of a
+tyrannical system of government, state indebtedness so vast that it
+swallowed up private capital, the depreciation of money, and the
+corresponding appreciation of labor. It is fair, therefore, to say that
+a rise in the cost of production and the temporary substitution of one
+class for another mark the extent to which political forces
+revolutionized the social fabric. Beyond these limits they did not go.
+The notion had been widespread in most countries, and deep-rooted in
+Russia, that a political upheaval would effect a root-reaching and
+lasting alteration in the forces of social development. It was adopted
+by Lenin, a fanatic of the Robespierre type, but far superior to
+Robespierre in will-power, insight, resourcefulness, and sincerity, who,
+having seized the reins of power, made the experiment.
+
+It is no easy matter to analyze Lenin's economic policy, because of the
+veil of mist that conceals so much of Russian contemporary history. Our
+sources are confined to the untrustworthy statements of a censored press
+and travelers' tales.
+
+But it is common knowledge that the Bolshevist dictator requisitioned
+and "nationalized" the banks, took factories, workshops, and plants from
+their owners and handed them over to the workmen, deprived landed
+proprietors of their estates, and allowed peasants to appropriate them.
+It is in the matter of industry, however, that his experiment is most
+interesting as showing the practical value of Marxism as a policy and
+the ability of the Bolsheviki to deal with delicate social problems. The
+historic decree issued by the Moscow government on the nationalization
+of industry after the opening experiment had broken down contains data
+enough to enable one to affirm that Lenin himself judged Marxism
+inapplicable even to Russia, and left it where he had found it--among
+the ideals of a millennial future. That ukase ordered the gradual
+nationalization of all private industries with a capital of not less
+than one million rubles, but allowed the owners to enjoy the gratuitous
+usufruct of the concern, provided that they financed and carried it on
+as before. Consequently, although in theory the business was transferred
+to the state, in reality the capitalist retained his place and his
+profits as under the old system. Consequently, the principal aims of
+socialism, which are the distribution of the proceeds of industry among
+the community and the retention of a certain surplus by the state, were
+missed. In the Bolshevist procedure the state is wholly eliminated
+except for the purpose of upholding a fiction. It receives nothing from
+the capitalist, not even a royalty.
+
+The Slav is a dreamer whose sense of the real is often defective. He
+loses himself in vague generalities and pithless abstractions. Thus,
+before opening a school he will spin out a theory of universal
+education, and then bemoan his lack of resources to realize it. True,
+many of the chiefs of the sect--for it is undoubtedly a sect when it is
+not a criminal conspiracy, and very often it is both--were not Slavs,
+but Jews, who, for the behoof of their kindred, dropped their Semitic
+names and adopted sonorous Slav substitutes. But they were most
+unscrupulous peculators, incapable of taking an interest in the
+scientific aspect of such matters, and hypnotized by the dreams of lucre
+which the opportunity evoked. One has only to call to mind some of the
+shabby transactions in which the Semitic Dictator of Hungary, Kuhn, or
+Cohen, and Braunstein (Trotzky) of Petrograd, took an active part. The
+former is said to have offered for sale the historic crown of St.
+Stephen of Hungary--which to him was but a plain gold headgear adorned
+with precious stones and a jeweled cross--to an old curiosity dealer of
+Munich,[278] and when solemnly protesting that he was living only for
+the Soviet Republic and was ready to die for it, he was actively
+engaged in smuggling out of Hungary into Switzerland fifty million
+kronen bonds, thirty-five kilograms of gold, and thirty chests filled
+with objects of value.[279] His colleague Szamuelly's plunder is a
+matter of history.
+
+To such adventurers as those science is a drug. They are primitive
+beings impressible mainly to concrete motives of the barest kind. The
+dupes of Lenin were people of a different type. Many of them fancied
+that the great political clash must inevitably result in an equally
+great and salutary social upheaval. This assumption has not been borne
+out by events.
+
+Those fanatics fell into another error; they were in a hurry, and would
+fain have effected their great transformation as by the waving of a
+magician's wand. Impatient of gradation, they scorned to traverse the
+distance between the point of departure and that of the goal, and by way
+of setting up the new social structure without delay, they rolled away
+all hindrances regardless of consequences. In this spirit of absolutism
+they abolished the services of the national debt, struck out the claims
+of Russia's creditors to their capital or interest, and turned the shops
+and factories over to labor boards. That was the initial blunder which
+the ukase alluded to was subsequently issued to rectify. But it was too
+late. The equilibrium of the forces of production had been definitely
+upset and could no longer be righted.
+
+One of the basic postulates of profitable production is the equilibrium
+of all its essential factors--such as the laborer's wages, the cost of
+the machinery and the material, the administration. Bring discord into
+the harmony and the entire mechanism is out of gear.
+
+The Russian workman, who is at bottom an illiterate peasant with the old
+roots of serfdom still clinging to him, has seldom any bowels for his
+neighbor and none at all for his employer. "God Himself commands us to
+despoil such gentry," is one of his sayings. He is in a hurry to enrich
+himself, and he cares about nothing else. Nor can he realize that to
+beggar his neighbors is to impoverish himself. Hence he always takes and
+never gives; as a peasant he destroys the forests, hewing trees and
+planting none, and robs the soil of its fertility. On analogous lines he
+would fain deal with the factories, exacting exorbitant wages that eat
+up all profit, and naïvely expecting the owner to go on paying them as
+though he were the trustee of a fund for enriching the greedy. The only
+people to profit by the system, and even they only transiently, were the
+manual laborers. The bulk of the skilled, intelligent, and educated
+artisans were held up to contempt and ostracized, or killed as an odious
+aristocracy. That, it has been aptly pointed out,[280] is far removed
+from Marxism. The Marxist doctrine postulates the adhesion of
+intelligent workers to the social revolution, whereas the Russian
+experimenters placed them in the same category as the capitalists, the
+aristocrats, and treated them accordingly. Another Marxist postulate not
+realized in Russia was that before the state could profitably proceed to
+nationalization the country must have been in possession of a
+well-organized, smooth-running industrial mechanism. And this was
+possible only in those lands in which capitalism had had a long and
+successful innings, not in the great Slav country of husbandmen.
+
+By way of glozing over these incongruities Lenin's ukase proclaimed that
+the measures enacted were only provisional, and aimed at enabling Russia
+to realize the great transformation by degrees. But the impression
+conveyed by the history of the social side of Lenin's activity is that
+Marxism, whether as understood by its author or as interpreted and
+twisted by its Russian adherents, has been tried and found
+impracticable. One is further warranted in saying that neither the
+visionary workers who are moved by misdirected zeal for social
+improvement nor the theorists who are constantly on the lookout for new
+and stimulating ideas are likely to discover in Russian Bolshevism any
+aspect but the one alluded to above worthy of their serious
+consideration.
+
+A much deeper mark was made on the history of the century by its
+methods.
+
+Compared with the soul-searing horrors let loose during the Bolshevist
+fit of frenzy, the worst atrocities recorded of Deputy Carrier and his
+noyades during the French Revolution were but the freaks of
+compassionate human beings. In Bolshevist Russia brutality assumed forms
+so monstrous that the modern man of the West shrinks from conjuring up a
+faint picture of them in imagination. Tens, perhaps hundreds, of
+thousands were done to death in hellish ways by the orders of men and of
+women. Eyes were gouged out, ears hacked off, arms and legs torn from
+the body in presence of the victims' children or wives, whose agony was
+thus begun before their own turn came. Men and women and infants were
+burned alive. Chinese executioners were specially hired to inflict the
+awful torture of the "thousand slices."[281] Officers had their limbs
+broken and were left for hours in agonies. Many victims are credibly
+reported to have been buried alive. History, from its earliest dawn down
+to the present day, has recorded nothing so profoundly revolting as the
+nameless cruelties in which these human fiends reveled. One gruesome
+picture of the less loathsome scenes enacted will live in history on a
+level with the _noyades_ of Nantes. I have seen several moving
+descriptions of it in Russian journals. The following account is from
+the pen of a French marine officer:
+
+"We have two armed cruisers outside Odessa. A few weeks ago one of them,
+having an investigation to make, sent a diver down to the bottom. A few
+minutes passed and the alarm signal was heard. He was hauled up and
+quickly relieved of his accoutrements. He had fainted away. When he came
+to, his teeth were chattering and the only articulate sounds that could
+be got from him were the words: 'It is horrible! It is awful!' A second
+diver was then lowered, with the same procedure and a like result.
+Finally a third was chosen, this time a sturdy lad of iron nerves, and
+sent down to the bottom of the sea. After the lapse of a few minutes the
+same thing happened as before, and the man was brought up. This time,
+however, there was no fainting fit to record. On the contrary, although
+pale with terror, he was able to state that he had beheld the sea-bed
+peopled with human bodies standing upright, which the swaying of the
+water, still sensible at this shallow depth, softly rocked as though
+they were monstrous algæ, their hair on end bristling vertically, and
+their arms raised toward the surface.... All these corpses, anchored to
+the bottom by the weight of stones, took on an appearance of eerie life
+resembling, one might say, a forest of trees moved from side to side by
+the wind and eager to welcome the diver come down among them.... There
+were, he added, old men, children numerous beyond count, so that one
+could but compare them to the trees of a forest."[282]
+
+From published records it is known that the Bolshevist thugs, when
+tired of using the rifle, the machine-gun, the cord, and the bayonet,
+expedited matters by drowning their victims by hundreds in the Black
+Sea, in the Gulf of Finland, and in the great rivers. Submarine
+cemeteries was the name given to these last resting-places of some of
+Russia's most high-minded sons and daughters.[283] It is not in the
+French Revolution that those deeds of wanton destruction and revolting
+cruelty which are indissolubly associated with Bolshevism find a
+parallel, but in Chinese history, which offers a striking and curious
+prefiguration of the Leninist structure.[284] Toward the middle of the
+tenth century, when the empire was plunged in dire confusion, a mystical
+sect was formed there for the purpose of destroying by force every
+vestige of the traditional social fabric, and establishing a system of
+complete equality without any state organization whatever, after the
+manner advocated by Leo Tolstoy. Some of the dicta of these sectarians
+have a decidedly Bolshevist flavor. This, for example: "Society rests
+upon law, property, religion, and force. But law is injustice and
+chicane; property is robbery and extortion; religion is untruth, and
+force is iniquity." In those days Chinese political parties were at
+strife with each other, and none of them scorned any means, however
+brutal, to worst its adversaries, but for a long while they were divided
+among themselves and without a capable chief.
+
+At last the Socialist party unexpectedly produced a leader, Wang Ngan
+Shen, a man of parts, who possessed the gift of drawing and swaying the
+multitude. Of agreeable presence, he was resourceful and unscrupulous,
+soon became popular, and even captivated the Emperor, Shen Tsung, who
+appointed him Minister. He then set about applying his tenets and
+realizing his dreams. Wang Ngan Shen began by making commerce and trade
+a state monopoly, just as Lenin had done, "in order," he explained, "to
+keep the poor from being devoured by the rich." The state was proclaimed
+the sole owner of all the wealth of the soil; agricultural overseers
+were despatched to each district to distribute the land among the
+peasants, each of these receiving as much as he and his family could
+cultivate. The peasant obtained also the seed, but this he was obliged
+to return to the state after the ingathering of the harvest. The power
+of the overseer went farther; it was he who determined what crops the
+husbandman might sow and who fixed day by day the price of every salable
+commodity in the district. As the state reserved to itself the right to
+buy all agricultural produce, it was bound in return to save up a part
+of the profits to be used for the benefit of the people in years of
+scarcity, and also at other times to be employed in works needed by the
+community. Wang Ngan Shen also ordained that only the wealthy should pay
+taxes, the proceeds of which were to be employed in relieving the wants
+of the poor, the old, and the unemployed. The theory was smooth and
+attractive.
+
+For over thirty years those laws are said to have remained in force, at
+any rate on paper. To what extent they were carried out is
+problematical. Probably a beginning was actually made, for during Wang's
+tenure of office confusion was worse confounded than before, and misery
+more intense and widespread. The opposition to his régime increased,
+spread, and finally got the upper hand. Wang Ngan Shen was banished,
+together with those of his partizans who refused to accept the return to
+the old system. Such would appear to have been the first appearance of
+Bolshevism recorded in history.
+
+Another less complete parallel, not to the Bolshevist theory, but to the
+plight of the country which it ruined, may be found in the Chinese
+rebellion organized in the year 1850 by a peasant[285] who, having
+become a Christian, fancied himself called by God to regenerate his
+people. He accordingly got together a band of stout-hearted fellows whom
+he fanaticized, disciplined, and transformed into the nucleus of a
+strong army to which brigands, outlaws, and malcontents of every social
+layer afterward flocked. They overran the Yangtse Valley, invaded twelve
+of the richest provinces, seized six hundred cities and towns, and put
+an end to twenty million people in the space of twelve years by fire,
+sword, and famine.[286] To this bloody expedition Hung Sew Tseuen, a
+master of modern euphemism, gave the name of Crusade of the Great Peace.
+For twelve years this "Crusade" lasted, and it might have endured much
+longer had it not been for the help given by outsiders. It was there
+that "Chinese" Gordon won his laurels and accomplished a beneficent
+work.
+
+There were politicians at the Conference who argued that Russia, being
+in a position analogous to that of China in 1854, ought, like her, to be
+helped by the Great Powers. It was, they held, quite as much in the
+interests of Europe as in hers. But however forcible their arguments,
+they encountered an insurmountable obstacle in the fear entertained by
+the chiefs of the leading governments lest the extreme oppositional
+parties in their respective countries should make capital out of the
+move and turn them out of office. They invoked the interests of the
+cause of which they were the champions for declining to expose
+themselves to any such risk. It has been contended with warmth, and
+possibly with truth, that if at the outset the Great Powers had
+intervened they might with a comparatively small army have crushed
+Bolshevism and re-established order in Russia. On the other hand, it was
+objected that even heavy guns will not destroy ideas, and that the main
+ideas which supplied the revolutionary movement with vital force were
+too deeply rooted to have been extirpated by the most formidable foreign
+army. That is true. But these ideas were not especially characteristic
+of Bolshevism. Far from that, they were incompatible with it: the
+bestowal of land on the peasants, an equitable reform of the relations
+between workmen and employers, and the abolition of the hereditary
+principle in the distribution of everything that confers an unfair
+advantage on the individual or the class are certainly not postulates of
+Lenin's party. It is a tenable proposition that timely military
+assistance would have enabled the constructive elements of Russia to
+restore conditions of normal life, but the worth of timeliness was never
+realized by the heads of the governments who undertook to make laws for
+the world. They ignored the maxim that a statesman, when applying
+measures, must keep his eye on the clock, inasmuch as the remedy which
+would save a nation at one moment may hasten its ruin at another.
+
+The expedients and counter-expedients to which the Conference had
+recourse in their fitful struggles with Bolshevism were so many
+surprises to every one concerned, and were at times redolent of comedy.
+But what was levity and ignorance on the part of the delegates meant
+death, and worse than death, to tens of thousands of their protégées. In
+Russia their agents zealously egged on the order-loving population to
+rise up against the Bolsheviki and attack their strong positions,
+promising them immediate military help if they succeeded. But when,
+these exploits having been duly achieved, the agents were asked how soon
+the foreign reinforcements might be expected, they replied, calling for
+patience. After a time the Bolsheviki assailed the temporary victors,
+generally defeated them, and then put a multitude of defenseless people
+to the sword. Deplorable incidents of this nature, which are said to
+have occurred several times during the spring of 1919, shook the credit
+of the Allies, and kindled a feeling of just resentment among all
+classes of Russians.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[273] In the _Biessy_ (Devils).
+
+[274] _Russian Characteristics_, by E.B. Lanin (Eblanin, a Russian word
+which means native of Dublin, Eblana).
+
+[275] Educational reforms have been mentioned among its achievements and
+attributed to Lunatcharsky. That he exerted himself to spread elementary
+instruction must be admitted. But this progress and the effective
+protection and encouragement which he has undoubtedly extended to arts
+and sciences would seem to exhaust the list of items in the credit
+account of the Bolshevist régime.
+
+[276] _Frankfurter Zeitung_, February 28, 1919.
+
+[277] A succinct but interesting study of this question appeared in the
+_Handels-Zeitung_ of the _Berliner Tageblatt_, over the signature of Dr.
+Felix Pinner, July 20, 1918.
+
+[278] Cf. _Bonsoir_, July 29, 1919. The price was not fixed, but the
+minimum was specified. It was one hundred thousand kronen.
+
+[279] Cf. _Der Tag_, Vienna, August 13, 1919. _L'Echo de Paris_, August
+15, 1919.
+
+[280] By Dr. F. Pinner, H. Vorst, and others.
+
+[281] The condemned man is tied to a post or a cross, his mouth gagged,
+and the execution is made to last several hours. It usually begins with
+a slit on the forehead and the pulling down of the skin toward the chin.
+After the lapse of a certain time the nose is severed from the face. An
+interval follows, then an ear is lopped off, and so the devilish work
+goes on with long pauses. The skill of the executioner is displayed in
+the length of time during which the victim remains conscious.
+
+[282] Cf. _Le Figaro_, February 18, 1919.
+
+[283] I do not suggest that these crimes were ordered by Lenin. But it
+will not be gainsaid that neither he nor his colleagues punished the
+mass murderers or even protested against their crimes. Neither can it be
+maintained that massacres were confined to any one party.
+
+[284] This pre-Bolshevist movement is described in an interesting study
+on the socialist movement and systems, down to the year 1848, by El.
+Luzatto. Cf. _Der Bund_, August 16, 1918.
+
+[285] Hung Sew Tseuen. The rebellion lasted from 1850 to 1864.
+
+[286] The superb city of Nankin, with its temples and porcelain towers,
+was destroyed.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+HOW BOLSHEVISM WAS FOSTERED
+
+
+The Allies, then, might have solved the Bolshevist problem by making up
+their minds which of the two alternative politics--war against, or
+tolerance of, Bolshevism--they preferred, and by taking suitable action
+in good time. If they had handled the Russian tangle with skill and
+repaid a great sacrifice with a small one before it was yet too late,
+they might have hoped to harvest in abundant fruits in the fullness of
+time. But they belonged to the class of the undecided, whose members
+continually suffer from the absence of a middle word between yes and no,
+connoting what is neither positive nor negative. They let the
+opportunity slip. Not only did they withhold timely succor to either
+side, but they visited some of the most loyal Russians in western Europe
+with the utmost rigor of coercion laws. They hounded them down as
+enemies. They cooped them up in cages as though they were Teuton
+enemies. They encircled them with barbed wire. They kept many of them
+hungry and thirsty, deprived them of life's necessaries for days, and in
+some cases reduced the discontented--and who in their place would not be
+discontented?--to pick their food in dustbins among garbage and refuse.
+I have seen officers and men in France who had shed their blood joyfully
+for the Entente cause gradually converted to Bolshevism by the misdeeds
+of the Allied authorities. In whose interests? With what helpful
+results?
+
+I watched the development of anti-Ententism among those Russians with
+painful interest, and in favorable conditions for observation, and I say
+without hesitation that rancor against the Allies burns as vehemently
+and intensely among the anti-Bolshevists as among their adversaries. "My
+country as a whole is bitterly hostile to her former allies," exclaimed
+an eminent Russian, "for as soon as she had rendered them inestimable
+services, at the cost of her political existence, they turned their
+backs upon her as though her agony were no affair of theirs. To-day the
+nation is divided on many issues. Dissensions and quarrels have riven
+and shattered it into shreds. But in one respect Russia is still
+united--in the vehemence of her sentiment toward the Allies, who first
+drained her life-blood and then abandoned her prostrate body to beasts
+of prey. Some part of the hatred engendered might have been mitigated if
+representatives of the provisional Russian government had been admitted
+to the Conference. A statesman would have insisted upon opening at least
+this little safety-valve. It would have helped and could not have harmed
+the Allies. It would have bound the Russians to them. For Russia's
+delegates, the men sent or empowered by Kolchak and his colleagues to
+represent them, would have been the exponents of a helpless community
+hovering between life and death. They could and would have gone far
+toward conciliating the world-dictators, to whose least palatable
+decisions they might have hesitated to offer unbending opposition. And
+this acquiescence, however provisional, would have tended to relieve the
+Allies of a sensible part of their load of responsibility. It would also
+have linked the Russians, loosely, perhaps, but perceptibly, to the
+Western Powers. It would have imparted a settled Ententophil direction
+to Kolchak's policy, and communicated it to the nation. In short, it
+might have dispelled some of the storm-clouds that are gathering in the
+east of Europe."
+
+But the Allies, true to their wont of drifting, put off all decisive
+action, and let things slip and slide, for the Germans to put in order.
+There were no Russians, therefore, at the Conference, and there lies no
+obligation on any political group or party in the anarchist Slav state
+to hold to the Allies. But it would be an error to imagine that they
+have a white sheet of paper on which to trace their line of action and
+write the names of France and Britain as their future friends. They are
+filled with angry disgust against these two ex-Allies, and of the two
+the feeling against France is especially intense.[287]
+
+It is a truism to repeat in a different form what Messrs. Lloyd George
+and Wilson repeatedly affirmed, but apparently without realizing what
+they said: that the peace which they regard as the crowning work of
+their lives deserves such value as it may possess from the assumption
+that Russia, when she recovers from her cataleptic fit, will be the ally
+of the Powers that have dismembered her. If this postulate should prove
+erroneous, Germany may form an anti-Allied league of a large number of
+nations which it would be invidious to enumerate here. But it is
+manifest that this consummation would imperil Poland, Czechoslovakia,
+and Jugoslavia, and sweep away the last vestiges of the peace
+settlement. And although it would be rash to make a forecast of the
+policy which new Russia will strike out, it would be impolitic to blink
+the conclusions toward which recent events significantly point.
+
+In April a Russian statesman said to me: "The Allied delegates are
+unconsciously thrusting from them the only means by which they can still
+render peace durable and a fellowship of the nations possible.
+Unwittingly they are augmenting the forces of Bolshevism and raising
+political enemies against themselves. Consider how they are behaving
+toward us. Recently a number of Russian prisoners escaped from Germany
+to Holland, whereupon the Allied representatives packed them off by
+force and against their will to Dantzig, to be conveyed thence to Libau,
+where they have become recruits of the Bolshevist Red Guards. Those men
+might have been usefully employed in the Allied countries, to whose
+cause they were devoted, but so exasperated were they at their forcible
+removal to Libau that many of them declared that they would join the
+Bolshevist forces.
+
+"Even our official representatives are seemingly included in the
+category of suspects. Our Minister in Peking was refused the right of
+sending ciphered telegrams and our chargé d'affaires in a European
+capital suffered the same deprivation, while the Bolshevist envoy
+enjoyed this diplomatic privilege. A councilor of embassy in one Allied
+country was refused a passport visa for another until he declared that
+if the refusal were upheld he would return a high order which for
+extraordinary services he had received from the government whose embassy
+was vetoing his visa. On the national festival of a certain Allied
+country the chargé d'affaires of Russia was the only member of the
+diplomatic corps who received no official invitation."
+
+One day in January, when a crowd had gathered on the Quai d'Orsay,
+watching the delegates from the various countries--British, American,
+Italian, Japanese, Rumanian, etc.--enter the stately palace to safeguard
+the interests of their respective countries and legislate for the human
+race, a Russian officer passed, accompanied by an illiterate soldier who
+had seen hard service first under the Grand Duke Nicholas, and then in a
+Russian brigade in France. The soldier gazed wistfully at the palace,
+then, turning to the officer, asked, "Are they letting any of our people
+in there?" The officer answered, evasively: "They are thinking it over.
+Perhaps they will." Whereupon his attendant blurted out: "Thinking it
+over! What thinking is wanted? Did we not fight for them till we were
+mowed down like grass? Did not millions of Russian bodies cover the
+fields, the roads, and the camps? Did we not face the German great guns
+with only bayonets and sticks? Have we done too little for them? What
+more could we have done to be allowed in there with the others? I fought
+since the war began, and was twice wounded. My five brothers were called
+up at the same time as myself, and all five have been killed, and now
+the Russians are not wanted! The door is shut in our faces...."
+
+Sooner or later Russian anarchy, like that of China, will come to an
+end, and the leaders charged with the reconstitution of the country, if
+men of knowledge, patriotism, and character, will adopt a program
+conducive to the well-being of the nation. To what extent, one may ask,
+is its welfare compatible with the _status quo_ in eastern Europe, which
+the Allies, distracted by conflicting principles and fitful impulse,
+left or created and hope to perpetuate by means of a parchment
+instrument?
+
+The zeal with which the French authorities went to work to prevent the
+growth of Bolshevism in their country, especially among the Russians
+there, is beyond dispute. Unhappily it proved inefficacious. Indeed, it
+is no exaggeration to say that it defeated its object and produced the
+contrary effect. For attention was so completely absorbed by the aim
+that no consideration remained over for the means of attaining it. A few
+concrete examples will bring this home to the reader. The following
+narratives emanate from an eminent Russian, who is devoted to the
+Allies.
+
+There were scores of thousands of Russian troops in France. Most of them
+fought valiantly, others half-heartedly, and a few refused to fight at
+all. But instead of making distinctions the French authorities, moved by
+the instinct of self-preservation, and preferring prevention to cure,
+tarred them all with the same brush. "Give a dog a bad name and hang
+him," says the proverb, and it was exemplified in the case of the
+Russians, who soon came to be regarded as a _tertium quid_ between
+enemies of public order and suspicious neutrals. They were profoundly
+mistrusted. Their officers were deprived of their authority over their
+own men and placed under the command of excellent French officers, who
+cannot be blamed for not understanding the temper of the Slavs nor for
+rubbing them against the grain. The privates, seeing their superiors
+virtually degraded, concluded that they had forfeited their claim to
+respect, and treated them accordingly. That gave the death-blow to
+discipline. The officers, most of whom were devoted heart and soul to
+the cause of the Allies, with which they had fondly identified their
+own, lost heart. After various attempts to get themselves reinstated,
+their feelings toward the nation, which was nowise to blame for the
+excessive zeal of its public servants, underwent a radical change.
+Blazing indignation consumed whatever affection they had originally
+nurtured for the French, and in many cases also for the other Allies,
+and they went home to communicate their animus to their countrymen. The
+soldiers, who now began to be taunted and vilipended as Boches, threw
+all discipline to the winds and, feeling every hand raised against them,
+resolved to raise their hands against every man. These were the
+beginnings of the process of "bolshevization."
+
+This anti-Russian spirit grew intenser as time lapsed. Thousands of
+Russian soldiers were sent out to work for private employers, not by the
+War Ministry, but by the Ministry of Agriculture, under whom they were
+placed. They were fed and paid a wage which under normal circumstances
+should have contented them, for it was more than they used to receive in
+pre-war days in their own country. But the circumstances were not
+normal. Side by side with them worked Frenchmen, many of whom were
+unable physically to compete with the sturdy peasants from Perm and
+Vyatka. And when propagandists pointed out to them that the French
+worker was paid 100 per cent. more, they brooded over the inequality and
+labeled it as they were told. For overwork, too, the rate of pay was
+still more unequal. One result of this differential treatment was the
+estrangement of the two races as represented by the two classes of
+workmen, and the growth of mutual dislike. But there was another. When
+they learned, as they did in time, that the employer was selling the
+produce of their labor at a profit of 400 and 500 per cent., they had no
+hesitation about repeating the formulas suggested to them by socialist
+propagandists: "We are working for bloodsuckers. The bourgeois must be
+exterminated." In this way bitterness against the Allies and hatred of
+the capitalists were inculcated in tens of thousands of Russians who a
+few months before were honest, simple-minded peasants and
+well-disciplined soldiers. Many of these men, when they returned to
+their country, joined the Red Guards of Bolshevism with spontaneous
+ardor. They needed no pressing.
+
+There was one young officer of the Guards, in particular, named G----,
+who belonged to a very good family and was an exceptionally cultured
+gentleman. Music was his recreation, and he was a virtuoso on the
+violin. In the war he had distinguished himself first on the Russian
+front and then on the French. He had given of his best, for he was
+grievously wounded, had his left hand paralyzed, and lost his power of
+playing the violin forever. He received a high decoration from the
+French government. For the English nation he professed and displayed
+great affection, and in particular he revered King George, perhaps
+because of his physical resemblance to the Tsar. And when King George
+was to visit Paris he rejoiced exceedingly at the prospect of seeing
+him. Orders were issued for the troops to come out and line the
+principal routes along which the monarch would pass. The French
+naturally had the best places, but the Place de l'Étoile was reserved
+for the Allied forces. G----, delighted, went to his superior officer
+and inquired where the Russians were to stand. The general did not know,
+but promised to ascertain. Accordingly he put the question to the French
+commander, who replied: "Russian troops? There is no place for any
+Russian troops." With tears in his eyes G---- recounted this episode,
+adding: "We, who fought and bled, and lost our lives or were crippled,
+had to swallow this humiliation, while Poles and Czechoslovaks, who had
+only just arrived from America in their brand-new uniforms, and had
+never been under fire, had places allotted to them in the pageant. Is
+that fair to the troops without whose exploits there would have been no
+Polish or Czechoslovak officers, no French victory, no triumphal entry
+of King George V into Paris?"
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[287] It is right to say that during the summer months a considerable
+section of the anti-Bolshevists modified their view of Britain's policy,
+and expressed gratitude for the aid bestowed on Kolchak, Denikin, and
+Yudenitch, without which their armies would have collapsed.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+SIDELIGHTS ON THE TREATY
+
+
+From the opening of the Conference fundamental differences sprang up
+which split the delegates into two main parties, of which one was
+solicitous mainly about the resettlement of the world and its future
+mainstay, the League of Nations, and the other about the furtherance of
+national interests, which, it maintained, was equally indispensable to
+an enduring peace. The latter were ready to welcome the League on
+condition that it was utilized in the service of their national
+purposes, but not if it countered them. To bridge the chasm between the
+two was the task to which President Wilson courageously set his hand.
+Unluckily, by way of qualifying for the experiment, he receded from his
+own strong position, and having cut his moorings from one shove, failed
+to reach the other. His pristine idea was worthy of a world-leader; had,
+in fact, been entertained and advocated by some of the foremost spirits
+of modern times. He purposed bringing about conditions under which the
+pacific progress of the world might be safeguarded in a very large
+measure and for an indefinite time. But being very imperfectly
+acquainted with the concrete conditions of European and Asiatic
+peoples--he had never before felt the pulsation of international
+life--his ideas about the ways and means were hazy, and his calculations
+bore no real reference to the elements of the problem. Consequently,
+with what seemed a wide horizon and a generous ambition, his grasp was
+neither firm nor comprehensive enough for such a revolutionary
+undertaking. In no case could he make headway without the voluntary
+co-operation of the nations themselves, who in their own best interests
+might have submitted to heavy sacrifices, to which their leaders, whom
+he treated as true exponents of their will, refused their consent. But
+he scouted the notion of a world-parliament. Whenever, therefore,
+contemplating a particular issue, not as an independent question in
+itself, but as an integral part of a larger problem, he made a
+suggestion seemingly tending toward the ultimate goal, his motion
+encountered resolute opposition in the face of which he frequently
+retreated.
+
+At the outset, on which so much depended, the peoples as distinguished
+from the governments appeared to be in general sympathy with his
+principal aim, and it seemed at the time that if appealed to on a clear
+issue they would have given him their whole-hearted support, provided
+always that, true to his own principles, he pressed these to the fullest
+extent and admitted no such invidious distinctions as privileged and
+unprivileged nations. This belief was confirmed by what I heard from men
+of mark, leaders of the labor people, and three Prime Ministers. They
+assured me that such an appeal would have evoked an enthusiastic
+response in their respective countries. Convinced that the principles
+laid down by the President during the last phases of the war would go
+far to meet the exigencies of the conjuncture, I ventured to write on
+one of the occasions, when neither party would yield to the other: "The
+very least that Mr. Wilson might now do, if the deadlock continues, is
+to publish to the world the desirable objects which the United States
+are disinterestedly, if not always wisely, striving for, and leave the
+judgment to the peoples concerned."[288]
+
+But he recoiled from the venture. Perhaps it was already too late. In
+the judgment of many, his assent to the suppression of the problem of
+the freedom of the seas, however unavoidable as a tactical expedient,
+knelled the political world back to the unregenerate days of strategical
+frontiers, secret alliances, military preparations, financial burdens,
+and the balance of power. On that day, his grasp on the banner relaxing,
+it fell, to be raised, it may be, at some future time by the peoples
+whom he had aspired to lead. The contests which he waged after that
+first defeat had little prospect of success, and soon the pith and
+marrow of the issue completely disappeared. The utmost he could still
+hope for was a paper covenant--- which is a different thing from a
+genuine accord--to take home with him to Washington. And this his
+colleagues did not grudge him. They were operating with a different cast
+of mind upon a wholly different set of ideas. Their aims, which they
+pursued with no less energy and with greater perseverance than Mr.
+Wilson displayed, were national. Some of them implicitly took the ground
+that Germany, having plunged the world in war, would persist
+indefinitely in her nefarious machinations, and must, therefore, in the
+interests of general peace, be crippled militarily, financially,
+economically, and politically, for as long a time as possible, while her
+potential enemies must for the same reason be strengthened to the utmost
+at her expense, and that this condition of things must be upheld through
+the beneficent instrumentality of the League of Nations.
+
+On these conflicting issues ceaseless contention went on from the start,
+yet for lack of a strong personality of sound, over-ruling judgment the
+contest dragged on without result. For months the demon of
+procrastination seemed to have possessed the souls of the principal
+delegates, and frustrated their professed intentions to get through the
+work expeditiously. Even unforeseen incidents led to dangerous delay.
+Every passing episode became a ground for postponing the vital issue,
+although each day lost increased the difficulties of achieving the
+principal object, which was the conclusion of peace. For example, the
+committee dealing with the question of reparations would reach a
+decision, say, that Germany must pay a certain sum, which would entail a
+century of strenuous effort, accompanied with stringent thrift and
+self-denial; while the Economic Committee decided that her supply of raw
+material should be restricted within such narrow limits as to put such
+payment wholly out of her power. And this difference of view
+necessitated a postponement of the whole issue. Mr. Hughes, the Premier
+of Australia, commenting on this shilly-shallying, said with truth:[289]
+"The minds of the people are grievously perturbed. The long delay,
+coupled with fears lest that the Peace Treaty, when it does come, should
+prove to be a peace unworthy, unsatisfactory, unenduring, has made the
+hearts of the people sick. We were told that the Peace Treaty would be
+ready in the coming week, but we look round and see half a world engaged
+in war, or preparation for war. Bolshevism is spreading with the
+rapidity of a prairie fire. The Allies have been forced to retreat from
+some of the most fertile parts of southern Russia, and Allied troops,
+mostly British, at Murmansk and Archangel are in grave danger of
+destruction. Yet we were told that peace was at hand, and that the world
+was safe for liberty and democracy. It is not fine phrases about peace,
+liberty, and making the world safe for democracy that the world wants,
+but deeds. The peoples of the Allied countries justifiably desire to be
+reassured by plain, comprehensible statements, instead of
+long-drawn-out negotiations and the thick veil of secrecy in which
+these were shrouded."
+
+It requires an effort to believe that procrastination was raised to the
+level of a theory by men whose experience of political affairs was
+regarded as a guarantee of the soundness of their judgment. Yet it is an
+incontrovertible fact that dilatory tactics were seriously suggested as
+a policy at the Conference. It was maintained that, far from running
+risks by postponing a settlement, the Entente nations were, on the
+contrary, certain to find the ground better prepared the longer the day
+of reckoning was put off. Germany, they contended, had recovered
+temporarily from the Bolshevik fever, but the improvement was fleeting.
+The process of decomposition was becoming intenser day by day, although
+the symptoms were not always manifest. Lack of industrial production, of
+foreign trade and sound finances, was gnawing at the vitals of the
+Teuton Republic. The army of unemployed and discontented was swelling.
+Soon the sinister consequences of this stagnation would take the form of
+rebellions and revolts, followed by disintegration. And this conjunction
+would be the opportunity of the Entente Powers, who could then step in,
+present their bills, impose their restrictions, and knead the Teuton
+dough into any shape they relished. Then it would be feasible to
+prohibit the Austrian-Germans from ever entering the Republic as a
+federated state. In a word, the Allied governments need only command,
+and the Teutons would hasten to obey. It is hardly credible that men of
+experience in foreign politics should build upon such insecure
+foundations as these. It is but fair to say the Conference rejected this
+singular program in theory while unintentionally carrying it out.
+
+Although everybody admitted that the liquidation of the world conflict
+followed by a return to normal conditions was the one thing that pressed
+for settlement, so intent were the plenipotentiaries on preventing wars
+among unborn generations that they continued to overlook the pressing
+needs of their contemporaries. It is at the beginning and end of an
+enterprise that the danger of failure is greatest, and it was the
+opening moves of the Allies that proved baleful to their subsequent
+undertakings. Germany, one would think, might have been deprived
+summarily of everything which was to be ultimately and justly taken from
+her, irrespective of its final destination. The first and most important
+operation being the severance of the provinces allotted to other
+peoples, their redistribution might safely have been left until
+afterward. And hardly less important was the despatch of an army to
+eastern Europe. Then Germany, broken in spirit, with Allied troops on
+both her fronts, between the two jaws of a vise, could not have said nay
+to the conditions. But this method presupposed a plan which unluckily
+did not exist. It assumed that the peace terms had been carefully
+considered in advance, whereas the Allies prepared for war during
+hostilities, and for peace during the negotiations. And they went about
+this in a leisurely, lackadaisical way, whereas expedition was the key
+to success.
+
+As for a durable peace, involving general disarmament, it should have
+been outlined in a comprehensive program, which the delegates had not
+drawn up, and it would have become feasible only if the will to pursue
+it proceeded from principle, not from circumstances. In no case could it
+be accomplished without the knowledge and co-operation of the peoples
+themselves, nor within the time-limits fixed for the work of the
+Conference. For the abolition of war and the creation of a new ordering,
+like human progress, is a long process. It admits of a variety of
+beginnings, but one can never be sure of the end, seeing that it
+presupposes a radical change in the temper of the peoples, one might
+almost say a remodeling of human nature. It can only be the effect of a
+variety of causes, mainly moral, operating over a long period of time.
+Peace with Germany was a matter for the governments concerned; the
+elimination of war could only be accomplished by the peoples. The one
+was in the main a political problem, the other social, economical, and
+ethical.
+
+Mr. Balfour asserted optimistically[290] that the work of concluding
+peace with Germany was a very simple matter. None the less it took the
+Conference over five months to arrange it. So desperately slow was the
+progress of the Supreme Council that on the 213th day of the Peace
+Conference,[291] two months after the Germans had signed the conditions,
+not one additional treaty had been concluded, nay, none was even ready
+for signature. The Italian plenipotentiary, Signor Tittoni, thereupon
+addressed his colleagues frankly on the subject and asked them whether
+they were not neglecting their primary duty, which was to conclude
+treaties with the various enemies who had ceased to fight in November of
+the previous year and were already waiting for over nine months to
+resume normal life, and whether the delegates were justified in seeking
+to discharge the functions of a supreme board for the government of all
+Europe. He pointed out that nobody could hope to profit by the state of
+disorder and paralysis for which this procrastination was answerable,
+the economic effects making themselves felt sooner or later in every
+country. He added that the cost of the war had been calculated for every
+month, every week, every day, and that the total impressed every one
+profoundly; but that nobody had thought it worth his while to count up
+the atrocious cost of this incredibly slow peace and of the waste of
+wealth caused every week and month that it dragged on. Italy, he
+lamented, felt this loss more keenly than her partners because her peace
+had not yet been concluded. He felt moved, therefore, he said, to tell
+them that the business of governing Europe to which the Conference had
+been attending all those months was not precisely the work for which it
+was convoked.[292]
+
+This sharp and timely admonition was the preamble of a motion. The
+Conference was just then about to separate for a "well-earned holiday,"
+during which its members might renew their spent energies and return in
+October to resume their labors, the peoples in the meanwhile bearing the
+cost in blood and substance. The Italian delegate objected to any such
+break and adjured them to remain at their posts. Why, he asked, should
+ill-starred Italy, which had already sustained so many and such painful
+losses, be condemned to sacrifice further enormous sums in order that
+the delegates who had been frittering away their time tackling
+irrelevant issues, and endeavoring to rule all Europe, might have a
+rest? Why should they interrupt the sessions before making peace with
+Austria, with Hungary, with Bulgaria, with Turkey, and enabling Italy to
+return to normal life? Why should time and opportunity be given to the
+Turks and Kurds for the massacre of Armenian men, women, and children?
+This candid reminder is said to have had a sobering effect on the
+versatile delegates yearning for a holiday. The situation that evoked it
+will arouse the passing wonder of level-headed men.
+
+It is worth recording that such was the atmosphere of suspicion among
+the delegates that the motives for this holiday were believed by some to
+be less the need of repose than an unavowable desire to give time to
+the Hapsburgs to recover the Crown of St. Stephen as the first step
+toward seizing that of Austria.[293] The Austrians desired exemption
+from the obligation to make reparations and pay crushing taxes, and one
+of the delegates, with a leaning for that country, was not averse to the
+idea. As the states that arose on the ruins of the Hapsburg monarchy
+were not considered enemies by the Conference, it was suggested that
+Austria herself should enjoy the same distinction. But the Italian
+plenipotentiaries objected and Signor Tittoni asked, "Will it perhaps be
+asserted that there was no enemy against whom we Italians fought for
+three years and a half, losing half a million slain and incurring a debt
+of eighty thousand millions?"
+
+A French journal, touching on this Austrian problem, wrote:[294]
+"Austria-Hungary has been killed and now France is striving to raise it
+to life again. But Italy is furiously opposed to everything that might
+lead to an understanding among the new states formed out of the old
+possessions of the Hapsburgs. That, in fact, is why our transalpine
+allies were so favorable to the union of Austria with Germany. France on
+her side, whose one overruling thought is to reduce her vanquished enemy
+to the most complete impotence, France who is afraid of being afraid,
+will not tolerate an Austria joined to the German Federation." Here the
+principle of self-determination went for nothing.
+
+Before the Conference had sat for a month it was angrily assailed by the
+peoples who had hoped so much from its love of justice--Egyptians,
+Koreans, Irishmen from Ireland and from America, Albanians, Frenchmen
+from Mauritius and Syria, Moslems from Aderbeidjan, Persians, Tartars,
+Kirghizes, and a host of others, who have been aptly likened to the halt
+and maimed among the nations waiting round the diplomatic Pool of Siloam
+for the miracle of the moving of the waters that never came.[295]
+
+These peoples had heard that a great and potent world-reformer had
+arisen whose mission it was to redress secular grievances and confer
+liberty upon oppressed nations, tribes, and tongues, and they sent their
+envoys to plead before him. And these wandered about the streets of
+Paris seeking the intercession of delegates, Ministers, and journalists
+who might obtain for them admission to the presence of the new Messiah
+or his apostles. But all doors were closed to them. One of the
+petitioners whose language was vernacular English, as he was about to
+shake the dust of Paris from his boots, quoting Sydney Smith, remarked:
+"They, too, are Pharisees. They would do the Good Samaritan, but without
+the oil and twopence. How has it come to pass that the Jews without an
+official delegate commanded the support--the militant support--of the
+Supreme Council, which did not hesitate to tyrannize eastern Europe for
+their sake?"
+
+Involuntarily the student of politics called to mind the report written
+to Baron Hager[296] by one of his secret agents during the Congress of
+Vienna: "Public opinion continues to be unfavorable to the Congress. On
+all sides one hears it said that there is no harmony, that they are no
+longer solicitous about the re-establishment of order and justice, but
+are bent only on forcing one another's hands, each one grabbing as much
+as he can.... It is said that the Congress will end because it must, but
+that it will leave things more entangled than it found them.... The
+peoples, who in consequence of the success, the sincerity, and the
+noble-mindedness of this superb coalition had conceived such esteem for
+their leaders and such attachment to them, and now perceive how they
+have forgotten what they solemnly promised--justice, order, peace
+founded on the equilibrium and legitimacy of their possessions--will end
+by losing their affection and withdrawing their confidence in their
+principles and their promises."
+
+Those words, written a hundred and five years ago, might have been
+penned any day since the month of February, 1919.
+
+The leading motive of the policy pursued by the Supreme Council and
+embodied in the Treaty was aptly described at the time as the systematic
+protection of France against Germany. Hence the creation of the powerful
+barrier states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, Greater Rumania, and
+Greater Greece. French nationalists pleaded for further precautions more
+comprehensive still. Their contention was that France's economic,
+strategic, financial, and territorial welfare being the cornerstone of
+the future European edifice, every measure proposed at the Conference,
+whether national or general, should be considered and shaped in
+accordance with that, and consequently that no possibility should be
+accorded to Germany of rising again to a commanding position because, if
+she once recovered her ascendancy in any domain whatsoever, Europe would
+inevitably be thrust anew into the horrors of war. Territorially,
+therefore, the dismemberment of Germany was obligatory; the annexation
+of the Saar Valley, together with its six hundred thousand Teuton
+inhabitants, was necessary to France, and either the annexation of the
+left bank of the Rhine or its transformation into a detached state to be
+occupied and administered by the French until Germany pays the last
+farthing of the indemnity. Further, Austria must be deprived of the
+right of determining her own mode of existence and constrained to
+abandon the idea of becoming one of the federated states of the German
+Republic, and, if possible, northern Germany should be kept entirely
+separate from southern. The Allies should divide the Teutons in order to
+sway them. All Germany's other frontiers should be delimitated in a like
+spirit. And at the same time the work of knitting together the peoples
+and nations of Europe and forming them into a friendly sodality was to
+go forward without interruption.
+
+"How to promote our interests in the Rhineland," wrote M. Maurice
+Barrès,[297] "is a life-and-death question for us. We are going to carry
+to the Rhine our military and, I hope, our economic frontier. The rest
+will follow in its own good time. The future will not fail to secure for
+us the acquiescence of the population of the Rhineland, who will live
+freely under the protection of our arms, their faces turned toward
+Paris."
+
+Financially it was proposed that the Teutons should be forced to
+indemnify France, Belgium, and the other countries for all the damage
+they had inflicted upon them; to pay the entire cost of the war, as well
+as the pensions to widows, orphans, and the mutilated. And the military
+occupation of their country should be maintained until this huge debt is
+wholly wiped out.
+
+A Nationalist organ,[298] in a leading article, stated with brevity and
+clearness the prevailing view of Germany's obligations. Here is a
+characteristic passage: "She is rich, has reserves derived from many
+years of former prosperity; she can work to produce and repair all the
+evil she has done, rebuild all the ruins she has accumulated, and
+restore all the fortunes she has destroyed, however irksome the burden."
+After analyzing Doctor Helfferich's report published six years ago, the
+article concluded, "Germany must pay; she disposes of the means because
+she is rich; if she refuses we must compel her without hesitation and
+without ruth."
+
+As France, whose cities and towns and very soil were ruined, could not
+be asked to restore these places at her own expense and tax herself
+drastically like her allies, the Americans and British, the prior and
+privileged right to receive payment on her share of the indemnity should
+manifestly appertain to her. Her allies and associates should, it was
+argued, accordingly waive their money claims until hers were satisfied
+in full. Moreover, as France's future expenditure on her army of
+occupation, on the administration of her colonies and of the annexed
+territories, must necessarily absorb huge sums for years to come, which
+her citizens feel they ought not to be asked to contribute, and as her
+internal debt was already overwhelming, it is only meet and just that
+her wealthier partners should pool their war debts with hers and share
+their financial resources with her and all their other allies. This, it
+was argued, was an obvious corollary of the war alliance. Economically,
+too, the Germans, while permitted to resume their industrial occupations
+on a sufficiently large scale to enable them to earn the wherewithal to
+live and discharge their financial obligations, should be denied free
+scope to outstrip France, whose material prosperity is admittedly
+essential to the maintenance of general peace and the permanence of the
+new ordering. In this condition, it is further contended, our chivalrous
+ally was entitled to special consideration because of her low
+birth-rate, which is one of the mainsprings of her difficulties. This
+may permanently keep her population from rising above the level of forty
+million, whereas Germany, by the middle of the century, will have
+reached the formidable total of eighty million, so that competition
+between them would not be on a footing of equality. Hence the chances
+should be evenly balanced by the action of the Conference, to be
+continued by the League. Discriminating treatment was therefore a
+necessity. And it should be so introduced that France should be free to
+maintain a protective tariff, of which she had sore need for her foreign
+trade, without causing umbrage to her allies. For they could not gainsay
+that her position deserved special treatment.
+
+Some of the Anglo-Saxon delegates took other ground, feeling unable to
+countenance the postulate underlying those demands, namely, that the
+Teuton race was to be forever anathema. They looked far enough ahead to
+make due allowance for a future when conditions in Europe will be very
+different from what they are to-day. The German race, they felt, being
+numerous and virile, will not die out and cannot be suppressed. And as
+it is also enterprising and resourceful it would be a mistake to render
+it permanently hostile by the Allies overstepping the bounds of justice,
+because in this case neither national nor general interests would be
+furthered. You may hinder Germany, they argued, from acquiring the
+hegemony of the world, but not from becoming the principal factor in
+European evolution. If thirty years hence the German population totals
+eighty million or more, will not their attitude and their sentiment
+toward their neighbors constitute an all-important element of European
+tranquillity and will not the trend of these be to a large extent the
+outcome of the Allies' policy of to-day? The present, therefore, is the
+time for the delegates to deprive that sentiment of its venomous,
+anti-Allied sting, not by renouncing any of their countries' rights, but
+by respecting those of others.
+
+That was the reasoning of those who believed that national striving
+should be subordinated to the general good, and that the present time
+and its aspirations should be considered in strict relation to the
+future of the whole community of nations. They further contended that
+while Germany deserved to suffer condignly for the heinous crimes of
+unchaining the war and waging it ruthlessly, as many of her own people
+confessed, she should not be wholly crippled or enthralled in the hope
+that she would be rendered thereby impotent forever. Such hope was vain.
+With her waxing strength her desire of vengeance would grow, and
+together with it the means of wreaking it. She might yet knead Russia
+into such a shape as would make that Slav people a serviceable
+instrument of revenge, and her endeavors might conceivably extend
+farther than Russia. The one-sided resettlement of Europe charged with
+explosives of such incalculable force would frustrate the most elaborate
+attempts to create not only a real league of nations, but even such a
+rough approximation toward one as might in time and under favorable
+circumstances develop into a trustworthy war preventive. They concluded
+that a league of nations would be worse than useless if transformed into
+a weapon to be wielded by one group of nations against another, or as an
+artificial makeshift for dispensing peoples from the observance of
+natural laws.
+
+At the same time all the governments of the Allies were sincere and
+unanimous in their desire to do everything possible to show their
+appreciation of France's heroism, to recognize the vastness of her
+sacrifices, and to pay their debt of gratitude for her services to
+humanity. All were actuated by a resolve to contribute in the measure of
+the possible to compensate her for such losses as were still reparable
+and to safeguard her against the recurrence of the ordeal from which she
+had escaped terribly scathed. The only limits they admitted to this
+work of reparation were furnished by the aim itself and by the means of
+attaining it. Thus Messrs. Wilson and Lloyd George held that to
+incorporate in renovated France millions or even hundreds of thousands
+of Germans would be to introduce into the political organism the germs
+of fell disease, and on this ground they firmly refused to sanction the
+Rhine frontier, which the French were thus obliged to relinquish. The
+French delegates themselves admitted that if granted it could not be
+held without a powerful body of international troops ever at the beck
+and call of the Republic, vigilantly keeping watch and ward on the banks
+of the Rhine and with no reasonable prospect of a term to this
+servitude. For the real ground of this dependence upon foreign forces is
+the disproportion between the populations of Germany and France and
+between the resources of the two nations. The ratio of the former is at
+present about six to four and it is growing perceptibly toward seven to
+four. The organizing capacity in commerce and industry is said to be
+even greater. If, therefore, France cannot stand alone to-day, still
+less could she stand alone in ten or fifteen years, and the necessity of
+protecting her against aggression, assuming that the German people does
+not become reconciled to its status of forced inferiority, would be more
+urgent and less practicable with the lapse of time. For, as we saw, it
+is largely a question of the birth-rate. And as neither the British nor
+the American people, deeply though they are attached to their gallant
+comrades in arms, would consent to this arrangement, which to them would
+be a burden and to the Germans a standing provocation, their
+representatives were forced to the conclusion that it would be the
+height of folly to do aught that would give the Teutons a convenient
+handle for a war of revenge. Let there be no annexation of territory,
+they said, no incorporation of unwilling German citizens. The Americans
+further argued that an indefinite occupation of German territory by a
+large body of international troops would be a direct encouragement to
+militarism.
+
+The indemnities for which the French yearned, and on which their
+responsible financiers counted, were large. The figures employed were
+astronomical. Hundreds of milliards of francs were operated with by
+eminent publicists in an offhand manner that astonished the survivor of
+the expiring budgetary epoch and rejoiced the hearts of the Western
+taxpayers. For it was not only journalists who wrote as though a stream
+of wealth were to be turned into these countries to fertilize industry
+and commerce there and enable them to keep well ahead of their pushing
+competitors. Responsible Ministers likewise hall-marked these forecasts
+with their approval. Before the fortune of war had decided for the
+Allies, the finances of France had sorely embarrassed the Minister, M.
+Klotz, of whom his chief, M. Clemenceau, is reported to have said: "He
+is the only Israelite I have ever known who is out of his element when
+dealing with money matters." Before the armistice, M. Klotz, when
+talking of the complex problem and sketching the outlook, exclaimed: "If
+we win the war, I undertake to make both ends meet, far though they now
+seem apart. For I will make the Germans pay the entire cost of the war."
+After the armistice he repeated his promise and undertook not to levy
+fresh taxation.
+
+Thus, despite fitful gleams of idealism, the atmosphere of the Paris
+Conclave grew heavy with interests, passions, and ambitions. Only people
+in blinkers could miss the fact that the elastic formulas launched and
+interpreted by President Wilson were being stretched to the
+snapping-point so as to cover two mutually incompatible policies. The
+chasm between his original prospects and those of his foreign associates
+they both conscientiously endeavored to ignore, and after a time they
+hit upon a _tertium quid_ between territorial equilibrium and a
+sterilized league tempered by the Monroe Doctrine and a military
+compact. This composite resultant carried with it the concentrated evils
+of one of these systems and was deprived of its redeeming features by
+the other. At a conjuncture in the world's affairs which postulated
+internationalism of the loftiest kind, the delegates increased and
+multiplied nations and states which they deprived of sovereignty and
+yoked to the first-class races. National ambitions took precedence of
+larger interests; racial hatred was raised to its highest power. In a
+word, the world's state system was so oddly pieced together that only
+economic exhaustion followed by a speedy return to militarism could
+insure for it a moderate duration.
+
+Territorial self-sufficiency, military strength, and advantageous
+alliances were accordingly looked to as the mainstays of the new
+ordering, even by those who paid lip tribute to the Wilsonian ideal. The
+ideal itself underwent a disfiguring change in the process of
+incarnation. The Italians asked how the Monroe Doctrine could be
+reconciled with the charter of the League of Nations, seeing that the
+League would be authorized to intervene in the domestic affairs of other
+member-states, and if necessary to despatch troops to keep Germany,
+Italy, and Poland in order; whereas if the United States were guilty of
+tyrannical aggression against Brazil, the Argentine Republic, or Mexico,
+the League, paralyzed by that Doctrine, must look on inactive. The
+Germans, alleging capital defects in the Wilsonian Covenant, which was
+adjusted primarily to the Allies' designs, went to Paris prepared with a
+substitute which, it must in fairness be admitted, was considerably
+superior to that of their adversaries, and incidentally fraught with
+greater promise to themselves.
+
+It is superfluous to add that the continental view prevailed, but Mr.
+Wilson imagined that, while abandoning his principles in favor of
+Britain, France, and Bulgaria, he could readjust the balance by applying
+them with rigor to Italy and exaggerating them when dealing with Greece.
+He afterward communicated his reasons for this belief in a message
+published in Washington.[299] The alliance--he was understood to have
+been opposed to all partial alliances on principle--which guarantees
+military succor to France, he had signed, he said, in gratitude to that
+country, for he seriously doubted whether the American Republic could
+have won its freedom against Britain's opposition without the gallant
+and friendly aid of France. "We recently had the privilege of assisting
+in driving enemies, who also were enemies of the world, from her soil,
+but that does not pay our debt to her. Nothing can pay such a debt." His
+critics retorted that that is a sentimental reason which might with
+equal force have been urged by France and Britain in justification of
+their promises to Italy and Rumania, yet was rejected as irrelevant by
+Mr. Wilson in the name of a higher principle.
+
+
+The President of the United States, it was further urged, is a
+historian, and history tells him that the help given to his country
+against England neither came from the French people nor was actuated by
+sympathy for the American cause. It was the vindictive act of one of
+those kings whose functions Mr. Wilson is endeavoring to abolish. The
+monarch who helped the Americans was merely utilizing a favorable
+opportunity for depriving with a minimum of effort his adversary of
+lucrative possessions. Moreover, the debt which nothing can pay was
+already due when in the years 1914-16 France was in imminent danger of
+being crushed by a ruthless enemy. But at that time Mr. Wilson owed his
+re-election largely to his refusal to extricate her from that peril.
+Instead of calling to mind the debt that can never be repaid he merely
+announced that he could not understand what the belligerents were
+fighting for and that in any case France's grateful debtor was too proud
+to fight. The motive which finally brought the United States into the
+World War may be the noblest that ever yet actuated any state, but no
+student of history will allow that Mr. Wilson has correctly described
+it.
+
+The fact is that the French delegates and their supporters were
+consistent and, except in their demand for the Rhine frontier,
+unbending. They drew up a program and saw that it was substantially
+carried out. They declared themselves quite ready to accept Mr. Wilson's
+project, but only on condition that their own was also realized,
+heedless of the incompatibility of the two. And Mr. Wilson felt
+constrained to make their position his own, otherwise he could not have
+obtained the Covenant he yearned for. And yet he must have known that
+acquiescence in the demands put forward by M. Clemenceau would lower the
+practical value of his Covenant to that of a sheet of paper.
+
+A blunt American journal, commenting on the handiwork of the Conference,
+gave utterance to views which while making no pretense to courtly
+phraseology are symptomatic of the way in which the average man thought
+and spoke of the Covenant which emanated from the Supreme Council. "We
+are convinced," it said, "that the elder statesmen of Europe, typified
+by Clemenceau, consider it a hoax. Clemenceau never before was so
+extremely bored by anything in his life as he was by the necessity of
+making a pious pretense in the Covenant when what he wanted was the
+assurance of the Triple Alliance. He got that assurance, which, along
+with the French watch on the Rhine, the French in the Saar Valley and
+in Africa, with German money going into French coffers, makes him
+tolerably indulgent of the altruistic rhetoricians.
+
+"The English, the intelligent English, we know have their tongues in
+their cheeks. The Italians are petulant imperialists, and Japan doesn't
+care what happens to the League so long as Japan says what shall happen
+in Asia."[300]
+
+Peace was at last signed, not on the basis of the Fourteen Points nor
+yet entirely on the lines of territorial equilibrium, but on those of a
+compromise which, missing the advantages of each, combined many of the
+evils of both and of others which were generated by their conjunction,
+and laid the foundations of the new state fabric on quick-sands. That
+was at bottom the view to which Italy, Rumania, and Greece gave
+utterance when complaining that their claims were being dealt with on
+the principle of self-denial, whereas those of France had been settled
+on the traditional basis of territorial guaranties and military
+alliances. Further, the Treaty failed to lay an ax to the roots of war,
+did, in fact, increase their number while purporting to destroy them.
+Far from that: germs of future conflicts not only between the late
+belligerents, but also between the recent Allies, were plentifully
+scattered and may sprout up in the fullness of time.
+
+
+The Paris press expressed its satisfaction with France's share of the
+fruits of victory. For the provisions of the Treaty went as far as any
+merely political arrangement could go to check the natural inequality,
+numerical, economical, industrial, and financial, between the Teuton and
+French peoples. To many this problem seemed wholly insoluble, because
+its solution involved a suspension or a corrective of a law of nature.
+Take the birth-rate in France, for example. Before the war it had long
+been declining at a rate which alarmed thoughtful French patriots. And,
+according to official statistics, it is falling off still more rapidly
+to-day, whereas the increase in other countries is greater than ever
+before.[301] Thus, whereas in the year 1911 there were 73,599 births in
+the Seine Department, there were only 47,480 in 1918. Wet nurses, too,
+are disappearing. Of these, in the year 1911, in the same territory
+there were 1,363, but in 1918 only 65. The mortality among foundlings
+rose from 5 per cent. before the war to 40 per cent. in the year
+1918.[302] M. Bertillon calculates that for France to increase merely at
+the same rate as other nations--not to recover the place among them
+which she has already lost, but only to keep her present one--she needs
+five hundred thousand more births than are registered at present. A
+statistical table which he drew up of the birth-rate of four European
+nations during five decades, beginning with the year 1861, is unpleasant
+reading[303] for the friends of that heroic and artistic people. France,
+containing in round numbers 40,000,000 inhabitants, ought to increase
+annually by 500,000. Before the war the total number of births in
+Germany was computed at one million nine hundred and fifty thousand, but
+hardly more than one million of the children born were viable.[304] The
+general conclusion to be drawn from these figures and from the
+circumstances that the falling off in the French population still goes
+on unchecked, is disquieting for those who desire to see the French
+race continue to play the leading part in continental Europe. One of the
+shrewdest observers in contemporary Germany--himself a distinguished
+Semite--commented on this decisive fact as follows:[305] "Within ten
+years Germany will contain seventy million inhabitants, and in the
+torrent of her fecundity will drown anemic and exhausted France.... The
+French nation is dying of exhaustion. There is no reason, however, for
+the world to get alarmed ... for before the French will have vanished
+from the earth, other races, virile and healthy, will have come to their
+country to take their place." That is what is actually happening, and it
+is impressively borne in upon the visitor to various French cities by
+the vast number of exotic names over houses of business and in other
+ways.
+
+With this formidable obstacle, then, the three members of the Supreme
+Council strenuously coped by exercising to the fullest extent the power
+conferred on the victors over the vanquished. And the result of their
+combinations challenged and received the unstinted approval of all those
+numerous enemies of Teutondom who believe the Germans to be incapable of
+contributing materially to human progress, unless they are kept in
+leading-strings by one of the superior races. The Treaty represents the
+potential realization of France's dream, achieved semi-miraculously by
+the very statesmen on whom the Teutons were relying to dispel it.
+Defeated, disarmed, incapable of military resistance, and devoid of
+friends, Germany thought she could discern her sheet-anchor of salvation
+in the Wilsonian gospel, and it was the preacher of this gospel himself
+who implicitly characterized her salvation as more difficult than the
+passage of a camel through the eye of a needle. The crimes perpetrated
+by the Teutons were unquestionably heinous beyond words, and no
+punishment permitted by the human conscience is too drastic to atone for
+them. How long this punishment should endure, whether it should be
+inflicted on the entire people as well as on their leaders, and what
+form should be given to it, were among the questions confronting the
+Secret Council, and they implicitly answered them in the way we have
+seen.
+
+People who consider the answer adequate and justified give as their
+reason that it presupposes and attains a single object--the efficacious
+protection of France as the sentinel of civilization against an
+incorrigible arch-enemy. And in this they may be right. But if you
+enlarge the problem till it covers the moral fellowship of nations, and
+if you postulate that as a safeguard of future peace and neighborliness
+in the world, then the outcome of the Treaty takes on a different
+coloring. Between France and Germany it creates a sea of bitterness
+which no rapturous exultation over the new ethical ordering can sweeten.
+The latter nation is assumed to be smitten with a fell moral disease, to
+which, however, the physicians of the Conference have applied no moral
+remedy, but only measures of coercion, mostly powerful irritants. The
+reformed state of Europe is consequently a state of latent war between
+two groups of nations, of which one is temporarily prostrate and both
+are naïvely exhorted to join hands and play a helpful part in an idyllic
+society of nations. This expectation is the delight of cynics and the
+despair of those serious reformers who are not interested politicians.
+Heretofore the most inveterate optimists in politics were the
+revolutionaries. But they have since been outdone by the Paris
+world-reformers, who tempt Providence by calling on it to accomplish by
+a miracle an object which they have striven hard and successfully to
+render impossible by the ordinary operation of cause and effect. Thus
+the Covenant mars the Treaty, and the Treaty the Covenant.
+
+In Weimar and Berlin the Treaty was termed the death-sentence of
+Germany, not only as an empire, but as an independent political
+community. Henceforward her economic efforts, beyond a certain limit,
+will be struck with barrenness, her industry will be hindered from
+outstripping or overtaking that of the neighboring countries, and her
+population will be indirectly kept within definite bounds. For, instead
+of exporting manufactures, she will be obliged to export human beings,
+whose intellect and skill will be utilized by such rivals of her own
+race as vouchsafe to admit them. Already before the Conference was over
+they began to emigrate eastward. And those who remain at home will not
+be masters in their own house, for the doors will be open to various
+foreign commissions.
+
+The assumption upon which the Treaty-framers proceeded is that the
+abominations committed by the German military and civil authorities were
+constructively the work of the entire nation, for whose reformation
+within a measurable period hope is vain. This view predominated among
+the ruling classes of the Entente peoples with few exceptions. If it be
+correct, it seems superfluous to constrain the enemy to enter the league
+of law-abiding nations, which is to be cemented only by voluntary
+adherence and by genuine attachment to liberty, right, and justice.
+Hence the Covenant, by being inserted in the Peace Treaty, necessarily
+lost its value as an eirenicon, and became subsequent to that
+instrument, and seems likely to be used as an anti-German safeguard. But
+even then its efficacy is doubtful, and manifestly so; otherwise the
+reformers, who at the start set out to abolish alliances as recognized
+causes of war, would not have ended by setting up a new Triple
+Alliance, which involves military, naval, and aerial establishments, and
+the corresponding financial burdens inseparable from these. An alliance
+of this character, whatever one may think of its economic and financial
+aspects, runs counter to the spirit of the Covenant, but was an obvious
+corollary of the Allies' attitude as mirrored in the Treaty. And the
+spirit of the Treaty destroys the letter of the Covenant. For the world
+is there implicitly divided into two camps--the friends and the enemies
+of liberty, right, and justice; and the main functions of the League as
+narrowed by the Treaty will be to hinder or defeat the machinations of
+the enemies. Moreover, the deliberate concessions made by the Conference
+to such agencies of the old ordering as the grouping of two or three
+Powers into defensive alliances bids fair to be extended in time. For
+the stress of circumstance is stronger than the will of man. At this
+rate the last state may be worse than the first.
+
+The world situation, thus formally modified, remained essentially
+unchanged, and will so endure until other forces are released. The
+League of Nations forfeited its ideal character under the pressure of
+national interests, and became a coalition of victors against the
+vanquished. By the insertion of the Covenant in the Treaty the former
+became a means for the execution of the latter. For even Mr. Wilson,
+faced with realities and called to practical counsel, affectionately
+dismissed the high-souled speculative projects in which he delighted
+during his hours of contemplation. Although the German delegates signed
+the Treaty, no one can honestly say that he expects them to observe it
+longer than constraint presses, however solemn the obligations imposed.
+
+In the press organ of the most numerous and powerful political party in
+Germany one might read in an article on the Germans in Bohemia annexed
+by Czechoslovakia: "Assuredly their destiny will not be determined for
+all time by the Versailles peace of violence. It behooves the German
+nation to cherish its affection for its oppressed brethren, even though
+it be powerless to succor them immediately. What then can it do? Italy
+has given it a marvelous lesson in the policy of irredentism, which she
+pursued in respect of the Trentino and Trieste."[306]
+
+With the Treaty as it stands, nationalist France of this generation has
+reason to be satisfied. One of its framers, himself a shrewd business
+man and politician, publicly set forth the grounds for this
+satisfaction.[307] Alsace and Lorraine reunited to the metropolis, he
+explained, will assist France materially with an industrious population
+and enormous resources in the shape of mineral wealth and a fruitful
+soil. Germany's former colonies, Kamerun and Togoland, are become
+French, and will doubtless offer a vast and attractive field for the
+expansion and prosperity of the French population. Morocco, freed from
+German enterprise, can henceforth be developed by the French population
+alone and without let or hindrance, for the benefit of the natives and
+in the true sense of Mr. Wilson's humanitarian ordinances. The potash
+deposits, to which German agriculture largely owed its prosperity, will
+henceforward be utilized in the service of French agriculture. "In iron
+ore the wealth of France is doubled, and her productive capacity as
+regards pig-iron and steel immensely increased. Her production of
+textiles is greater than before the war by about a third."[308] In a
+word, a vast area of the planet inhabited by various peoples will look
+to the French people for everything that makes their collective life
+worth living.
+
+The sole arrangement which for a time caused heart-burnings in France
+was that respecting the sums of money which Germany should have been
+made to pay to her victorious enemies. For the opinions on that subject
+held by the average man, and connived at or approved by the authorities,
+were wholly fantastic, just as were some of the expectations of other
+Allied states. The French people differ from their neighbors in many
+respects--and in a marked way in money matters. They will sacrifice
+their lives rather than their substance. They will leave a national debt
+for their children and their children's children, instead of making a
+resolute effort to wipe it out or lessen it by amortization. In this
+respect the British, the Americans, and also the Germans differ from
+them. These peoples tax themselves freely, create sinking funds, and
+make heavy sacrifices to pay off their money obligations. This habit is
+ingrained. The contrary system is become second nature to the French,
+and one cannot change a nation's habits overnight. The education of the
+people might, however, have been undertaken during the war with
+considerable chances of satisfactory results. The government might have
+preached the necessity of relinquishing a percentage of the war gains to
+the state. It was done in Britain and Germany. The amount of money
+earned by individuals during the hostilities was enormous. A
+considerable percentage of it should have been requisitioned by the
+state, in view of the peace requirements and of the huge indebtedness
+which victory or defeat must inevitably bring in its train. But no
+Minister had the courage necessary to brave the multitude and risk his
+share of popularity or tolerance. And so things were allowed to slide.
+The people were assured that victory would recompense their efforts, not
+only by positive territorial gains, but by relieving them of their new
+financial obligations.
+
+That was a sinister mistake. The truth is that the French nation, if
+defeated, would have paid any sum demanded. That was almost an axiom. It
+would and could have expected no ruth. But, victorious, it looked to the
+enemy for the means of refunding the cost of the war. The Finance
+Minister--M. Klotz--often declared to private individuals that if the
+Allies were victorious he would have all the new national debt wiped out
+by the enemy, and he assured the nation that milliards enough would be
+extracted from Germany to balance the credit and debit accounts of the
+Republic. And the people naturally believed its professional expert.
+Thus it became a dogma that the Teuton state was to provide all the cost
+of the war. In that illusion the nation lived and worked and spent money
+freely, nay, wasted it woefully.
+
+And yet M. Klotz should have known better. For he was supplied with
+definite data to go upon. In October, 1918, the French government, in
+doubt about the full significance of that one of Mr. Wilson's Fourteen
+Points which dealt with reparations, asked officially for explanations,
+and received from Mr. Lansing the answer by telegraph that it involved
+the making good by the enemy of all losses inflicted directly and
+lawlessly upon civilians, but none other. That surely was a plain answer
+and a just principle. But, in accordance with the practice of secrecy in
+vogue among Allied European governments, the nation was not informed of
+these restrictive conditions, but was allowed to hug dangerous
+delusions.
+
+But the Ministers knew them, and M. Klotz was a Minister. Not only,
+however, did he not reveal what he knew, but he behaved as though his
+information was of a directly contrary tenor, and he also stated that
+Germany must also refund the war indemnities of 1870, capitalized down
+to November, 1918, and he set down the sum at fifty milliards of
+francs. This procedure was not what reasonably might have been expected
+from the leader of a heroic nation stout-hearted enough to face
+unpleasant facts. Some of the leading spirits in the country, despite
+the intensity of their feelings toward Germany, disapproved this kind of
+bookkeeping, but M. Klotz did not relinquish his method of keeping
+accounts. He drew up a bill against the Teutons for one thousand and
+eighty-six milliards of francs.
+
+The Germans at the Conference maintained that if the wealth of their
+nation were realized and liquid, it would amount at most to four hundred
+milliards, but that to realize it would involve the stripping of the
+population of everything--of its forests, its mines, its railways, its
+factories, its cattle, its houses, its furniture, and its ready money.
+They further pleaded that the territorial clauses of the Treaty deprived
+them of important resources, which would reduce their solvency to a
+greater degree than the Allies realized. These clauses dispossessed the
+nation of 21 per cent. of the total crops of cereals and potatoes. A
+further falling off in the quantities of food produced would result from
+the restrictions on the importation of raw materials for the manufacture
+of fertilizers. Of her coal, Germany was forfeiting about one-third;
+three-fourths of her iron ore was also being taken away from her; her
+total zinc production would be cut down by over three-fifths. Add to
+this the enormous shortage of tonnage, machinery, and man-power, the
+total loss of her colonies, the shrinkage of available raw stuffs, and
+the depreciation of the mark.
+
+At the Conference the Americans maintained their ground. Invoking the
+principle laid down by Mr. Wilson and clearly formulated by Mr. Lansing,
+they insisted that reparations should be claimed only for damage done to
+civilians directly and lawlessly. After a good deal of fencing,
+rendered necessary by the pledges given by European statesmen to their
+electors, it was decided that the criteria provided by that principle
+should be applied. But even with that limitation the sums claimed were
+huge. It was alleged by the Germans that some of the demands were for
+amounts that exceeded the total national wealth of the country filing
+the claim. And as no formula could be devised that would satisfy all the
+claimants, it was resolved in principle that, although Germany should be
+obliged to make good only certain classes of losses, the Conference
+would set no limits to the sums for which she would thus be liable.
+
+At this juncture M. Loucheur suggested that a minimum sum should be
+demanded of the enemy, leaving the details to be settled by a
+commission. And this was the solution which was finally adopted.[309] It
+was received with protests and lamentations, which, however, soon made
+place for self-congratulations, official and private.
+
+The French Minister of Finances, for example, drew a bright picture in
+the Chamber of the financial side of the Treaty, so far as it affected
+his country: "Within two years," he announced, "independently of the
+railway rolling stock, of agricultural materials and restitutions, we
+receive a part, still to be fixed, of the payment of twenty milliards of
+marks in gold; another share, also to be determined, of an emission of
+bonds amounting to forty milliard gold marks, bearing interest at the
+rate of 2 per cent.; a third part, to be fixed, of German shipping and
+dyes; seven million tons of coal annually for a period of ten years,
+followed by diminishing quantities during the following years; the
+repayment of the expenses of occupation; the right of taking over a part
+of Germany's interests in Russia, in particular that of obtaining the
+payment of pre-war debts at the pre-war rate of exchange, likewise the
+maintenance of such contracts as we may desire to maintain in force and
+the return of Alsace-Lorraine free from all incumbrances. Nor is that
+all. In Morocco we have the right to liquidate German property, to
+transfer the shares that represent Germany's interests in the Bank of
+Morocco, and finally the allotment under a French mandate of a portion
+of the German colonies free from incumbrances of any kind.... We shall
+receive four hundred and sixty-three milliard francs, payable in
+thirty-six years, without counting the restitutions which will have been
+effected. Nor should it be forgotten that already we have received eight
+milliards' worth of securities stolen from French bearers. So do not
+consider the Treaty as a misfortune for France."[310]
+
+Soon after the outburst of joy with which the ingathering of the fruits
+of France's victory was celebrated, clouds unexpectedly drifted athwart
+the cerulean blue of the political horizon, and dark shadows were flung
+across the Allied countries. The second-and third-class nations fell out
+with the first-class Powers. Italy, for example, whose population is
+almost equal to that of her French sister, demanded compensation for the
+vast additions that were being made to France's extensive possessions.
+The grounds alleged were many. Compensation had been promised by the
+secret treaty. The need for it was reinforced by the rejection of
+Italy's claims in the Adriatic. The Italian people required, desired,
+and deserved a fair and fitting field for legitimate expansion. They are
+as numerous as the French, and have a large annual surplus population,
+which has to hew wood and draw water for foreign peoples. They are
+enterprising, industrious, thrifty, and hard workers. Their country
+lacks some of the necessaries of material prosperity, such as coal,
+iron, and cotton. Why should it not receive a territory rich in some of
+these products? Why should a large contingent of Italy's population have
+to go to the colonies of Spain, France, and Britain or to South American
+republics for a livelihood? The Italian press asked whether the Supreme
+Council was bent on fulfilling the Gospel dictum, "Whosoever hath, to
+him shall be given...."
+
+One of the first demands made by Italy was for the port and town of
+Djibouti, which is under French sway. It was rejected, curtly and
+emphatically. Other requests elicited plausible explanations why they
+could not be complied with. In a word, Italy was treated as a poor and
+importunate relation, and was asked to console herself with the
+reflection that she was working in the vineyard of idealism. In vain
+eminent publicists in Rome, Turin, and Milan pleaded their country's
+cause. Adopting the principle which Mr. Wilson had applied to France and
+Britain, they affirmed that even before the war France, with a larger
+population and fewer possessions, had shown that she was incapable of
+discharging the functions which she had voluntarily taken upon herself.
+Tunis, they alleged, owed its growth and thriving condition to Italian
+emigrants. With all the fresh additions to her territories, the
+population of the Republic would be utterly inadequate to the task. To
+the Supreme Council this line of reasoning was distinctly unpalatable.
+Nor did the Italians further their cause when, by way of giving emphatic
+point to their reasoning, their press quoted that eminent Frenchman, M.
+d'Estournelles de Constant, who wrote at that very moment: "France has
+too many colonies already--far more in Asia, in Africa, in America, in
+Oceania than she can fructify. In this way she is immobilizing
+territories, continents, peoples, which nominally she takes over. And it
+is childish and imprudent to take barren possession of them, when other
+states allege their power to utilize them in the general interest. By
+acting in this manner, France, do what she may, is placing herself in
+opposition to the world's interests, and to those of the League of
+Nations. In the long run it is a serious business. Spain, Portugal, and
+Holland know this to their cost. Do what she would, France was not able
+before the war to utilize all her immense colonial domain ... for lack
+of population. She will be still less able after the war...."[311]
+
+The discussion grew dangerously animated. Epigrams were coined and sent
+floating in the heavily charged air. A tactless comparison was made
+between the French nation and a _bon vivant_ of sixty-five who flatters
+himself that he can enjoy life's pleasures on the same scale as when he
+was only thirty. Little arrows thus barbed with biting acid often make
+more enduring mischief than sledge-hammer blows. Soon the estrangement
+between the two sister nations unhappily became wider and led to marked
+divergences in their respective policies, which seem fraught with grave
+consequences in the future.
+
+The Italy of to-day is not the Italy of May, 1915. She now knows exactly
+where she stands. When she unsheathed her sword to fight against the
+allies of the state that declared a treaty to be but a scrap of paper,
+she was heartened by a solemn promise given in writing by her comrades
+in arms. But when she had accomplished her part of the contract, that
+document turned out to be little more than another scrap of paper. Thus
+it was one of the piquant ironies of Fate, Italian publicists said, that
+the people who had mostly clamored against that doctrine were indirectly
+helping it to triumph. Mr. Wilson, unwittingly sapping public faith in
+written treaties, was held up as one of the many pictures in which the
+Conference abounded of the delegates refuting their words by acts. The
+unbiased historian will readily admit that the secret treaties were
+profoundly immoral from the Wilsonian angle of vision, but that the only
+way of canceling them was by a general principle rigidly upheld and
+impartially applied. And this the Supreme Council would not entertain.
+
+With her British ally, too, France had an unpleasant falling out about
+Eastern affairs, and in especial about Syria and Persia. There was also
+a demand for the retrocession by Britain of the island of Mauritius, but
+it was not made officially, nor is it a subject for two such nations to
+quarrel over. The first rift in the lute was caused by the deposition of
+Emir Faisal respecting the desires of the Arab population. This
+picturesque chief, the French press complained, had been too readily
+admitted to the Conference and too respectfully listened to there,
+whereas the Persian delegation tramped for months over the Paris streets
+without once obtaining a hearing. The Hedjaz, which had been independent
+from time immemorial, was formally recognized as a separate kingdom
+during the war, and the Grand Sheriff of Mecca was suddenly raised to
+the throne in the European sense by France and Britain. Since then he
+was formally recognized by the five Powers. His representatives in Paris
+demanded the annexation of all the countries of Arabic speech which were
+under Turkish domination. These included not only Mesopotamia, but also
+Syria, on which France had long looked with loving eyes and respecting
+which there existed an accord between her and Britain. The project
+community would represent a Pan-Arab federation of about eleven million
+souls, over which France would have no guardianship. And yet the
+written accord had never been annulled. Palestine was excluded from
+this Pan-Arabian federation, and Syria was to be consulted, and instead
+of being handed over to France, as M. Clemenceau demanded, was to be
+allowed to declare its own wishes without any injunctions from the
+Conference. Mesopotamia would be autonomous under the League of Nations,
+but a single mandatory was asked for by the king of the Hedjaz for the
+entire eleven million inhabitants.
+
+The comments of the French press on Britain's attitude, despite their
+studied reserve and conventional phraseology, bordered on recrimination
+and hinted at a possible cooling of friendship between the two nations,
+and in the course of the controversy the evil-omened word "Fashoda" was
+pronounced. The French _Temps's_ arguments were briefly these: The
+populations claimed occupy such a vast stretch of territory that the
+sovereignty of the Hedjaz could hardly be more than nominal and
+symbolical. In fact, they cover an area of one-half of the Ottoman
+Empire. These different provinces would, in reality, be under the
+domination of the Great Power which was the real creator of this new
+kingdom, and the monarch of the Hedjaz would be a mere stalking-horse of
+Britain. This, it was urged, would not be independence, but a masked
+protectorate, and in the name of the higher principles must be
+prevented. Syria must be handed over to France without consulting the
+population. The financial resources of the Hedjaz are utterly inadequate
+for the administration of such a vast state as was being compacted. Who,
+then, it was asked, would supply the indispensable funds? Obviously
+Britain, who had been providing the Emir Faisal with funds ever since
+his father donned the crown. If this political entity came into
+existence, it would generate continuous friction between France and
+Britain, separate comrades in arms, delight a vigilant enemy, and
+violate a written compact which should be sacred. For these reasons it
+should be rejected and Syria placed under the guardianship of France.
+
+The Americans took the position that congruously with the high ethical
+principles which had guided the labors of the Conference throughout, it
+was incumbent on its members, instead of bartering civilized peoples
+like chattels, to consult them as to their own aspirations. If it were
+true that the Syrians were yearning to become the wards of France, there
+could be no reasonable objection on the part of the French delegates to
+agree to a plebiscite. But the French delegates declined to entertain
+the suggestion on the ground that Syria's longing for French guidance
+was a notorious fact.
+
+After much discussion and vehement opposition on the part of the French
+delegates an Inter-Allied commission under Mr. Charles Crane was sent to
+visit the countries in dispute and to report on the leanings of their
+populations. After having visited forty cities and towns and more than
+three hundred villages, and received over fifteen hundred delegations of
+natives, the commission reported that the majority of the people "prefer
+to maintain their independence," but do not object to live under the
+mandatory system for fifty years _provided the United States accepts_
+the mandate. "Syria desires to become a sovereign kingdom, and most of
+the population supports the Emir Faisal as king.[312] The commission
+further ascertained that the Syrians, "who are singularly enlightened as
+to the policies of the United States," invoked and relied upon a
+Franco-British statement of policy[313] which had been distributed
+broadcast throughout their country, "promising complete liberation from
+the Turks and the establishment of free governments among the native
+population and recognition of these governments by France and
+Britain."[314]
+
+The result of the investigation by the Inter-Allied commission reminds
+one of the story of the two anglers who were discussing the merits of
+two different sauces for the trout which one of them had caught. As they
+were unable to agree they decided to refer the matter to the trout, who
+answered: "Gentlemen, I do not wish to be eaten with any sauce. I desire
+to live and be free in my own element." "Ah, now you are wandering from
+the question," exclaimed the two, who thereupon struck up a compromise
+on the subject of the sauce.
+
+The tone of this long-drawn-out controversy, especially in the press,
+was distinctly acrimonious. It became dangerously bitter when the French
+political world was apprised one day of the conclusion of a treaty
+between Britain and Persia as the outcome of secret negotiations between
+London and Teheran. And excitement grew intenser when shortly afterward
+the authentic text of this agreement was disclosed. In France, Italy,
+Germany, Russia, and the United States the press unanimously declared
+that Persia's international status as determined by the new diplomatic
+instrument could best be described by the evil-sounding words
+"protectorate" and the violation of the mandatory system adopted by the
+Conference.
+
+This startling development shed a strong light upon the new ordering of
+the world and its relation to the Wilsonian gospel, complicated with
+secret negotiations, protectorates without mandates, and the one-sided
+abrogation of compacts.
+
+Persia is one of the original members of the League of Nations,[315] and
+as such was entitled, the French argued, to a hearing at the
+Conference. She had grievances that called for redress: her neutrality
+had been violated, many of her subjects had been put to death, and her
+titles to reparation were undeniable. President Wilson, the comforter of
+small states and oppressed nationalities, having proclaimed that the
+weakest communities would command the same friendly treatment as the
+greatest, the Persian delegates repaired to Paris in the belief that
+this treatment would be accorded them. But there they were
+disillusioned. For them there was no admission. Whether, if they had
+been heard and helped by the Supreme Council, they would have contrived
+to exist as an independent state is a question which cannot be discussed
+here. The point made by the French was that on its own showing the
+Conference was morally bound to receive the Persian delegation. The
+utmost it obtained was that the Persian Minister of Foreign Affairs,
+Monalek, who was head of the delegation, had a private talk with
+President Wilson, Colonel House, and Mr. Lansing. These statesmen
+unhesitatingly promised to help Persia to secure full sovereign rights,
+or at any rate to enable her delegates to unfold their country's case
+and file their protests before the Conference. The delegates were
+comforted and felt sure of the success of their mission. They told the
+American plenipotentiaries that the United States would be Persia's
+creditor for this help and that she would invite American financiers to
+put her money matters in order, American engineers to develop her mining
+industries, and the American oil firms to examine and exploit her petrol
+deposits.[316] In a word, Persia would be Americanized. This naïve
+announcement of the rôle reserved for American benefactors in the land
+of the Shah might have impressed certain commercial and financial
+interests in the United States, but was wholly alien to the only order
+of motives that could properly move the American plenipotentiaries to
+interpose in favor of their would-be wards.
+
+The promises made by Messrs. Wilson, House, and Lansing came to nothing.
+For months the Persian envoys lived in hope which was strengthened by
+the assurances of various members of the Conference that the
+intervention of Mr. Wilson would infallibly prove successful. But events
+belied this forecast, whereupon the head of the Persian delegation,
+after several months of hopes deferred, quitted France for
+Constantinople, and his country's position among the nations was settled
+in detail by the new agreement.
+
+That position does undoubtedly resemble very closely Egypt's status
+before the outbreak of the World War. And Egypt's status could hardly be
+termed independence. Henceforward Great Britain has a strong hold on the
+Persian customs, the control of the waterways and carriage routes, the
+rights of railway construction, the oil-fields--these were ours
+before--the right to organize the army and direct the foreign policy of
+the kingdom. And it may fairly be argued that this arrangement may prove
+a greater blessing to the Persians than the realization of their own
+ambitions. That, at any rate, is my own personal belief, which for many
+years I have held and expressed. None the less it runs diametrically
+counter to the letter and the spirit of Wilsonianism, which is now seen
+to be a wall high enough to keep out the dwarf states, but which the
+giants can easily clear at a bound.
+
+Against this violation of the new humanitarian doctrine French
+publicists flared up. The glaring character of the transgression
+revolted them, the plight of the Persians touched them, and the right of
+self-determination strongly appealed to them. Was it not largely for the
+assertion of that right that all the Allied peoples had for five years
+been making unheard-of sacrifices? What would become of the League of
+Nations if such secret and selfish doings were connived at? In a word,
+French sympathy for the victims of British hegemony waxed as strong as
+the British fellow-feeling for the Syrians, who objected to be drawn
+into the orbit of the French. Those sharp protests and earnest appeals,
+it may be noted, were the principal, perhaps the only, symptoms of
+tenderness for unprotected peoples which were evoked by the great
+ethical movement headed by the Conference.
+
+The French further pointed out that the system of Mandates had been
+specially created for countries as backward and helpless as Persia was
+assumed to be, and that the only agency qualified to apply it was either
+the Supreme Council or the League of Nations. The British press answered
+that no such humiliating assumption about the Shah's people was being
+made, that the Foreign Office had distinctly disclaimed the intention of
+establishing a protectorate over Persia, who is, and will remain, a
+sovereign and independent state. But these explanations failed to
+convince our indignant Allies. They argued, from experience, that no
+trust was to be placed in those official assurances and euphemistic
+phrases which are generally belied by subsequent acts.[317] They further
+lamented that the long and secret negotiations which were going forward
+in Teheran while the Persian delegation was wearily and vainly waiting
+in Paris to be allowed to plead its country's cause before the great
+world-dictators was not a good example of loyalty to the new cosmic
+legislation. Had not Mr. Wilson proclaimed that peoples were no longer
+to be bartered and swapped as chattels? Here the Italians and Rumanians
+chimed in, reminding their kinsmen that it was the same American
+statesmen who in the peace conditions first presented to Count
+Brockdorff-Rantzau made over the German population of the Saar Valley to
+France at the end of fifteen years as the fair equivalent of a sum of
+money payable in gold, and that France at any rate had raised no
+objection to the barter nor to the principle at the root of it. They
+reasoned that if the principle might be applied to one case it should be
+deemed equally applicable to the other, and that the only persons or
+states that could with propriety demur to the Anglo-Persian arrangements
+were those who themselves were not benefiting by similar transactions.
+
+At last the Paris press, laying due weight on the alliance with Britain,
+struck a new note. "It seems that these last Persian bargainings offer a
+theme for conversations between our government and that of the Allies,"
+one influential journal wrote.[318] At once the amicable suggestion was
+taken up by the British press. The idea was to join the Syrian with the
+Persian transactions and make French concessions on the other. This
+compromise would compose an ugly quarrel and settle everything for the
+best. For France's intentions toward the people of Syria were, it was
+credibly asserted, to the full as disinterested and generous as those of
+Britain toward Persia, and if the Syrians desired an English-speaking
+nation rather than the French to be their mentor, it was equally true
+that the Persians wanted Americans rather than British to superintend
+and accelerate their progress in civilization. But instead of harkening
+to the wishes of only one it would be better to ignore those of both. By
+this prudent compromise all the demands of right and justice, for which
+both governments were earnest sticklers, would thus be amply satisfied.
+
+Our American associates were less easily appeased. In sooth there was
+nothing left wherewith to appease them. Their press condemned the
+"protectorate" as a breach of the Covenant. Secretary Lansing let it be
+known[319] that the United States delegation had striven to obtain a
+hearing for the Persians at the Conference, but had "lost its fight." A
+Persian, when apprized of this utterance, said: "When the United States
+delegation strove to hinder Italy from annexing Fiume and obtaining the
+territories promised her by a secret treaty, they accomplished their aim
+because they refused to give way. Then they took care not to lose their
+fight. When they accepted a brief for the Jews and imposed a Jewish
+semi-state on Rumania and Poland, they were firm as the granite rock,
+and no amount of opposition, no future deterrents, made any impression
+on their will. Accordingly, they had their way. But in the cause of
+Persia they lost the fight, although logic, humanity, justice, and the
+ordinances solemnly accepted by the Great Powers were all on their
+side." ... One American press organ termed the Anglo-Persian accord "a
+coup which is a greater violation of the Wilsonian Fourteen Points than
+the Shantung award to Japan, as it makes the whole of Persia a mere
+protectorate for Britain."[320]
+
+Generally speaking, illustrations of the meaning of non-intervention in
+the home affairs of other nations were numerous and somewhat perplexing.
+Were it not that Mr. Wilson had come to Europe for the express purpose
+of interpreting as well as enforcing his own doctrine, one would have
+been warranted in assuming that the Supreme Council was frequently
+travestying it. But as the President was himself one of the leading
+members of that Council, whose decisions were unanimous, the utmost
+that one can take for granted is that he strove to impose his tenets on
+his intractable colleagues and "lost the fight."
+
+Here is a striking instance of what would look to the average man very
+like intervention in the domestic politics of another nation--well-meant
+and, it may be, beneficent intervention--were it not that we are assured
+on the highest authority that it is nothing of the sort. It was devised
+as an expedient for getting outside help for the capture of Petrograd by
+the anti-Bolshevists. The end, therefore, was good, and the means seemed
+effectual to those who employed them. The Kolchak-Denikin party could,
+it was believed, have taken possession of that capital long before, by
+obtaining the military co-operation of the Esthonians. But the price
+asked by these was the recognition of their complete independence by the
+non-Bolshevist government in the name of all Russia. Kolchak, to his
+credit, refused to pay this price, seeing that he had no powers to do
+so, and only a dictator would sign away the territory by usurping the
+requisite authority. Consequently the combined attack on Petrograd was
+not undertaken. The Admiral's refusal was justified by the circumstances
+that he was the spokesman only of a large section of the Russian people,
+and that a thoroughly representative assembly must be consulted on the
+subject previous to action being taken. The military stagnation that
+ensued lasted for months. Then one day the press brought the tidings
+that the difficulty was ingeniously overcome. This is the shape in which
+the intelligence was communicated to the world: "Colonel Marsh, of the
+British army, who is representing General Gough, organized a republic in
+northwest Russia at Reval, August 12th, _within forty-five minutes_,
+General Yudenitch being nominally the head of the new government, which
+is affiliated with the Kolchak government. Northwest Russia opposes the
+Esthonian government only in principle because it wants guaranties that
+the Esthonians will not be the stepping-stone for some big Power like
+Germany to control the Russian outlet through the Baltic. If the
+Esthonians give such guaranties, the northwestern Russians are perfectly
+willing to let them become an independent state."[321]
+
+Here then was a "British colonel" who, in addition to his military
+duties, was, according to this account, willing and able to create an
+independent republic without any Supreme Council to assist him, whereas
+professional diplomatists and military men of other nations had been
+trying for months to found a Rhine republic under Dorten and had failed.
+Nor did he, if the newspaper report be correct, waste much time at the
+business. From the moment of its inception until northwestern Russia
+stood forth an independent state, promulgating and executing grave
+decisions in the sphere of international politics, only forty-five
+minutes are said to have elapsed. Forty-five minutes by the clock. It
+was almost as quick a feat as the drafting of the Covenant of Nations.
+Further, the resourceful statemaker forged a republic which was
+qualified to transfer sovereignly Russian territory to unrecognized
+states without consulting the nation or obtaining authority from any
+one. More marvelous than any other detail, however, is the circumstance
+that he did his work so well that it never amounted to
+intervention.[322]
+
+One cannot affect surprise if the distinction between this amazing
+exploit of diplomatico-military prestidigitation and intermeddling in
+the internal affairs of another nation prove too subtle for the mental
+grasp of the average unpolitical individual.
+
+It is practices like these which ultimately determine the worth of the
+treaties and the Covenant which Mr. Wilson was content to take back with
+him to Washington as the final outcome of what was to have been the most
+superb achievement of historic man. Of the new ethical principles, of
+the generous renunciation of privileges, of the righting of secular
+wrongs, of the respect that was to be shown for the weak, which were to
+have cemented the union of peoples into one pacific if not blissful
+family, there remained but the memory. No such bitter draught of
+disappointment was swallowed by the nations since the world first had a
+political history. Many of the resounding phrases that once foretokened
+a new era of peace, right, and equity were not merely emptied of their
+contents, but made to connote their opposites. Freedom of the seas
+became supremacy of the seas, which may possibly turn out to be a
+blessed consummation for all concerned, but should not have been
+smuggled in under a gross misnomer. The abolition of war means, as
+British and American and French generals and admirals have since told
+their respective fellow-citizens, thorough preparations for the next
+war, which are not to be confined, as heretofore, to the so-called
+military states, but are to extend over all Anglo-Saxondom.[323] "Open
+covenants openly arrived at" signify secret conclaves and conspirative
+deliberations carried on in impenetrable secrecy which cannot be
+dispensed with even after the whole business has passed into
+history.[324] The self-determination of peoples finds its limit in the
+rights of every Great Power to hold its subject nationalities in thrall
+on the ground that their reciprocal relations appertain to the domestic
+policy of the state. It means, further, the privilege of those who wield
+superior force to put irresistible pressure upon those who are weak, and
+the lever which it places in their hands for the purpose is to be known
+under the attractive name of the protection of minorities. Abstention
+from interference in the home affairs of a neighboring community is made
+to cover intermeddling of the most irksome and humiliating character in
+matters which have no nexus with international law, for if they had, the
+rule would be applicable to all nations. The lesser peoples must harken
+to injunctions of the greater states respecting their mode of treating
+alien immigrants and must submit to the control of foreign bodies which
+are ignorant of the situation and its requirements. Nor is it enough
+that those states should accord to the members of the Jewish and other
+races all the rights which their own citizens enjoy--they must go
+farther and invest them with special privileges, and for this purpose
+renounce a portion of their sovereignty. They must likewise allow their
+more powerful allies to dictate to them their legislation on matters of
+transit and foreign commerce.[325] For the Great Powers, however, this
+law of minorities was not written. They are above the law. Their warrant
+is force. In a word, force is the trump card in the political game of
+the future as it was in that of the past. And M. Clemenceau's reminder
+to the petty states at the opening of the Conference that the wielders
+of twelve million troops are the masters of the situation was
+appropriate. Thus the war which was provoked by the transformation of a
+solemn treaty into a scrap of paper was concluded by the presentation of
+two scraps of paper as a treaty and a covenant for the moral renovation
+of the world.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[288] _The Daily Telegraph_, March 28, 1919.
+
+[289] In a speech delivered at a dinner given in Paris on April 19,
+1919, by the Commonwealth of Australia to Australian soldiers.
+
+[290] In March, 1919.
+
+[291] August 19, 1919.
+
+[292] Cf. _Corriere delta Sera_, August 20, 1919.
+
+[293] _Ibidem_ (_Corriere della Sera_, August 20, 1919).
+
+[294] _L'Humanité,_ May 21, 1919.
+
+[295] _The Nation_, August 23, 1919.
+
+[296] Chief of the Austrian police at Vienna Congress in the years
+1814-15.
+
+[297] In _L'Echo de Paris_, March 2,1919. Cf. _The Daily Telegraph_,
+March 4th.
+
+[298] _Le Gaulois_, March 8, 1919. Cf. _The Daily Telegraph_, March
+10th.
+
+[299] Cf. _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 21, 1919.
+
+[300] Cf. _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 23, 1919
+
+[301] Report of Dr. Jacques Bertillon. Cf. _L'Information_, January 20,
+1919.
+
+[302] Cf. _Le Matin_, August 13, 1919.
+
+30
+3: Excess of births over deaths (yearly average).--Cf.
+_L'Information,_ January 20, 1919:
+
+          Germany  Great Britain  Italy   France
+1861-70   408,333    365,499     183,196  93,515
+1871-80   511,034    431,436     191,538  64,063
+1881-90   551,308    442,112     307,082  66,982
+1891-1900 730,265    430,000     339,409  23,961
+1901-10   866,338    484,822     369,959  46,524
+
+[304] Professor L. Marchand. Cf. _La Démocratie Nouvelle_, April 26,
+1919.
+
+[305] Dr. Walter Rathenau, in a book entitled _The Death of France_. I
+have not been able to procure a copy of this book. The extracts given
+above are taken from a statement published by M. Brudenne in the _Matin_
+of February 16, 1919.
+
+[306] _Germania_, August 11, 1919. Cf. _Le Temps_, September 9, 1919.
+
+[307] M. André Tardieu in a speech delivered on August 17, 1919. Cf.
+Paris newspapers of following two days, and in particular _New York
+Herald_, August 19th.
+
+[308] Cf. speech delivered by M. André Tardieu on August 17, 1919.
+
+[309] On this subject of reparations the _Journal de Genève_ published
+several interesting articles at various times, as, for example, on May
+15, 1919.
+
+[310] Speech of M. Klotz in the Chamber on September 5, 1919. Cf.
+_L'Echo de Paris_, September 6, 1919.
+
+[311] D'Estournelles de Constant. _Bulletin des Droits de l'Homme_, May
+15, 1919.
+
+[312] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 24, 1919.
+
+[313] Issued on November 9, 1918.
+
+[314] See _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 30, 1919.
+
+[315] An American Senator uncharitably conjectured that she received
+this honorable distinction in order to contribute an additional vote to
+the British.
+
+[316] Cf. interview with a Persian official, published in the Paris
+edition of _The Chicago Tribune_, August 19, 1919.
+
+[317] "Unfortunately, Mr. Lloyd George, who has stripped the Foreign
+Office of real power, has frequently given assurances of this nature,
+and his acts have always contradicted them. As a proof, his last
+interview with M. Clemenceau will serve." Cf. _L'Echo de Paris_, August
+15, 1919, article by Pertinax.
+
+[318] _Le Journal des Débats_, August 15, 1919.
+
+[319] In Washington on August 16, 1919.
+
+[320] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 19, 1919.
+
+[321] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 24, 1919.
+
+[322] After the above was written, a French journal, the _Echo de Paris_
+of September 19, 1919, announced that General Marsh declares that his
+agents acted without his instructions, but none the less it holds him
+responsible for this Baltic policy.
+
+[323] Marshal Douglas Haig, Lord French, the American pacifist, Sydney
+Baker, Senator Chamberlain, Representative Kahn, and a host of others
+have been preaching universal military training. The press, too, with
+considerable exceptions, favors the movement. "We want a democratized
+army, which represents all the nation, and it can be found only in
+universal service.... Universal service is our best guaranty of peace."
+Cf. _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 22, 1919.
+
+[324] President Wilson, when at the close of his conference with the
+Senate Committee on Foreign Relations--at the White House--asked how the
+United States had voted on the Japanese resolution in favor of race
+equality, replied: "I am not sure of being free to answer the question,
+because it affects a large number of points that were discussed in
+Paris, and in the interest of international harmony I think I had better
+not reply."--_The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), August 22, 1919.
+
+[325] In virtue of Article LX of the Treaty with Austria.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE TREATY WITH GERMANY
+
+
+To discuss in detail the peace terms which after many months' desultory
+talk were finally presented to Count Brockdorff-Rantzau would transcend
+the scope of these pages. Like every other act of the Supreme Council,
+they may be viewed from one of two widely sundered angles of
+survey--either as the exercise by a victorious state of the power
+derived from victory over the vanquished enemy, or as one of the
+measures by which the peace of the world is to be enforced in the
+present and consolidated in the future. And from neither point of view
+can it command the approval of unbiased political students. At first the
+Germans, and not they alone, expected that the conditions would be based
+on the Fourteen Points, while many of the Allies took it for granted
+that they would be inspired by the resolve to cripple Teutondom for all
+time. And for each of these anticipations there were good formal
+grounds.
+
+The only legitimate motive for interweaving the Covenant with the Treaty
+was to make of the latter a sort of corollary of the former and to
+moderate the instincts of vengeance by the promptings of higher
+interests. On this ground, and only on this, did the friends of
+far-ranging reform support Mr. Wilson in his contention that the two
+documents should be rendered mutually interdependent. Reparation for the
+damage done in violation of international law and sound guaranties
+against its recurrence are of the essence of every peace treaty that
+follows a decisive victory. But reparation is seldom this and nothing
+more. The lower instincts of human nature, when dominant as they are
+during a bloody war and in the hour of victory, generally outweigh
+considerations not only of right, but also of enlightened egotism,
+leaving justice to merge into vengeance. And the fruits are treasured
+wrath and a secret resolve on the part of the vanquished to pay out his
+victor at the first opportunity. The war-loser of to-day aims at
+becoming the war-winner of to-morrow. And this frame of mind is
+incompatible with the temper needed for an era of moral fellowship such
+as Mr. Wilson was supposed to be intent on establishing. Consequently, a
+peace treaty unmodified by the principles underlying the Covenant is
+necessarily a negation of the main possibilities of a society of nations
+based upon right and a decisive argument against joining together the
+two instruments.
+
+The other kind of peace which Mr. Wilson was believed to have had at
+heart consisted not merely in the liquidation of the war, but in the
+uprooting of its permanent causes, in the renunciation by the various
+nations of sanguinary conflicts as a means of determining rival claims,
+and in such an amicable rearrangement of international relations as
+would keep such disputes from growing into dangerous quarrels. Right, or
+as near an approximation to it as is attainable, would then take the
+place of violence, whereby military guaranties would become not only
+superfluous, but indicative of a spirit irreconcilable with the main
+purpose of the League. Each nation would be entitled to equal
+opportunity within the limits assigned to it by nature and widened by
+its own mental and moral capacities. Thus permanently to forbid a
+numerous, growing, and territorially cramped nation to possess overseas
+colonies for its superfluous population while overburdening others with
+possessions which they are unable to utilize, would constitute a
+negation of one of the basic principles of the new ordering.
+
+Those were the grounds which seemed to warrant the belief that the
+Treaty would be not only formally, but substantially and in its spirit
+an integral, part of the general settlement based on the Fourteen
+Points.
+
+This anticipation turned out to be a delusion. Wilsonianism proved to be
+a very different system from that of the Fourteen Points, and its author
+played the part not only of an interpreter of his tenets, but also of a
+sort of political pope alone competent to annul the force of laws
+binding on all those whom he should refuse to dispense from their
+observance. He had to do with patriotic politicians permeated with the
+old ideas, desirous of providing in the peace terms for the next war and
+striving to secure the maximum of advantage over the foe presumptive, by
+dismembering his territory, depriving him of colonies, making him
+dependent on others for his supplies of raw stuffs, and artificially
+checking his natural growth. Nearly all of them had principles to invoke
+in favor of their claims and some had nothing else. And it was these
+tendencies which Mr. Wilson sought to combine with the ethical ideals to
+be incarnated in the Society of Nations. Now this was an impossible
+synthesis. The spirit of vindictiveness--for that was well represented
+at the Conference--was to merge and lose itself in an outflow of
+magnanimity; precautions against a hated enemy were to be interwoven
+with implicit confidence in his generosity; a military occupation would
+provide against a sudden onslaught, while an approach to disarmament
+would bear witness to the absence of suspicion. Thus Poland would
+discharge the function of France's ally against the Teutons in the east,
+but her frontiers were to leave her inefficiently protected against
+their future attacks from the west. Germany was dismembered, yet she
+was credited with self-discipline and generosity enough to steel her
+against the temptation to profit by the opportunity of joining together
+again what France had dissevered. The League of Nations was to be based
+upon mutual confidence and good fellowship, yet one of its most powerful
+future members was so distrusted as to be declared permanently unworthy
+to possess any overseas colonies. Germany's territory in the Saar Valley
+is admittedly inhabited by Germans, yet for fifteen years there is to be
+a foreign administration there, and at the end of it the people are to
+be asked whether they would like to cut the bonds that link them with
+their own state and place themselves under French sway, so that a
+premium is offered for French immigration into the Saar Valley.
+
+Those are a few of the consequences of the mixture of the two
+irreconcilable principles.
+
+That Germany richly deserved her punishment cannot be gainsaid. Her
+crime was without precedent. Some of its most sinister consequences are
+irremediable. Whole sections of her people are still unconscious not
+only of the magnitude, but of the criminal character, of their misdeeds.
+None the less there is a future to be provided for, and one of the
+safest provisions is to influence the potential enemy's will for evil if
+his power cannot be paralyzed. And this the Treaty failed to do.
+
+The Germans, when they learned the conditions, discussed them angrily,
+and the keynote was refusal to sign the document. The financial clauses
+were stigmatized as masked slavery. The press urged that during the war
+less than one-tenth of France's territory had been occupied by their
+countrymen and that even of this only a fragment was in the zone of
+combat. The entire wealth of France, they alleged, had been estimated
+before the war at from three hundred and fifty milliard to four hundred
+milliard francs, consequently for the devastated provinces hardly more
+than one-twentieth of that sum could fairly be demanded as reparation,
+whereas the claim set forth was incomparably more. They objected to the
+loss of their colonies because the justification alleged--that they were
+disqualified to administer them because of their former cruelties toward
+the natives--was groundless, as the Allies themselves had admitted
+implicitly by offering them the right of pre-emption in the case of the
+Portuguese and other overseas possessions on the very eve of the war.
+
+But the most telling objections turned upon the clauses that dealt with
+the Saar Valley. Its population is entirely German, yet the
+treaty-makers provided for its occupation by the French for a term of
+fifteen years and its transference to them if, after that term, the
+German government was unable to pay a certain sum in gold for the coal
+mines it contained. If that sum were not forthcoming the population and
+the district were to be handed over to France for all time, even though
+the former should vote unanimously for reunion with Germany. Count
+Brockdorff-Rantzau remarked in his note on the Treaty "that in the
+history of modern times there is no other example of a civilized Power
+obliging a state to abandon its people to foreign domination as an
+equivalent for a cash payment." One of the most influential press organs
+complained that the Treaty "bartered German men, women, and children for
+coal; subjected some districts with a thoroughly German population to an
+obligatory plebiscite[326] under interested supervision; severed others
+without any consultation from the Fatherland; delivered over the
+proceeds of German industry to the greed of foreign capitalists for an
+indefinite period; ... spread over the whole country a network of alien
+commissions to be paid by the German nation; withdrew streams, rivers,
+railways, the air service, numerous industrial establishments, the
+entire economic system, from the sovereignty of the German state by
+means either of internationalization or financial control; conferred on
+foreign inspectors rights such as only the satraps of absolute monarchs
+in former ages were empowered to exercise; in a word, they put an end to
+the existence of the German nation as such. Germany would become a
+colony of white slaves...."[327]
+
+Fortunately for the Allies, the reproach of exchanging human beings for
+coal was seen by their leaders to be so damaging that they modified the
+odious clause that warranted it. Even the comments of the friendly
+neutral press were extremely pungent. They found fault with the Treaty
+on grounds which, unhappily, cannot be reasoned away. "Why dissimulate
+it?" writes the foremost of these journals; "this peace is not what we
+were led to expect. It dislodges the old dangers, but creates new ones.
+Alsace and Lorraine are, it is true, no longer in German hands, but ...
+irredentism has only changed its camp. In 1914 Germany put her faith in
+force because she herself wielded it. But crushed down under a peace
+which appears to violate the promises made to her, a peace which in her
+heart of hearts she will never accept, she will turn toward force anew.
+It will stand out as the great misfortune of this Treaty that it has
+tainted the victory with a moral blight and caused the course of the
+German revolution to swerve.... The fundamental error of the instrument
+lies in the circumstance that it is a compromise between two
+incompatible frames of mind. It was feasible to restore peace to Europe
+by pulling down Germany definitely. But in order to accomplish this it
+would have been necessary to crush a people of seventy millions and to
+incapacitate them from rising to their feet again. Peace could also have
+been secured by the sole force of right. But in this case Germany would
+have had to be treated so considerately as to leave her no grievance to
+brood over. M. Clemenceau hindered Mr. Wilson from displaying sufficient
+generosity to get the moral peace, and Mr. Wilson on his side prevented
+M. Clemenceau from exercising severity enough to secure the material
+peace. And so the result, which it was easy to foresee, is a régime
+devoid of the real guaranties of durability."[328]
+
+The judge of the French syndicalists was still more severe. "The
+Versailles peace," exclaimed M. Verfeuil, "is worse than the peace of
+Brest-Litovsk ... annexations, economic servitudes, overwhelming
+indemnities, and a caricature of the Society of Nations--these
+constitute the balance of the new policy,"[329] The Deputy Marcel Cachin
+said: "The Allied armies fought to make this war the last. They fought
+for a just and lasting peace, but none of these boons has been bestowed
+on us. We are confronted with the failure of the policy of the one man
+in whom our party had put its confidence--President Wilson. The peace
+conditions ... are inacceptable from various points of view, financial,
+territorial, economic, social, and human."[330]
+
+It is in this Treaty far more than in the Covenant that the principles
+to which Mr. Wilson at first committed himself are in decisive issue.
+True, he was wont after every surrender he made during the Conference to
+invoke the Covenant and its concrete realization--the League of
+Nations--as the corrective which would set everything right in the
+future. But the fact can hardly be blinked that it is the Treaty and its
+effects that impress their character on the Covenant and not the other
+way round. As an eminent Swiss professor observed: "No league of nations
+would have hindered the Belgian people in 1830 from separating from
+Holland. Can the future League of Nations hinder Germany from
+reconstituting its geographical unity? Can it hinder the Germans of
+Bohemia from smiting the Czech? Can it prevent the Magyars, who at
+present are scattered, from working for their reunion?"[331]
+
+These potential disturbances are so many dangers to France. For if war
+should break out in eastern Europe, is it to be supposed that the United
+States, the British colonies, or even Britain herself will send troops
+to take part in it? Hardly. Suppose, for instance, that the Austrians,
+who ardently desire to be merged in Germany, proclaim their union with
+her, as I am convinced they will one day, does any statesman believe
+that democratic America will despatch troops to coerce them back? If the
+Germans of Bohemia secede from the Czechoslovaks or the Croats from the
+Serbs, will British armies cross the sea to uphold the union which those
+peoples repudiate? And in the name of which of the Fourteen Points would
+they undertake the task? That of self-determination? France's interests,
+and hers alone, would be affected by such changes. And France would be
+left to fight single-handed. For what?
+
+It is interesting to note how the conditions imposed upon Germany were
+appreciated by an influential body of Mr. Wilson's American partizans
+who had pinned their faith to his Fourteen Points. Their view is
+expressed by their press organ as follows:[332]
+
+"France remains the strongest Power on the Continent. With her military
+establishment intact she faces a Germany without a general staff,
+without conscription, without universal military training, with a
+strictly limited amount of light artillery, with no air service, no
+fleet, with no domestic basis in raw materials for armament manufacture,
+with her whole western border fifty kilometers east of the Rhine
+demilitarized. On top of this France has a system of military alliances
+with the new states that touch Germany. On top of this she secured
+permanent representation in the Council of the League, from which
+Germany is excluded. On top of that economic terms which, while they
+cannot be fulfilled, do cripple the industrial life of her neighbor.
+With such a balance of forces France demands for herself a form of
+protection which neither Belgium, nor Poland, nor Czechoslovakia, nor
+Italy is granted."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[326] One of the three districts of Schleswig. A curious phenomenon was
+this zeal of the Supreme Council for Denmark's interests, as compared
+with Denmark's refusal to profit by it, the champions of
+self-determination urging the Danes to demand a district, as Danish,
+which the Danes knew to be German!
+
+[327] _Das Berliner Tageblatt_, June 4, 1919.
+
+[328] _Le Journal de Genève_, June 24, 1919.
+
+[329] Cf. _L'Echo de Paris_, May 12, 1919.
+
+[330] _Ibidem_.
+
+[331] In a monograph entitled _Plus Jamais_.
+
+[332] Cf. _The New Republic_, August 13, 1919, p. 43.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE TREATY WITH BULGARIA
+
+
+Among all the strange products of the many-sided outbursts of the
+leading delegates' reconstructive activity, the Treaty with Bulgaria
+stands out in bold relief. It reveals the high-water mark reached by
+those secret, elusive, and decisive influences which swayed so many of
+the mysterious decisions adopted by the Conference. As Bulgaria disposed
+of an abundant source of those influences, her chastisement partakes of
+some of the characteristics of a reward. Not only did she not fare as
+the treacherous enemy that she showed herself, but she emerged from the
+ordeal much better off than several of the victorious states. Unlike
+Serbia, Rumania, France, and Belgium, she escaped the horrors of a
+foreign invasion and she possessed and fructified all her resources down
+to the day when the armistice was concluded. Her peasant population made
+huge profits during the campaign and her armies despoiled Serbia,
+Rumania, and Greek Macedonia and sent home enormous booty. In a word,
+she is richer and more prosperous than before she entered the arena
+against her protectors and former allies.
+
+For, owing to the intercession of her powerful friends, she was treated
+with a degree of indulgence which, although expected by all who were
+initiated into the secrets of "open diplomacy," scandalized those who
+were anxious that at least some simulacrum of justice should be
+maintained. Germany was forced to sign a blank check which her enemies
+will one day fill in. Austria was reduced to the status of a parasite
+living on the bounty of the Great Powers and denied the right of
+self-determination. Even France, exhausted by five years' superhuman
+efforts, beholds with alarm her financial future entirely dependent upon
+the ability or inability of Germany to pay the damages to which she was
+condemned.
+
+But the Prussia of the Balkans, owing to the intercession of influential
+anonymous friends, had no such consequences to deplore. Although she
+contracted heavy debts toward Germany, she was relieved of the effort to
+pay them. Her financial obligations were first transferred[333] to the
+Allies and then magnanimously wiped out by these, who then limited all
+her liabilities for reparations to two and a quarter milliard francs. An
+Inter-Allied commission in Sofia is to find and return the loot to its
+lawful owners, but it is to charge no indemnity for the damage done. Nor
+will it contain representatives of the states whose property the Bulgars
+abstracted. Serbia is allowed neither indemnity nor reparation. She is
+to receive a share which the Treaty neglected to fix of the two and a
+quarter milliard francs on a date which has also been left undetermined.
+She is not even to get back the herds of cattle of which the Bulgars
+robbed her. The lawgivers in Paris considered that justice would be met
+by obliging the Bulgars to restore 28,000 head of cattle in lieu of the
+3,200,000 driven off, so that even if the ill-starred Serbs should
+identify, say, one million more, they would have no right to enforce
+their claim.[334]
+
+Nor is that the only disconcerting detail in the Treaty. The Supreme
+Council, which sanctioned the military occupation of a part of Germany
+as a guaranty for the fulfilment of the peace conditions, dispenses
+Bulgaria from any such irksome conditions. Bulgaria's good faith
+appeared sufficient to the politicians who drafted the instrument. "For
+reasons which one hardly dares touch upon," writes an eminent French
+publicist,[335] "several of the Powers that constitute the famous world
+areopagus count on the future co-operation of Bulgaria. We shrink in
+dismay from the perspective thus opened to our gaze."[336]
+
+The territorial changes which the Prussia of the Balkans was condemned
+to undergo are neither very considerable nor unjust. Rumania receives no
+Bulgarian territory, the frontiers of 1913 remaining unaltered. Serbia
+nets some on grounds which cannot be called in question, and a large
+part of Thrace which is inhabited, not by Bulgars, but mainly by Greeks
+and Turks, was taken from Bulgaria, but allotted to no state in
+particular. The upshot of the Treaty, as it appeared to most of the
+leading publicists on the Continent of Europe, was to leave Bulgaria,
+whose cruelty and destructiveness are described by official and
+unofficial reports as unparalleled, in a position of economic
+superiority to Serbia, Greece, and Rumania. And in the Inter-Allied
+commission Bulgaria is to have a representative, while Serbia, Greece,
+and Rumania, a part of whose stolen property the commission has to
+recover, will have none.
+
+A comparison between the indulgence lavished upon Bulgaria and the
+severity displayed toward Rumania is calculated to disconcert the
+stanchest friends of the Supreme Council. The Rumanian government, in a
+dignified note to the Conference, explained its refusal to sign the
+Treaty with Austria by enumerating a series of facts which amount to a
+scathing condemnation of the work of the Supreme Council. On the one
+hand the Council pleaded the engagements entered into between Japan and
+her European allies as a cogent motive for handing over Shantung to
+Japan. For treaties must be respected. And the argument is sound. On the
+other hand, they were bound by a similar treaty[337] to give Rumania the
+whole Banat, the Rumanian districts of Hungary and the Bukovina as far
+as the river Pruth. But at the Conference they repudiated this
+engagement. In 1916 they stipulated that if Rumania entered the war they
+would co-operate with ample military forces. They failed to redeem their
+promise. And they further undertook that "Rumania shall have the same
+rights as the Allies in the peace preliminaries and negotiations and
+also in discussing the issues which shall be laid before the Peace
+Conference for its decisions." Yet, as we saw, she was denied these
+rights, and her delegates were not informed of the subjects under
+discussion nor allowed to see the terms of peace, which were in the
+hands of the enemies, and were only twice admitted to the presence of
+the Supreme Council.
+
+It has been observed in various countries and by the Allied and the
+neutral press that between the German view about the sacredness of
+treaties and that of the Supreme Council there is no substantial
+difference.[338] Comments of this nature are all the more distressing
+that they cannot be thrust aside as calumnious. Again it will not be
+denied that Rumania rendered inestimable services to the Allies. She
+sacrificed three hundred thousand of her sons to their cause. Her soil
+was invaded and her property stolen or ruined. Yet she has been deprived
+of part of her sovereignty by the Allies to whom she gave this help. The
+Supreme Council, not content with her law conferring equal rights on
+all her citizens, to whatever race or religion they may belong, ordered
+her to submit to the direction of a foreign board in everything
+concerning her minorities and demanded from her a promise of obedience
+in advance to their future decrees respecting her policy in matters of
+international trade and transit. These stipulations constitute a
+noteworthy curtailment of her sovereignty.
+
+That any set of public men should be carried by extrinsical motives thus
+far away from justice, fair play, and good faith would be a misfortune
+under any circumstances, but that at a conjuncture like the present it
+should befall the men who set up as the moral guides of mankind and
+wield the power to loosen the fabric of society is indeed a dire
+disaster.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[333] In June, 1919.
+
+[334] The comments on these terms, published by M. Gauvain in the
+_Journal des Débats_ (September 20, 1919), are well worth reading.
+
+[335] M. Auguste Gauvain.
+
+[336] _Le Journal des Débats_, September 20, 1919.
+
+[337] Concluded in the year 1916.
+
+[338] Cf. _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), September 21, 1919.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE COVENANT AND MINORITIES
+
+
+In Mr. Wilson's scheme for the establishment of a society of nations
+there was nothing new but his pledge to have it realized. And that
+pledge has still to be redeemed under conditions which he himself has
+made much more unfavorable than they were. The idea itself--floating in
+the political atmosphere for ages--has come to seem less vague and
+unattainable since the days of Kant. The only heads of states who had
+set themselves to embody it in institutions before President Wilson took
+it up not only disappointed the peoples who believed in them, but
+discredited the idea itself.
+
+That a merely mechanical organization such as the American statesman
+seems to have had in mind, formed by parliamentary politicians
+deliberating in secret, could bind nations and peoples together in moral
+fellowship, is conceivable in the abstract. But if we turn to the
+reality, we shall find that in that direction nothing durable can be
+effected without a radical change in the ideas, aspirations, and temper
+of the leaders who speak for the nations to-day, and, indeed, in those
+of large sections of the nations themselves. For to organize society on
+those unfamiliar lines is to modify some of the deepest-rooted instincts
+of human nature. And that cannot be achieved overnight, certainly not in
+the span of thirty minutes, which sufficed for the drafting of the
+Covenant. The bulk of mankind might not need to be converted, but whole
+classes must first be educated, and in some countries re-educated, which
+is perhaps still more difficult. Mental and moral training must
+complement and reinforce each other, and each political unit be brought
+to realize that the interests of the vaster community take precedence
+over those of any part of it. And to impress these novel views upon the
+peoples of the world takes time.
+
+An indispensable condition of success is that the compact binding the
+members together must be entered into by the peoples, not merely by
+their governments. For it is upon the masses that the burden of the war
+lies heaviest. It is the bulk of the population that supplies the
+soldiers, the money, and the work for the belligerent states, and
+endures the hardships and makes the sacrifices requisite to sustain it.
+Therefore, the peoples are primarily interested in the abolition of the
+old ordering and the forging of the new. Moreover, as latter-day
+campaigns are waged with all the resources of the warring peoples, and
+as the possession of certain of these resources is often both the cause
+of the conflict and the objective of the aggressor, it follows that no
+mere political enactments will meet contemporary requirements. An
+association of nations renouncing the sword as a means of settling
+disputes must also reduce as far as possible the surface over which
+friction with its neighbors is likely to take place. And nowadays most
+of that surface is economic. The possession of raw materials is a more
+potent attraction than territorial aggrandizement. Indeed, the latter is
+coveted mainly as a means of securing or safeguarding the former. On
+these and other grounds, in drawing up a charter for a society of
+nations, the political aspect should play but a subsidiary part. In
+Paris it was the only aspect that counted for anything.
+
+A parliament of peoples, then, is the only organ that can impart
+viability to a society of nations worthy of the name. By joining the
+Covenant with the Peace Treaty, and turning the former into an
+instrument for the execution of the latter, thus subordinating the ideal
+to the egotistical, Mr. Wilson deprived his plan of its sole
+justification, and for the time being buried it. The philosopher
+Lichtenberg[339] wrote, "One man brings forth a thought, another holds
+it over the baptismal font, the third begets offspring with it, the
+fourth stands at its deathbed, and the fifth buries it." Mr. Wilson has
+discharged the functions of gravedigger to the idea of a pacific society
+of nations, just as Lenin has done to the system of Marxism, the only
+difference being that Marxism is as dead as a door-nail, whereas the
+society of nations may rise again.
+
+It was open, then, to the three principal delegates to insure the peace
+of the world by moral means or by force. Having eschewed the former by
+adopting the doctrines of Monroe, abandoning the freedom of the seas,
+and by according to France strategic frontiers and other privileges of
+the militarist order, they might have enlarged and systematized these
+concessions to expediency and forged an alliance of the three states or
+of two, and undertaken to keep peace on the planet against all marplots.
+I wrote at the time: "The delegates are becoming conscious of the
+existence of a ready-made league of nations in the shape of the
+Anglo-Saxon states, which, together with France, might hinder wars,
+promote good-fellowship, remold human destinies; and they are delighted
+thus to possess solid foundations on which a noble edifice can be raised
+in the fullness of time. Tribunals will be created, with full powers to
+adjudge disputes; facilities will be accorded to litigious states, and
+even an obligation will be imposed to invoke their arbitration. And the
+sum total of these reforms will be known to contemporary annals as an
+inchoate League of Nations. The delegates are already modestly
+disavowing the intention of realizing the ideal in all its parts. That
+must be left to coming generations; but what with the exhaustion of the
+peoples, their aversion from warfare, and the material obstacles to the
+renewal of hostilities in the near future, it is calculated that the
+peace will not soon be violated. Whether more salient results will be
+attained or attempted by the Conference nobody can foretell."[340]
+
+This expedient, even had it been deliberately conceived and skilfully
+wrought out, would not have been an adequate solution of the world's
+difficulties, nor would it have commended itself to all the states
+concerned. But it would at least have been a temporary makeshift capable
+of being transmuted under favorable circumstances into something less
+material and more durable. But the amateur world-reformers could not
+make up their minds to choose either alternative. And the result is one
+of the most lamentable failures recorded in human history.
+
+I placed my own opinion on record at the time as frankly as the
+censorship which still existed for me would permit. I wrote: "What every
+delegate with sound political instinct will ask himself is, whether the
+League of Nations will eliminate wars in future, and, if not, he will
+feel conscientiously bound to adopt other relatively sure means of
+providing against them, and these consist of alliances, strategic
+frontiers, and the permanent disablement of the potential enemy. On one
+or other of these alternative lines the resettlement must be devised. To
+combine them would be ruinous. Now of what practical use is a league of
+nations devoid of supernational forces and faced by a numerous, virile,
+and united race, smarting under a sense of injustice, thirsting for the
+opportunities for development denied to it, but granted to nations which
+it despises as inferior? Would a league of nations combine militarily
+against the gradual encroachments or sudden aggression of that Power
+against its weaker neighbors? Nobody is authorized to answer this
+question affirmatively. To-day the Powers cannot agree to intervene
+against Bolshevism, which they deem a scourge of the world, nor can they
+agree to tolerate it.
+
+"In these circumstances, what compelling motives can be laid before
+those delegates who are asked to dispense with strategic frontiers and
+rely upon a league of nations for their defense? Take France's outlook.
+Peace once concluded, she will be confronted with a secular enemy who
+numbers some seventy millions to her forty-five millions. In ten years
+the disproportion will be still greater. Discontented Russia is almost
+certain to be taken in hand by Germany, befriended, reorganized,
+exploited, and enlisted as an ally."[341]
+
+
+Conscious of these reefs and shoals, the French government, which was at
+first contemptuous of the Wilsonian scheme, discerned the use it might
+be put to as a military safeguard, and sought to convert it into that.
+"The French," wrote a Francophil English journal published in Paris,
+"would like the League to maintain what may be called a permanent
+military general staff. The duties of this organization would be to keep
+a hawklike eye on the misdemeanors, actual or threatened, of any state
+or group of states, and to be empowered with authority to call into
+instant action a great international military force for the frustration
+or suppression of such aggression. The French have frankly in mind the
+possibility that an unrepentant and unregenerate Germany is the most
+likely menace not only to the security of France, but to the peace of
+the world in general."[342]
+
+And other states cherished analogous hopes. The spirit of right and
+justice was to be evoked like the spirit that served Aladdin, and to be
+compelled to enter the service of nationalism and militarism, and
+accomplish the task of armies.
+
+The paramount Powers prescribed the sacrifices of sovereignty which
+membership of the League necessitated, and forthwith dispensed
+themselves from making them. The United States government maintained its
+Monroe Doctrine for America--nay, it went farther and identified its
+interests with the Hay doctrine for the Far East.[343] It decided to
+construct a powerful navy for the defense of these political assets, and
+to give the youth of the country a semi-military training.[344] Defense
+presupposes attack. War, therefore, is not excluded--nay, it is admitted
+by the world-reformers, and preparations for it are indispensable.
+Equally so are the burdens of taxation. But if liberty of defense be one
+of the rights of two or three Powers, by what law is it confined to them
+and denied to the others? Why should the other communities be
+constrained to remain open to attack? Surely they, too, deserve to live
+and thrive, and make the most of their opportunities. Now if in lieu of
+a misnamed League of Nations we had an Anglo-Saxon board for the better
+government of the world, these unequal weights and measures would be
+intelligible on the principle that special obligations and
+responsibilities warrant exceptional rights. But no such plea can be
+advanced under an arrangement professing to be a society of free
+nations. All that can with truth be said is what M. Clemenceau told the
+delegates of the lesser states at the opening of the Conference--that
+the three great belligerents represent twelve million soldiers and that
+their supreme authority derives from that. The rôle of the other peoples
+is to listen to the behests of their guardians, and to accept and
+execute them without murmur. Might is still a source of right.
+
+It is fair to say that the disclosure of the true base of the new
+ordering, as blurted out by M. Clemenceau at that historic meeting,
+caused little surprise among the initiated. For there was no reason to
+assume that he, or, indeed, the bulk of the continental statesmen, were
+converts to a doctrine of which its own apostle accepted only those
+fragments which commended themselves to his country or his party. Had
+not the French Premier scoffed at the League in public as in private?
+Had he not said in the Chamber: "I do not believe that the Society of
+Nations constitutes the necessary conclusion of the present war. I will
+give you one of my reasons. It is this: if to-morrow you were to propose
+to me that Germany should enter into this society I would not
+consent."[345]
+
+"I am certain," wrote one of the ablest and most ardent champions of the
+League in France, Senator d'Estournelles de Constant--"I am certain that
+he [M. Clemenceau] made an effort against himself, against his entire
+past, against his whole life, against all his convictions, to serve the
+Society of Nations. And his Minister of Foreign Affairs followed
+him."[346] Exactly. And as with M. Clemenceau, so it was with the
+majority of European statesmen; most of them made strenuous and, one
+may add, successful efforts against their convictions. And the result
+was inevitable.
+
+"The governments," we read in the organ of syndicalists, who had
+supported Mr. Wilson as long as they believed him determined to redeem
+his promises--"the governments have acquiesced in the Fourteen
+Points.... Hypocrisy. Each one cherished mental reservations. Virtue was
+exalted and vice practised. The poltroon eulogized heroism; the
+imperialist lauded the spirit of justice. For the past month we have
+been picking up ideas about the worth of the adhesions to the Fourteen
+Points, and never before has a more sinister or a more odious comedy
+been played. Territorial demands have been heaved one upon the other;
+contempt of the rights of peoples--the only right that we can
+recognize--has been expressed in striking terms; the last restraints
+have vanished; the masks have fallen."[347]
+
+
+From every country in Europe the same judgment came pitched in varying
+keys. The Italian press condemned the proceedings of the Conference in
+language to the full as strong as that of the German or Austrian
+journals. The _Stampa_ affirmed that those who, like Bissolati, were in
+the beginning for placing their trust in one of the two coteries at the
+Conference were guilty of a fatal mistake. "The mistake lay in their
+belief in the ideal strivings of one of the parties, and in the horror
+with which the cupidity of the others was contemplated, whereas both of
+them were fighting for ... their interests.... In verity France was no
+less militarist or absolutist than Germany, nor was England less avid
+than either. And the proof is enshrined in the peace treaties which have
+masked the results of their respective victories. _Versailles is a
+Brest-Litovsk_, aggravated in the same proportion as the victory of the
+Entente over Germany, is more complete than was that of Germany over
+Russia. Cupidity does not alter its character, even when it seeks to
+conceal itself under a Phrugian cap rather than wear a helmet."[348]
+
+M. Clemenceau's opening utterance about the twelve million men, and the
+unlimited right which such formidable armies confer on their possessors
+to sit in judgment on the tribes and peoples of the planet, was the true
+keynote to the Conference. After that the leading statesmen trimmed
+their ship, touched the rudder, and sailed toward downright absolutism.
+
+The effect of such utterances and acts on the minds of the peoples are
+distinctly mischievous. For they tend to obliterate the sense of public
+right, which is the main foundation of international intercourse among
+progressive nations.
+
+And already it had been shaken and weakened by the campaigns of the past
+fifty years, and in particular by the last war. In the relations of
+nation to nation there were certain principles--derivatives of ethics
+diluted with maxims of expediency--which kept the various governments
+from too flagrant breaches of faith. These checks were the only
+substitute for morality in politics. Their highest power was connoted by
+the word Europeanism, which stood for a supposed feeling of solidarity
+among all the peoples of the old Continent, and for a certain respect
+for the treaties on which the state-system reposed. But it existed
+mainly among defeated nations when apprehensive of being isolated or
+chastised by their victors. None the less, the idea marked a certain
+advance toward an ethical bond of union.
+
+
+Now this embryonic sense, together with respect for the binding force of
+a nation's plighted troth, were numbered by the demoralizing influence
+of the wars of the last fifty years. And one of the first and peremptory
+needs of the world was their restoration. This could be effected only by
+bringing the peoples, not merely of Europe, but of the world, more
+closely together, by engrafting on them a feeling of close solidarity,
+and impressing them with the necessity of making common cause in the one
+struggle worth their while waging--resistance to the forces that
+militate against human welfare and progress. The feeling was widespread
+that the way to effect this was by some form of internationalism, by the
+broadening, deepening, and quickening all that was implied by
+Europeanism, by co-ordinating the collective energies of all progressive
+peoples, and causing them to converge toward a common and worthy goal.
+For the working classes this conception in a restricted form had long
+possessed a commanding attraction. What they aimed at, however, was no
+more than the catholicity of labor. They fancied that after the passage
+of the tidal wave of destructiveness the ground was cleared of most of
+the obstacles which had encumbered it, and that the forward advance
+might begin forthwith.
+
+What they failed to take sufficiently into account was the _vis
+inertiæ_, the survival of the old spirit among the ruling orders whose
+members continued to live and move in the atmosphere of use and wont,
+and the spirit of hate and bitterness infused into all the political
+classes, to dispel which was a herculean task. It was exclusively to the
+leaders of those classes that Mr. Wilson confided the realization of the
+abstract idea of a society of nations, which he may at first have
+pictured to himself as a vast family conscious of common interests, bent
+on moral and material self-betterment, and willing to eschew such
+partial advantages as might hinder or retard the general progress. But,
+judging by his attitude and his action, he had no real acquaintance
+with the materials out of which it must be fashioned, no notion of the
+difficulties to be met, and no staying power to encounter and surmount
+them. And his first move entailed the failure of the scheme.
+
+As a matter of fact, Mr. Wilson came to the Conference with a home-made
+charter for the Society of Nations, which, according to the evidence of
+Mr. Lansing, "was never pressed." The State Secretary added that "the
+present league Covenant is superior to the American plan." And as for
+the Fourteen Points, "They were not even discussed at the
+Conference."[349] Suspecting as much, I wrote at the time:[350] "The
+President has pinned himself down to no concrete scheme whatever. His
+method is electric, choosing what is helpful and beneficent in the
+projects of others, and endeavoring to obtain from the dissentients a
+renunciation of ideas belonging to the old national currents and
+adherence to the doctrines he deems salutary. It is, however, already
+clear that the highest ideal now attainable is not a league of nations
+as the masses understand it, which will abolish wars and likewise put an
+end to the costly preparations for them, but only a coalition of
+victorious nations, which may hope, by dint of economic inducements and
+deterrents, to draw the enemy peoples into its camp in the not too
+distant future. This result would fall very short of the expectations
+aroused by the far-resonant promises made at the outset; but even it
+will be unattainable without an international compact binding all the
+members of the coalition to make war simultaneously upon the nation or
+group of nations which ventures to break the peace. I am disposed to
+believe that nothing less than such an express covenant will be regarded
+by the continental Powers of the Entente as an adequate substitute for
+certain territorial readjustments which they otherwise consider
+essential to secure them from sudden attack.
+
+"Whether such a condition would prevent future wars is a question that
+only experience can answer. Personally, I am profoundly convinced, with
+Mr. Taft, that a genuine league of nations must have teeth in the guise
+of supernational, not international, forces. In these remarks I make
+abstraction from the larger question which wholly absorbs this--namely,
+whether the masses for whose behoof the lavish expenditure of time,
+energy, and ingenuity is undertaken, will accept a coalition of
+victorious governments against unregenerate peoples as a substitute for
+the Society of Nations as at first conceived."
+
+The supposed object of the League was the substitution of right for
+force, by debarring each individual state from employing violence
+against any of the others, and by the use of arbitration as a means of
+settling disputes. This entails the suppression of the right to declare
+war and to prepare for it, and, as a corollary, a system of deterrents
+to hinder, and of penalties to punish rebellion on the part of a
+community. That in those cases where the law is set at naught
+efficacious means should be available to enforce it will hardly be
+denied; but whether economic pressure would suffice in all cases is
+doubtful. To me it seems that without a supernational army, under the
+direct orders of the League, it might under conceivable circumstances
+become impossible to uphold the decisions of the tribunal, and that, on
+the other hand, the coexistence of such a military force with national
+armaments would condemn the undertaking to failure.
+
+An analysis of the Covenant lies beyond the limits of my task, but it
+may not be amiss to point out a few of its inherent defects. One of the
+principal organs of the League will be the Assembly and the Council. The
+former, a very numerous and mainly political body, will necessarily be
+out of touch with the peoples, their needs and their aspirations. It
+will meet at most three or four times a year. And its members alone will
+be invested with all the power, which they will be chary of delegating.
+On the other hand, the Council, consisting at first of nine members,
+will meet at least once a year. The members of both bodies will
+presumably be appointed by the governments,[351] who will certainly not
+renounce their sovereignty in a matter that concerns them so closely.
+Such a system may be wise and conducive to the highest aims, but it can
+hardly be termed democratic. The military Powers who command twelve
+million soldiers will possess a majority in the Council.[352] The
+Secretariat alone will be permanent, and will naturally be appointed by
+the Great Powers.
+
+Instead of abolishing war, the Conference described its abolition as
+beyond the power of man to compass. Disarmament, which was to have been
+one of its main achievements, is eliminated from the Covenant. As the
+war that was to have been the last will admittedly be followed by
+others, the delegates of the Great Powers worked conscientiously, as
+behooved patriotic statesmen, to obtain in advance all possible
+advantages for their respective countries by way of preparing for it.
+The new order, which in theory reposes upon right, justice, and moral
+fellowship, in reality depends upon powerful armies and navies. France
+must remain under arms, seeing that she has to keep watch on the Rhine.
+Britain and the United States are to go on building warships and
+aircraft, besides training their youth for the coming Armageddon. The
+article of the Covenant which lays it down that "the members of the
+League recognize that the maintenance of peace requires the reduction
+of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national
+safety,"[353] is, to use a Russian simile, written on water with a fork.
+Britain, France, and the United States are already agreed that they will
+combine to repel unprovoked aggression on the part of Germany. That
+evidently signifies that they will hold themselves in readiness to
+fight, and will therefore make due preparation. This arrangement is a
+substitute for a supernational army, as though prevention were not
+better than cure; that it will prove efficacious in the long run very
+few believe. One clear-visioned Frenchman writes: "The inefficacy of the
+organization aimed at by the Conference constrains France to live in
+continual and increasing insecurity, owing to the falling off of her
+population."[354] He adds: "It follows from this abortive expedient--if
+it is to remain definitive--that each member-state must protect itself,
+or come to terms with the more powerful ones, as in the past.
+Consequently we are in presence of the maintenance of militarism and the
+régime of armaments."[355] This writer goes farther and accuses Mr.
+Wilson of having played into the hands of Britain. "President Wilson,"
+he affirms, "has more or less sacrificed to the English government the
+society of nations and the question of armaments, that of the colonies
+and that of the freedom of the seas...."[356] This, however, is an
+over-statement. It was not for the sake of Britain that the American
+statesman gave up so much; it was for the sake of saving something of
+the Covenant. It was in the spirit of Sir Boyle Roche, whose attachment
+to the British Constitution was such that, to save a part of it, he was
+willing to sacrifice the whole.
+
+The arbitration of disputes is provided for by one of the articles of
+the Covenant;[357] but the parties may go to war three months later with
+a clear conscience and an appeal to right, justice, self-determination,
+and the usual abstract nouns.
+
+In a word, the directors of the Conference disciplined their political
+intelligence on lines of self-hypnotization, along which common sense
+finds it impossible to follow them. There were also among the delegates
+men who thought and spoke in terms of reason and logic, but their voices
+evoked no echo. One of them summed up his criticism somewhat as follows:
+
+"During the war our professions of democratic principles were far
+resonant and emphatic. We were fighting for the nations of the world,
+especially for those who could not successfully fight for themselves.
+All the peoples, great and small, were exhorted to make the most painful
+sacrifices to enable their respective governments to conquer the enemy.
+Victory unexpectedly smiled on us, and the peoples asked that those
+promises should be made good. Naturally, expectations ran high. What has
+happened? The governments now answer in effect: 'We will promote your
+interests, but without your co-operation or assent. We will make the
+necessary arrangements in secret behind closed doors. The machinery we
+are devising will be a state machinery, not a popular one. All that we
+ask of you is implicit trust. You complain of our action in the past.
+You have good cause. You say that the same men are about to determine
+your future. Again you are right. But when you affirm that we are sure
+to make the like mistakes, you are wrong, and we ask you to take our
+word for it. You complain that we are politicians who feel the weight of
+certain commitments and the fetters of obsolete traditions from which we
+cannot free ourselves; that we are mainly concerned to protect and
+further the interests of our respective countries, and that it is
+inconceivable we should devise an organization which looks above and
+beyond those interests. We ask you, are you willing, then, to abandon
+the heritage of our fathers to the foreigner?'
+
+"That the downtrodden peoples in Austria and Germany have been
+emancipated is a moral triumph. But why has the beneficent principle
+that is said to have inspired the deed been restricted in its
+application? Why has the experiment been tried only in the enemies'
+countries? Or are things quite in order everywhere else? Is there no
+injustice in other quarters of the globe? Are there no complaints? If
+there be, why are they ignored? Is it because all acts of oppression are
+to be perpetuated which do not take place in the enemy's land? What
+about Ireland and about a dozen other countries and peoples? Are they
+skeletons not to be touched?
+
+"By debarring the masses from participation in a grandiose scheme, the
+success of which depends upon their assent, the governments are
+indirectly but surely encouraging secret combined opposition, and in
+some cases Bolshevism. The masses resent being treated as children after
+having been appealed to as arbiters and rescuers. For four and a half
+years it was they who bore the brunt of the war, they who sacrificed
+their sons and their substance. In the future it is they to whom the
+states will look for the further sacrifices in blood and treasure which
+will be necessary in the struggles which they evidently anticipate.
+Well, some of them refuse these sacrifices in advance. They challenge
+the right of the governments to retain the power of making war and
+peace. That power they are working to get into their own hands and to
+wield in their own way, or at any rate to have a say in its exercise.
+And in order to secure it, some sections of the peoples are making
+common cause with the socialist revolutionaries, while others have gone
+the length of Bolshevism. And that is a serious danger. The agitation
+now going on among the people, therefore, starts with a grievance. The
+masses have many other grievances besides the one just sketched--the
+survivals of the feudal age, the privileges of class, the inequality of
+opportunity. And the kernel formed by these is the element of truth and
+equity which imparts force to all those underground movements, and
+enables them to subsist and extend. Error is never dangerous by itself;
+it is only when it has an admixture of truth that it becomes powerful
+for evil. And it seems a thousand pities that the governments, whose own
+interests are at stake, as well as those of the communities they govern,
+should go out of their way to provide an explosive element for
+Bolshevism and its less sinister variants."
+
+The League was treated as a living organism before it existed. All the
+problems which the Supreme Councilors found insoluble were reserved for
+its judgment. Arduous functions were allotted to it before it had organs
+to discharge them. Formidable tasks were imposed upon it before the
+means of achieving them were devised. It is an institution so elusive
+and elastic that the French regard it as capable of being used as a
+handy instrument for coercing the Teutons, who, in turn, look upon it as
+a means of recovering their place in the world; the Japanese hope it may
+become a bridge leading to racial equality, and the governments which
+devised it are bent on employing it as a lever for their own
+politico-economic aims, which they identify with the progress of the
+human race. How the peoples look upon it the future will show.
+
+On the Monroe Doctrine in connection with the League of Nations the less
+said the soonest mended. But one cannot well say less than this: that
+any real society of peoples such as Mr. Wilson first conceived and
+advocated is as incompatible with "regional understandings like the
+Monroe Doctrine" as are the maintenance of national armaments and the
+bartering of populations. It is immaterial whether one concludes that a
+Society of Nations is therefore impossible in the present conjuncture or
+that all those survivals of the old state system are obsolescent and
+should be abolished. The two are unquestionably irreconcilable.
+
+It would be a mistake to infer from the unanimity with which Mr.
+Wilson's Covenant was finally accepted that it expressed the delegates'
+genuine conceptions or sentiments. Mr. Bullitt, one of the expert
+advisers to the American Peace Delegation, testified before the Senate
+committee in Washington that State-Secretary Lansing remarked to him: "I
+consider the League of Nations at present as entirely useless. The Great
+Powers have simply gone ahead and arranged the world to suit themselves.
+England and France, in particular, have gotten out of the Treaty
+everything they wanted. The League of Nations can do nothing to alter
+any unjust clauses of the Treaty except by the unanimous consent of the
+League members. The Great Powers will never consent to changes in the
+interests of weaker peoples."[358]
+
+This opinion which Mr. Bullitt ascribed to Mr. Lansing was, to my
+knowledge, that of a large number of the representatives of the nations
+at the Conference. Among them all I have met very few who had a good
+word to say of the scheme, and of the few one had helped to formulate
+it, another had assisted him. And the unfavorable judgments of the
+remainder were delivered after the Covenant was signed.
+
+
+One of those leaders, in conversation with several other delegates and
+myself, exclaimed one day: "The League of Nations indeed! It is an
+absurdity. Who among thinking men believes in its reality?" "I do,"
+answered his neighbor; "but, like the devils, I believe and tremble. I
+hold that it is a corrosive poison which destroys much that is good and
+will further much that is bad." A statesman who was not a delegate
+demurred. "In my opinion," he said, "it is a response to a demand put
+forward by the peoples of the globe, and because of this origin
+something good will ultimately come of it. Unquestionably it is very
+defective, but in time it may be--nay, must be--changed for the better."
+The first speaker replied: "If you imagine that the League will help
+continental peoples, you are, I am convinced, mistaken. It took the
+United States three years to go to the help of Britain and France. How
+long do you suppose it will take her to mobilize and despatch troops to
+succor Poland, Rumania, or Czechoslovakia? I am acquainted with British
+colonial public opinion and sentiment--too often misunderstood by
+foreigners--and I can tell you that they are misconstrued by those who
+fancy that they would determine action of that kind. If England tells
+the colonies that she needs their help, they will come, because their
+people are flesh of her flesh and blood of her blood, and also because
+they depend for their defense upon her navy, and if she were to go under
+they would go under, too. But the continental nations have no such
+claims upon the British colonies, which would not be in a hurry to make
+sacrifices in order to satisfy their appetites or their passions."
+
+The second speaker then said: "It is possible, but nowise certain, that
+the future League may help to settle these disputes which professional
+diplomatists would have arranged, and in the old way, but it will not
+affect those others which are the real causes of wars. If a nation
+believes it can further its vital interest by breaking the peace, the
+League cannot stop it. How could it? It lacks the means. There will be
+no army ready. It would have to create one. Even now, when such an army,
+powerful and victorious, is in the field, the League--for the Supreme
+Council is that and more--cannot get its orders obeyed. How then will
+its behest be treated when it has no troops at its beck and call? It is
+redrawing the map of central and eastern Europe, and is very satisfied
+with its work. But, as we know, the peoples of those countries look upon
+its map as a sheet of paper covered with lines and blotches of color to
+which no reality corresponds."
+
+The constitution of the League was termed by Mr. Wilson a Covenant, a
+word redolent of biblical and puritanical times, which accorded well
+with the motives that decided him to prefer Geneva to Brussels as the
+seat of the League, and to adopt other measures of a supposed political
+character. The first draft of this document was, as we saw, completed in
+the incredibly short space of some thirty hours, so as to enable the
+President to take it with him to Washington. As the Ententophil _Echo de
+Paris_ remarked, "By a fixed date the merchandise has to be consigned on
+board the _George Washington_."[359]
+
+
+The discussions that took place after the President's return from the
+United States were animated, interesting, and symptomatic. In April the
+commission had several sittings, at which various amendments and
+alterations were proposed, some of which would cut deep into
+international relations, while others were of slight moment and gave
+rise to amusing sallies. One day the proposal was mooted that each
+member-state should be free to secede on giving two years' notice. M.
+Larnaude, who viewed membership as something sacramentally inalienable,
+seemed shocked, as though the suggestion bordered on sacrilege, and
+wondered how any government should feel tempted to take such a step.
+Signor Orlando was of a different opinion. "However precious the
+privilege of membership may be," he said, "it would be a comfort always
+to know that you could divest yourself of it at will. I am shut up in my
+room all day working. I do not go into the open air any oftener than a
+prisoner might. But I console myself with the thought that I can go out
+whenever I take it into my head. And I am sure a similar reflection on
+membership of the League would be equally soothing. I am in favor of the
+motion."
+
+The center of interest during the drafting of the Covenant lay in the
+clause proclaiming the equality of religions, which Mr. Wilson was bent
+on having passed at all costs, if not in one form, then in another. This
+is one example of the occasional visibility of the religious thread
+which ran through a good deal of his personal work at the Conference.
+For it is a fact--not yet realized even by the delegates
+themselves--that distinctly religious motives inspired much that was
+done by the Conference on what seemed political or social grounds. The
+strategy adopted by the eminent American statesman to have his
+stipulation accepted proceeded in this case on the lines of a
+humanitarian resolve to put an end to sanguinary wars rather than on
+those which the average reformer, bent on cultural progress, would have
+traced. Actuality was imparted to this simple and yet thorny topic by a
+concrete proposal which the President made one day. What he is reported
+to have said is briefly this: "As the treatment of religious confessions
+has been in the past, and may again in the future be, a cause of
+sanguinary wars, it seems desirable that a clause should be introduced
+into the Covenant establishing absolute liberty for creeds and
+confessions." "On what, Mr. President," asked the first Polish delegate,
+"do you found your assertion that wars are still brought about by the
+differential treatment meted out to religions? Does contemporary
+history bear out this statement? And, if not, what likelihood is there
+that religious inequality will precipitate sanguinary conflicts in the
+future?" To this pointed question Mr. Wilson is said to have made the
+characteristic reply that he considered it expedient to assume this
+nexus between religious inequality and war as the safest way of bringing
+the matter forward. If he were to proceed on any other lines, he added,
+there would be truth and force in the objection which would doubtless be
+raised, that the Conference was intruding upon the domestic affairs of
+sovereign states. As that charge would damage the cause, it must be
+rebutted in advance. And for this purpose he deemed it prudent to
+approach the subject from the side he had chosen.
+
+This reply was listened to in silence and unfavorably commented upon
+later. The alleged relation between such religious inequality as has
+survived into the twentieth century and such wars as are waged nowadays
+is so obviously fictitious that one can hardly understand the line of
+reasoning that led to its assumption, or the effect which the fiction
+could be supposed to have on the minds of those legislators who might be
+opposed to the measure on the ground that it involved undue interference
+in the internal affairs of sovereign states. The motion was referred to
+a commission, which in due time presented a report. Mr. Wilson was
+absent when the report came up for discussion, his place being taken by
+Colonel House. The atmosphere was chilly, only a couple of the delegates
+being disposed to support the clause--Rumania's representative, M.
+Diamandi, was one, and another was Baron Makino, whose help Colonel
+House would gladly have dispensed with, so inacceptable was the
+condition it carried with it.
+
+Baron Makino said that he entirely agreed with Colonel House and the
+American delegates. The equality of religious confessions was not merely
+desirable, but necessary to the smooth working of a Society of Nations
+such as they were engaged in establishing. He held, however, that it
+should be extended to races, that extension being also a corollary of
+the principle underlying the new international ordering. He would
+therefore move the insertion of a clause proclaiming the equality of
+races and religions. At this Colonel House looked pensive. Nearly all
+the other opinions were hostile to Colonel House's motion.
+
+The reasons alleged by each of the dissenting lawgivers were
+interesting. Lord Robert Cecil surprised many of his colleagues by
+informing them that in England the Catholics, who are fairly treated as
+things are, could not possibly be set on a footing of perfect equality
+with their Protestant fellow-citizens, because the Constitution forbids
+it. Nor could the British people be asked to alter their Constitution.
+He gave as instances of the slight inequality at present enforced the
+circumstance that no Catholic can ascend the throne as monarch, nor sit
+on the woolsack as Lord Chancellor in the Upper House.
+
+M. Larnaude, speaking in the name of France, stated that his country had
+passed through a sequence of embarrassments caused by legislation on the
+relations between the Catholics and the state, and that the introduction
+of a clause enacting perfect equality might revive controversies which
+were happily losing their sharpness. He considered it, therefore,
+inadvisable to settle this delicate matter by inserting the proposed
+declaration in the Covenant. Belgium's first delegate, M. Hymans,
+pointed out that the objection taken by his government was of a
+different but equally cogent character. There was reason to apprehend
+that the Flemings might avail themselves of the equality clause to raise
+awkward issues and to sow seeds of dissension. On those grounds he
+would like to see the proposal waived. Signor Orlando half seriously,
+half jokingly, reminded his colleagues that none of their countries had,
+like his, a pope in their capital. The Italian government must,
+therefore, proceed in religious matters with the greatest
+circumspection, and could not lightly assent to any measure capable of
+being manipulated to the detriment of the public interest. Hence he was
+unable to give the motion his support. It was finally suggested that
+both proposals be withdrawn. To this Colonel House demurred, on the
+ground that President Wilson, who was unavoidably absent, attached very
+great weight to the declaration, to which he hoped the delegates would
+give their most favorable consideration. One of the members then rose
+and said, "In that case we had better postpone the voting until Mr.
+Wilson can attend." This suggestion was adopted. When the matter came up
+for discussion at a subsequent sitting, the Japanese substituted
+"nations" for "races."
+
+In the meantime the usual arts of parliamentary emergency were practised
+outside the Conference to induce the Japanese to withdraw their proposal
+altogether. They were told that to accept or refuse it would be to
+damage the cause of the future League without furthering their own. But
+the Marquis Saionji and Baron Makino refused to yield an inch of their
+ground. A conversation then took place between the Premier of Australia,
+on the one side, and Baron Makino and Viscount Chinda, on the other,
+with a view to their reaching a compromise. For Mr. Hughes was
+understood to be the leader of those who opposed any declaration of
+racial equality. The Japanese statesmen showed him their amendment, and
+asked him whether he could suggest a modification that would satisfy
+himself and them. The answer was in the negative. To the arguments of
+the Japanese delegates the Australian Premier is understood to have
+replied: "I am willing to admit the equality of the Japanese as a
+nation, and also of individuals man to man. But I do not admit the
+consequence that we should throw open our country to them. It is not
+that we hold them to be inferior to ourselves, but simply that we do not
+want them. Economically they are a perturbing factor, because they
+accept wages much below the minimum for which our people are willing to
+work. Neither do they blend well with our people. Hence we do not want
+them to marry our women. Those are my reasons. We mean no offense. Our
+restrictive legislation is not aimed specially at the Japanese. British
+subjects in India are affected by it in exactly the same way. It is
+impossible that we should formulate any modifications of your amendment,
+because there is no modification conceivable that would satisfy us
+both."
+
+The Japanese delegates were understood to say that they would maintain
+their motion, and that unless it passed they would not sign the
+document. Mr. Hughes retorted that if it should pass he would refuse to
+sign. Finally the Australian Premier asked Baron Makino whether he would
+be satisfied with the following qualifying proviso: "This affirmation of
+the principle of equality is not to be applied to immigration or
+nationalization." Baron Makino and Viscount Chinda both answered in the
+negative and withdrew.
+
+The final act[360] is described by eye-witnesses as follows. Congruously
+with the order of the day, President Wilson having moved that the city
+of Geneva be selected as the capital of the future League, obtained a
+majority, whereupon he announced that the motion had passed.
+
+Then came the burning question of the equality of nations.[361] The
+Polish delegate arose and opposed it on the formal ground that nothing
+ought to be inserted in the preamble which was not dealt with also in
+the body of the Covenant, as otherwise it would be no more than an
+isolated theory devoid of organic connection with the whole. The
+Japanese delegates delivered speeches of cogent argument and impressive
+debating power. Baron Makino made out a very strong case for the
+equality of nations. Viscount Chinda followed in a trenchant discourse,
+which was highly appreciated by his hearers, nearly all of whom
+recognized the justice of the Japanese claim. The Japanese delegates
+refused to be dazzled by the circumstances that Japan was to be
+represented on the Executive Council as one of the five Great Powers,
+and that the rejection of the proposed amendment could not therefore be
+construed as a diminution of her prestige. This consideration, they
+retorted, was wholly irrelevant to the question whether or no the
+nations were to be recognized as equal. They ended by refusing to
+withdraw their modified amendment and calling for a vote. The result was
+a majority for the amendment. Mr. Wilson thereupon announced that a
+majority was insufficient to justify its adoption, and that nothing less
+than absolute unanimity could be regarded as adequate. At this a
+delegate objected: "Mr. Wilson, you have just accepted a majority for
+your own motion respecting Geneva; on what grounds, may I ask, do you
+refuse to abide by a majority vote on the amendment of the Japanese
+delegation?" "The two cases are different," was the reply. "On the
+subject of the seat of the League unanimity is unattainable." This
+closed the official discussion.
+
+Some time later, it is asserted, the Rumanians, who had supported Mr.
+Wilson's motion on religious equality, were approached on the subject,
+and informed that it would be agreeable to the American delegates to
+have the original proposal brought up once more. Such a motion, it was
+added, would come with especial propriety from the Rumanians, who, in
+the person of M. Diamandi, had advocated it from the outset. But the
+Rumanian delegates hesitated, pleading the invincible opposition of the
+Japanese. They were assured, however, that the Japanese would no longer
+discountenance it. Thereupon they broached the matter to Lord Robert
+Cecil, but he, with his wonted caution, replied that it was a delicate
+subject to handle, especially after the experience they had already had.
+As for himself, he would rather leave the initiative to others. Could
+the Rumanian delegates not open their minds to Colonel House, who took
+the amendment so much to heart? They acted on this suggestion and called
+on Colonel House. He, too, however, declared that it was a momentous as
+well as a thorny topic, and for that reason had best be referred to the
+head of the American delegation. President Wilson, having originated the
+amendment, was the person most qualified to take direct action. It is
+further affirmed that they sounded the President as to the advisability
+of mooting the question anew, but that he declined to face another vote,
+and the matter was dropped for good--in that form.
+
+It was publicly asserted later on that the Japanese decided to abide by
+the rejection of their amendment and to sign the Covenant as the result
+of a bargain on the Shantung dispute. This report, however, was
+pulverized by the Japanese delegation, which pointed out that the
+introduction of the racial clause was decided upon before the delegates
+left Japan, and when no difficulties were anticipated respecting
+Japan's claim to have that province ceded to her by Germany, and that
+the discussion on the amendment terminated on April 11th, consequently
+before the Kiaochow issue came up for discussion. As a matter of fact,
+the Japanese publicly announced their intention to adhere to the League
+of Nations two days[362] before a decision was reached respecting their
+claims to Kiaochow.
+
+This adverse note on Mr. Wilson's pet scheme to have religious equality
+proclaimed as a means of hindering sanguinary wars brought to its climax
+the reaction of the Conference against what it regarded as a systematic
+endeavor to establish the overlordship of the Anglo-Saxon peoples in the
+world. The plea that wars may be provoked by such religious inequality
+as still survives was so unreal that it awakened a twofold suspicion in
+the minds of many of Mr. Wilson's colleagues. Most of them believed that
+a pretext was being sought to enable the leading Powers to intervene in
+the domestic concerns of all the other states, so as to keep them firmly
+in hand, and use them as means to their own ends. And these ends were
+looked upon as anything but disinterested. Unhappily this conviction was
+subsequently strengthened by certain of the measures decreed by the
+Supreme Council between April and the close of the Conference. The
+misgivings of other delegates turned upon a matter which at first sight
+may appear so far removed from any of the pressing issues of the
+twentieth century as to seem wholly imaginary. They feared that a
+religious--some would call it racial--bias lay at the root of Mr.
+Wilson's policy. It may seem amazing to some readers, but it is none the
+less a fact that a considerable number of delegates believed that the
+real influences behind the Anglo-Saxon peoples were Semitic.
+
+They confronted the President's proposal on the subject of religious
+inequality, and, in particular, the odd motive alleged for it, with the
+measures for the protection of minorities which he subsequently imposed
+on the lesser states, and which had for their keynote to satisfy the
+Jewish elements in eastern Europe. And they concluded that the sequence
+of expedients framed and enforced in this direction were inspired by the
+Jews, assembled in Paris for the purpose of realizing their carefully
+thought-out program, which they succeeded in having substantially
+executed. However right or wrong these delegates may have been, it would
+be a dangerous mistake to ignore their views, seeing that they have
+since become one of the permanent elements of the situation. The formula
+into which this policy was thrown by the members of the Conference,
+whose countries it affected, and who regarded it as fatal to the peace
+of eastern Europe, was this: "Henceforth the world will be governed by
+the Anglo-Saxon peoples, who, in turn, are swayed by their Jewish
+elements."
+
+It is difficult to convey an adequate notion of the warmth of
+feeling--one might almost call it the heat of passion--which this
+supposed discovery generated. The applications of the theory to many of
+the puzzles of the past were countless and ingenious. The illustrations
+of the manner in which the policy was pursued, and the cajolery and
+threats which were said to have been employed in order to insure its
+success, covered the whole history of the Conference, and presented it
+through a new and possibly distorted medium. The morbid suspicions
+current may have been the natural vein of men who had passed a great
+part of their lives in petty racial struggles; but according to common
+account, it was abundantly nurtured at the Conference by the lack of
+reserve and moderation displayed by some of the promoters of the
+minority clauses who were deficient in the sense of measure. What the
+Eastern delegates said was briefly this: "The tide in our countries was
+flowing rapidly in favor of the Jews. All the east European governments
+which had theretofore wronged them were uttering their _mea culpa_, and
+had solemnly promised to turn over a new leaf. Nay, they had already
+turned it. We, for example, altered our legislation in order to meet by
+anticipation the legitimate wishes of the Conference and the pressing
+demands of the Jews. We did quite enough to obviate decrees which might
+impair our sovereignty or lessen our prestige. Poland and Rumania issued
+laws establishing absolute equality between the Jews and their own
+nationals. All discrimination had ceased. Immigrant Hebrews from Russia
+received the full rights of citizenship and became entitled to fill any
+office in the state. In a word, all the old disabilities were abolished
+and the fervent prayer of east European governments was that the Jewish
+members of their respective communities should be gradually assimilated
+to the natives and become patriotic citizens like them. It was a new
+ideal. It accorded to the Jews everything they had asked for. It would
+enable them to show themselves as the French, Italian, and Belgian Jews
+had shown themselves, efficient citizens of their adopted countries.
+
+"But in the flush of their triumph, the Jews, or rather their spokesmen
+at the Conference, were not satisfied with equality. What they demanded
+was inequality to the detriment of the races whose hospitality they were
+enjoying and to their own supposed advantage. They were to have the same
+rights as the Rumanians, the Poles, and the other peoples among whom
+they lived, but they were also to have a good deal more. Their religious
+autonomy was placed under the protection of an alien body, the League,
+which is but another name for the Powers which have reserved to
+themselves the governance of the world. The method is to oblige each of
+the lesser states to bestow on each minority the same rights as the
+majority enjoys, and also certain privileges over and above. The
+instrument imposing this obligation is a formal treaty with the Great
+Powers which the Poles, Rumanians, and other small states were summoned
+to sign. It contains twenty-one articles. The first part of the document
+deals with minorities generally, the latter with the Jewish elements.
+The second clause of the Polish treaty enacts that every individual who
+habitually resided in Poland on August 1, 1914, becomes a citizen
+forthwith. This is simple. Is it also satisfactory? Many Frenchmen and
+Poles doubt it, as we do ourselves. On August 1st numerous German and
+Austrian agents and spies, many of them Hebrews, resided habitually in
+Poland. Moreover, the foreign Jewish elements there, which have
+immigrated from Russia, having lost--like everybody else before the
+war--the expectation of seeing Polish independence ever restored, had
+definitely thrown in their lot with the enemies of Poland. Now to put
+into the hands of such enemies constitutional weapons is already a
+sacrifice and a risk. The Jews in Vilna recently voted solidly against
+the incorporation of that city in Poland.[363] Are they to be treated as
+loyal Polish citizens? We have conceded the point unreservedly. But to
+give them autonomy over and above, to create a state within the state,
+and enable its subjects to call in foreign Powers at every hand's turn,
+against the lawfully constituted authorities--that is an expedient which
+does not commend itself to the newly emancipated peoples."
+
+The Rumanian Premier Bratiano, whose conspicuous services to the Allied
+cause entitled him to a respectful hearing, delivered a powerful
+speech[364] before the delegates assembled in plenary session on this
+question of protecting ethnic and religious minorities. He covered
+ground unsurveyed by the framers of the special treaties, and his
+sincere tone lent weight to his arguments. Starting from the postulate
+that the strength of latter-day states depends upon the widest
+participation of all the elements of the population in the government of
+the country, he admitted the peremptory necessity of abolishing
+invidious distinctions between the various elements of the population
+there, ethnic or religious. So far, he was at one with the spokesmen of
+the Great Powers. Rumania, however, had already accomplished this by the
+decree enabling her Jews to acquire full citizenship by expressing the
+mere desire according to a simple formula. This act confers the full
+rights of Rumanian citizens upon eight hundred thousand Jews. The Jewish
+press of Bucharest had already given utterance to its entire
+satisfaction. If, however, the Jews are now to be placed in a special
+category, differentiated and kept apart from their fellow-citizens by
+having autonomous institutions, by the maintenance of the German-Yiddish
+dialect, which keeps alive the Teuton anti-Rumanian spirit, and by being
+authorized to regard the Rumanian state as an inferior tribunal, from
+which an appeal always lies to a foreign body--the government of the
+Great Powers--this would be the most invidious of all distinctions, and
+calculated to render the assimilation of the German-Yiddish-speaking
+Jews to their Rumanian fellow-citizens a sheer impossibility. The
+majority and the minority would then be systematically and definitely
+estranged from each other; and, seeing this, the elemental instincts of
+the masses might suddenly assume untoward forms, which the treaty, if
+ratified, would be unavailing to prevent. But, however baneful for the
+population, foreign protection is incomparably worse for the state,
+because it tends to destroy the cement that holds the government and
+people together, and ultimately to bring about disintegration. A classic
+example of this process of disruption is Russia's well-meant protection
+of the persecuted Christians in Turkey. In this case the motive was
+admirable, the necessity imperative, but the result was the
+dismemberment of Turkey and other changes, some of which one would like
+to forget.
+
+
+The delegation of Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, and Poland upheld M.
+Bratiano's contentions in brief, pithy speeches. President Wilson's
+lengthy rejoinder, delivered with more than ordinary sweetness,
+deprecated M. Bratiano's comparison of the Allies' proposed intervention
+with Russia's protection of the Christians of Turkey, and represented
+the measure as emanating from the purest kindness. He said that the
+Great Powers were now bestowing national existence or extensive
+territories upon the interested states, actually guaranteeing their
+frontiers, and therefore making themselves responsible for permanent
+tranquillity there. But the treatment of the minorities, he added,
+unless fair and considerate, might produce the gravest troubles and even
+precipitate wars. Therefore it behooved the Powers in the interests of
+all Europe, as of each of its individual members, to secure harmonious
+relations, and, at any rate, to remove all manifest obstacles to their
+establishment. "We guarantee your frontiers and your territories. That
+means that we will send over arms, ships, and men, in case of necessity.
+Therefore we possess the right and recognize the duty to hinder the
+survival of a set of deplorable conditions which would render this
+intervention unavoidable."
+
+To this line of reasoning M. Bratiano made answer that all the helpful
+maxims of good government are of universal application, and, therefore,
+if this protection of minorities were, indeed, indispensable or
+desirable, it should not be restricted to the countries of eastern
+Europe, but should be extended to all without exception. For it is
+inadmissible that two categories of states should be artificially
+created, one endowed with full sovereignty and the other with
+half-sovereignty. Such an arrangement would destroy the equality which
+should lie at the base of a genuine League of Nations.
+
+But the Powers had made up their minds, and the special treaties were
+imposed on the unwilling governments. Thereupon the Rumanian Premier
+withdrew from the Conference, and neither his Cabinet nor that of the
+Jugoslavs signed the treaty with Austria at St.-Germain.
+
+What happened after that is a matter of history.
+
+Few politicians are conscious of the magnitude of the issue concealed by
+the involved diplomatic phraseology of the obnoxious treaties, or of the
+dangers to which their enactment will expose the minorities which they
+were framed to protect, the countries whose hospitality those minorities
+enjoy, and possibly other lands, which for the time being are seemingly
+immune from all such perilous race problems. The calculable, to say
+nothing of the unascertained, elements of the question might well cause
+responsible statesmen to be satisfied with the feasible. The Jewish
+elements in Europe, for centuries abominably oppressed, were justified
+in utilizing to the fullest the opportunity presented by the
+resettlement of the world in order to secure equality of treatment. And
+it must be admitted that their organization is marvelous. For years I
+championed their cause in Russia, and paid the penalty under the
+governments of Alexander II and III.[365] The sympathy of every
+unbiased man, to whatever race or religion he may belong, will naturally
+go out to a race or a nation which is trodden underfoot, as were the
+ill-starred Jews of Russia ever since the partition of Poland. But
+equality one would have thought sufficient to meet the grievance. Full
+equality without reservation. That was the view taken by numerous Jews
+in Poland and Rumania, several of whom called on me in Paris and urged
+me to give public utterance to their hopes that the Conference would
+rest satisfied with equality and to their fear of the consequences of an
+attempt to establish a privileged status. Why this position should exist
+only in eastern Europe and not elsewhere, why it should not be extended
+to other races with larger minorities in other countries, are questions
+to which a satisfactory response could be given only by farther-reaching
+and fateful changes in the legislation of the world.
+
+One of the statesmen of eastern Europe made a forcible appeal to have
+the minority clauses withdrawn. He took the ground that the principal
+aim pursued in conferring full rights on the Jews who dwell among us is
+to remove the obstacles that prevent them from becoming true and loyal
+citizens of the state, as their kindred are in France, Italy, Britain,
+and elsewhere. "If it is reasonable," he said, "that they should demand
+all the rights possessed by their Rumanian and Polish fellow-subjects,
+it is equally fair that they should take over and fulfil the correlate
+duties, as does the remainder of the population. For the gradual
+assimilation of all the ethnic elements of the community is our ideal,
+as it is the ideal of the French, English, Italian, and other states.
+
+"Isolation and particularism are the negative of that ideal, and operate
+like a piece of iron or wood in the human body which produces ulceration
+and gangrene. All our institutions should therefore be calculated to
+encourage assimilation. If we adopt the opposite policy, we inevitably
+alienate the privileged from the unprivileged sections of the community,
+generate enmity between them, cause endless worries to the
+administration and paralyze in advance our best-intentioned endeavors to
+fuse the various ethnic ingredients of the nation into a homogeneous
+whole.
+
+"This argument applies as fully to the other national fragments in our
+midst as to the Jews. It is manifest, therefore, that the one certain
+result of the minority clause will be to impose domestic enemies on each
+of the states that submits to it, and that it can commend itself only to
+those who approve the maxim, _Divide et impera_.
+
+"It also entails the noteworthy diminution of the sovereignty of the
+state. We are to be liable to be haled before a foreign tribunal
+whenever one of our minorities formulates a complaint against us.[366]
+How easily, nay, how wickedly such complaints were filed of late may be
+inferred from the heartrending accounts of pogroms in Poland, which have
+since been shown by the Allies' own confidential envoys to be utterly
+fictitious. Again, with whom are we to make the obnoxious stipulations?
+With the League of Nations? No. We are to bind ourselves toward the
+Great Powers, who themselves have their minorities which complain in
+vain of being continually coerced. Ireland, Egypt, and the negroes are
+three striking examples. None of their delegates were admitted to the
+Conference. If the principle which those Great Powers seek to enforce be
+worth anything, it should be applied indiscriminately to all minorities,
+not restricted to those of the smaller states, who already have
+difficulties enough to contend against."
+
+The trend of continental opinion was decidedly opposed to this policy of
+continuous control and periodic intervention. It would be unfruitful to
+quote the sharp criticisms of the status of the negroes in the United
+States.[367] But it will not be amiss to cite the views of two moderate
+French publicists who have ever been among the most fervent advocates of
+the Allied cause. Their comments deal with one of the articles[368] of
+the special Minority Treaty which Poland has had to sign. It runs thus:
+"Jews shall not be compelled to perform any act which constitutes a
+violation of their Sabbath, nor shall they be placed under any
+disability by reason of their refusal to attend courts of law or to
+perform any legal business on their Sabbath. This provision, however,
+shall not exempt Jews from such obligations as shall be imposed upon all
+other Polish citizens for the necessary purposes of military service,
+national defense, or the preservation of public order.
+
+"Poland declares her intention to refrain from ordering or permitting
+elections, whether general or local, to be held on a Saturday, nor will
+registration for electoral or other purposes be compelled to be
+performed on a Saturday."
+
+M. Gauvain writes: "One may put the question, why respect for the
+Sabbath is so peremptorily imposed when Sunday is ignored among several
+of the Allied Powers. In France Christians are not dispensed from
+appearing on Sundays before the assize courts. Besides, Poland is
+further obliged not to order or authorize elections on a Saturday. What
+precautions these are in favor of the Jewish religion as compared with
+the legislation of many Allied states which have no such ordinances in
+favor of Catholicism! Is the same procedure to be adopted toward the
+Moslems? Shall we behold the famous Mussulmans of India, so opportunely
+drawn from the shade by Mr. Montagu, demanding the insertion of clauses
+to protect Islam? Will the Zionists impose their dogmas in Palestine? Is
+the life of a nation to be suspended two, three, or four days a week in
+order that religious laws may be observed? Catholicism has adapted
+itself in practice to laic legislation and to the exigencies of modern
+life. It may well seem that Judaism in Poland could do likewise. In
+Rumania, the Jews met with no obstacle to the exercise of their
+religion. Indeed, they had contrived in the localities to the north of
+Moldavia, where they formed a majority, to impose their own customs on
+the rest of the population. Jewish guardians of toll-bridges are known
+to have barred the passage of these bridges on Saturdays, because, on
+the one hand, their religion forbade them to accept money on that day,
+and, on the other hand, they could allow no one to pass without paying.
+The Big Four might have given their attention to matters more useful or
+more pressing than enforcing respect for the Sabbath.
+
+"It is comprehensible that M. Bratiano should have refused to accept in
+advance the conditions which the Four or the Five may dictate in favor
+of ethnic and religious minorities. Rumania before the war was a free
+country governed congruously with the most modern principles. The
+restrictions which she had enacted respecting foreigners in general, and
+which were on the point of being repealed, did not exceed those which
+the United States and the Dominion of Australia still apply with
+remarkable tenacity. Why should the Cabinets of London and Washington
+take so much to heart the lot of ethnic and religious minorities in
+certain European countries while they themselves refuse to admit in the
+Covenant of the Society of Nations the principle of the equality of
+races? Their conduct is awakening among the states 'whose interests are
+limited' the belief that they are the victims of an arbitrary policy.
+And that is not without danger."[369]
+
+Another eminent Frenchman, M. Denis Cochin, who until quite recently was
+a Cabinet Minister, wrote: "The Conference, by imposing laws in favor of
+minorities, has uselessly and unjustly offended our allies. These laws
+oblige them to respect the usages of the Jews, to maintain schools for
+them.... I have spent a large part of my career in demanding for French
+Catholics exactly that which the Conference imposes elsewhere. The
+Catholics pay taxes in money and taxes in blood. And yet there is no
+budget for those schools in which their religion is taught; no liberty
+for those schoolmasters who wear the ecclesiastical habit. I have seen a
+doctor in letters, fellow of the university, driven from his class
+because he was a Marist brother and did not choose to repudiate the
+vocation of his youth. He died of grief. I have seen young priests,
+after the long, laborious preparation necessary before they could take
+part in the competition for a university fellowship, thrust aside at the
+last moment and debarred from the competition because they wore the garb
+of priests. Yet a year later they were soldiers. I have seen Father
+Schell presented unanimously by the Institute and the Professional Corps
+as worthy to receive a chair at the Collège de France, and refused by
+the Minister. Yet I hereby affirm that if foreigners, even though they
+were allies, even friends, were to meddle with imposing on us the
+abrogation of these iniquitous laws, my protest would be uplifted
+against them, together with that of M. Combes.[370] I would exclaim,
+like Sganarelle's wife, 'And what if I wish to be beaten?' I hold
+tyranny in horror, but I hold foreign intervention in greater horror
+still. Let us combat bad laws with all our strength, but among
+ourselves."[371]
+
+The minority treaties tend to transform each of the states on which it
+is imposed into a miniature Balkans, to keep Europe in continuous
+turmoil and hinder the growth of the new and creative ideas from which
+alone one could expect that union of collective energy with individual
+freedom which is essential to peace and progress. Modern history affords
+no more striking example of the force of abstract bias over the
+teachings of experience than this amateur legislation which is
+scattering seeds of mischief and conflict throughout Europe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Casting a final glance at the results of the Conference, it would be
+ungracious not to welcome as a precious boon the destruction of Prussian
+militarism, a consummation which we owe to the heroism of the armies
+rather than to the sagacity of the lawgivers in Paris. The restoration
+of a Polish state and the creation or extension of the other free
+communities at the expense of the Central Empires are also most welcome
+changes, which, however, ought never to have been marred by the
+disruptive wedge of the minority legislation. Again, although the League
+is a mill whose sails uselessly revolve, because it has no corn to
+grind, the mere fact that the necessity of internationalism was solemnly
+proclaimed as the central idea of the new ordering, and that an effort,
+however feeble, was put forth to realize it in the shape of a covenant
+of social and moral fellowship, marks an advance from which there can be
+no retrogression.
+
+Actuality was thereby imparted to the idea, which is destined to remain
+in the forefront of contemporary politics until the peoples themselves
+embody it in viable institutions. What the delegates failed to realize
+is the truth that a program of a league is not a league.
+
+On the debit side much might be added to what has already been said. The
+important fact to bear in mind--which in itself calls for neither praise
+nor blame--is that the world-parliament was at bottom an Anglo-Saxon
+assembly whose language, political conceptions, self-esteem, and
+disregard of everything foreign were essentially English. When speaking,
+the faces of the principal delegates were turned toward the future, and
+when acting they looked toward the past. As a thoroughly English press
+organ, when alluding to the League of Nations, puts it: "We have done
+homage to that entrancing ideal by spatchcocking the Convention into the
+Treaty. There it remains as a finger-post to point the way to a new
+heaven on earth. But we observe that the Treaty itself is a good old
+eighteenth-century piece, drawing its inspiration from mundane and
+practical considerations, and paying a good deal more than lip service
+to the principle of the balance of power."[372]
+
+That is a fair estimate of the work achieved by the delegates. But they
+sinned in their way of doing it. If they had deliberately and
+professedly aimed at these results, and had led the world to look for
+none other, most of the criticisms to which they have rendered
+themselves open would be pointless. But they raised hopes which they
+refused to realize, they weakened if they did not destroy faith in
+public treaties, they intensified distrust and race hatred throughout
+the world, they poured strong dissolvents upon every state on the
+European Continent, and they stirred up fierce passions in Russia, and
+then left that ill-starred nation a prey to unprecedented anarchy. In a
+word, they gathered up all the widely scattered explosives of
+imperialism, nationalism, and internationalism, and, having added to
+their destructiveness, passed them on to the peoples of the world as
+represented by the League of Nations. Some of them deplored the mess in
+which they were leaving the nations, without, however, admitting the
+causal nexus between it and their own achievements.
+
+General Smuts, before quitting Paris for South Africa, frankly admitted
+that the Peace Treaty will not give us the real peace which the peoples
+hoped for, and that peace-making would not begin until after the signing
+of the Treaty. The _Echo de Paris_ wrote: "As for us, we never believed
+in the Society of Nations."[373] And again: "The Society of Nations is
+now but a bladder, and nobody would venture to describe it as a
+lantern."[374] The Bolshevist dictator Lenin termed it "an organization
+to loot the world."[375]
+
+The Allies themselves are at sixes and sevens. The French are suspicious
+of the British. A large section of the American people is profoundly
+dissatisfied with the part played by the English and the French at the
+Conference; Italy is stung to the quick by the treatment she received
+from France, Britain, and the United States; Rumania loathes the very
+names of those for whom she staked her all and sacrificed so much; in
+Poland and Belgium the English have lost the consideration which they
+enjoyed before the Conference; the Greeks are wroth with the American
+delegates; the majority of Russians literally execrate their ex-Allies
+and turn to the Germans and the Japanese.
+
+"The resettlement of central Europe," writes an American journal,[376]
+"is not being made for the tranquillity of the liberated principles,
+but for the purposes of the Great Powers, among whom France is the
+active, and America and Britain the passive, partners. In Germany its
+purpose is the permanent elimination of the German nation as a factor in
+European politics.... We cannot save Europe by playing the sinister game
+now being played. There is no peace, no order, no security in it....
+What it can do is to aggravate the mischief and intensify the schisms."
+
+A distinguished American, who is a consistent friend of England,[377] in
+a review article affirmed that the proposed League of Nations is slowly
+undermining the Anglo-American Entente. "There is in America a growing
+sense of irritation that she should be forever entangled in the
+spider-web of European politics." ... And if the Senate in the supposed
+interests of peace should ratify the League, he adds, "In my judgment no
+greater harm could result to Anglo-American unity than such reluctant
+consent."[378]
+
+Some of Mr. Wilson's fellow-countrymen who gave him their whole-hearted
+support when he undertook to establish a régime of right and justice sum
+up the result of his labors in Paris as follows:[379]
+
+"His solemn warning against special alliances emerged as a special
+alliance with Britain and France. His repeated condemnations of secret
+treaties emerges as a recognition that 'they could not honorably be
+brushed aside,' even though they conflicted with equally binding public
+engagements entered into after they had been written. Openly arrived at
+covenants were not openly arrived at. The removal, so far as possible,
+of all economic barriers was applied to German barriers, and
+accompanied by the blockade of a people with whom we have never been at
+war. The adequate guaranties to be given and taken as respects armaments
+were taken from Germany and given to no one. The 'unhampered and
+unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own
+political development' promised to Russia, and defined as the 'acid
+test,' has been worked out by Mr. Wilson and others to a point where so
+cautious a man as Mr. Asquith says he regards it with 'bewilderment and
+apprehension.' The righting of the wrong done in 1871 emerges as a
+concealed annexation of the boundary of 1814. The 'clearly recognizable
+lines of nationality' which Italy was to obtain has been wheedled into
+annexations which have moved Viscount Bryce to denounce them. 'The
+freest opportunity of autonomous development' promised the peoples of
+Austria-Hungary failed to define the Austrians as peoples...."
+
+Whatever the tests one applies to the work of the Conference--ethical,
+social, or political--they reveal it as a factor eminently calculated to
+sap high interests, to weaken the moral nerve of the present generation,
+to fan the flames of national and racial hatred, to dig an abyss between
+the classes and the masses, and to throw open the sluice-gates to the
+inrush of the waves of anarchist internationalities. Truth, justice,
+equity, and liberty have been twisted and pressed into the service of
+economico-political boards. In the United States the people who prided
+themselves on their aloofness are already fighting over European
+interests. In Europe every nation's hand is raised against its
+neighbors, and every people's hand against its ruling class. Every
+government is making its policy subservient to the needs of the future
+war which is universally looked upon as an unavoidable outcome of the
+Versailles peace. Imperialism and militarism are striking roots in soil
+where they were hitherto unknown. In a word, Prussianism, instead of
+being destroyed, has been openly adopted by its ostensible enemies, and
+the huge sacrifices offered up by the heroic armies of the foremost
+nations are being misused to give one half of the world just cause to
+rise up against the other half.
+
+THE END
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[339] A contemporary of Goethe. His works were republished by Herzog in
+the year 1907.
+
+[340] _The Daily Telegraph_, January 28, 1919.
+
+[341] _The Daily Telegraph_, January 31, 1919.
+
+[342] _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), February 13, 1919.
+
+[343] State-Secretary Hay addressed a note to the Powers in September,
+1899, setting forth America's attitude toward China. It is known as the
+doctrine of the "open door." In a subsequent note (July 3, 1900) he
+enlarged its scope and promulgated the integrity of China. But Russia
+ignored it and flew her flag over the Chinese customs in Newchwang. It
+was Japan who, on that occasion, asserted and enforced the doctrine
+without outside help.
+
+[344] General March intimated, when testifying before the House Military
+Committee, that President Wilson approved of universal training,
+indorsing the War Department's army program.--_New York Herald_ (Paris
+edition).
+
+[345] _Bulletin des Droits de l'Homme_, No. 10, May 15, 1919.
+
+[346] _Journal Officiel_, November 21, 1917.
+
+[347] _Le Populaire_, February 10, 1919.
+
+[348] _La Stampa_, June 11, 1919. Cf. _L'Humanité,_ June 13, 1919.
+
+[349] Cf. _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 27, 1919.
+
+[350] In _The Daily Telegraph_, February 8, 1919.
+
+[351] The Covenant leaves the mode of recruiting them undetermined.
+
+[352] Article IV.
+
+[353] Article VIII.
+
+[354] M. d'Estournelles de Constant, _Bulletin des Droits de l'Homme_,
+May 15, 1919, p. 450.
+
+[355] _Ibid._
+
+[356] _Ibid._, p. 457.
+
+[357] Article XII.
+
+[358] Cf. _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), September 14, 1919.
+
+[359] _L'Echo de Paris_, February 17, 1919.
+
+[360] On April 11, 1919.
+
+[361] The wording of the final Japanese amendment was: "By the
+endorsement of the principle of equality of nations and just treatment
+of their nationals."
+
+[362] On April 28, 1919.
+
+[363] The Jewish coalition in Vilna inscribed on its program the union
+of Vilna with Russia.... There was an overwhelming majority in favor of
+its retention by Poland.--_Le Temps_, September 14, 1919. The election
+took place on September 7th.
+
+[364] On Saturday, May 31, 1919.
+
+[365] I published several series of articles in _The Daily Telegraph_,
+_The Fortnightly Review_, and other English as well as American
+periodicals, and a long chapter in my book entitled _Russian
+Characteristics_.
+
+[366] "Poland agrees that any member of the Council of the League of
+Nations shall have the right to bring to the attention of the Council
+any infraction, or _any danger of infraction_, of any of these
+obligations, and that the Council may thereupon take such action and
+give such direction as it may deem proper and effective in the
+circumstances."--Article XII of the Special Treaty with Poland.
+
+[367] Cf. _La Gazette de Lausanne_, April 24, 1919.
+
+[368] Article XI of the Special Treaty, _L'Etoile Belge_, August 17,
+1919.
+
+[369] _Le Journal des Débats_, July 7, 1919.
+
+[370] M. Emile Combes was the author of the laws which banished
+religious congregations from France.
+
+[371] _Le Figaro_, August 21, 1919. _L'Echo de Paris_, August 22, 1919.
+
+[372] _The Morning Post_, July 21, 1919.
+
+[373] _L'Echo de Paris_, April 29, 1919.
+
+[374] _Ibid._, April 14, 1919.
+
+[375] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), September 17, 1919.
+
+[376] _The New Republic_, August 6, 1919.
+
+[377] Mr. James B. Beck.
+
+[378] _The North American Review_, June, 1919.
+
+[379] Cf. _The New Republic_, August 6, 1919, pp. 5, 6.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Inside Story Of The Peace
+Conference, by Emile Joseph Dillon
+
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+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of THE INSIDE STORY OF THE PEACE CONFERENCE, by Dr. E.J. Dillon.
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference
+by Emile Joseph Dillon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference
+
+Author: Emile Joseph Dillon
+
+Release Date: December 26, 2004 [EBook #14477]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PEACE CONFERENCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Martin Pettit and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<h1><i>The Inside Story of The Peace Conference</i></h1>
+
+
+<h3><i>by</i></h3>
+
+<h2><i>Dr. E.J. Dillon</i></h2>
+
+
+
+<h3>HARPER &amp; BROTHERS PUBLISHERS</h3>
+
+<h3><i>NEW YORK AND LONDON</i></h3>
+
+<p class='center'>Copyright 1920, by Harper &amp; Brothers</p>
+
+<p class='center'>Printed in the United States of America</p>
+
+<p class='center'>Published February, 1920</p>
+
+<h3><i>To<br />
+C.W. BARRON<br />
+in memory of interesting conversations<br />
+on historic occasions</i></h3>
+
+<h3><i>These pages are inscribed.</i></h3>
+
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<ul>
+	<li><a href="#FOREWORD">FOREWORD</a>
+        </li>
+ 	<li><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;THE CITY OF THE CONFERENCE
+        </li>
+        <li><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;SIGNS OF THE TIMES
+        </li>
+	<li><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;THE DELEGATES
+        </li>
+	<li><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;CENSORSHIP AND SECRECY
+        </li>
+	<li><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;AIMS AND METHODS
+        </li>
+	<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;THE LESSER STATES
+        </li>
+	<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; POLAND'S OUTLOOK IN THE FUTURE
+        </li>
+	<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;ITALY
+        </li>
+	<li><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; JAPAN
+        </li>
+	<li><a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;ATTITUDE TOWARD RUSSIA
+        </li>
+	<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;BOLSHEVISM
+        </li>
+	<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;HOW BOLSHEVISM WAS FOSTERED
+        </li>
+	<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;SIDELIGHTS ON THE TREATY
+        </li>
+	<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;THE TREATY WITH GERMANY
+        </li>
+	<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;THE TREATY WITH BULGARIA
+        </li>
+	<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;THE COVENANT AND MINORITIES
+        </li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="FOREWORD" id="FOREWORD" />FOREWORD</h2>
+
+<p>It is almost superfluous to say that this book does
+not claim to be a history, however summary, of the Peace
+Conference, seeing that such a work was made sheer
+impossible now and forever by the chief delegates themselves
+when they decided to dispense with records of their
+conversations and debates. It is only a sketch&mdash;a sketch
+of the problems which the war created or rendered pressing&mdash;of
+the conditions under which they cropped up;
+of the simplicist ways in which they were conceived by
+the distinguished politicians who volunteered to solve
+them; of the delegates' natural limitations and electioneering
+commitments and of the secret influences by
+which they were swayed; of the peoples' needs and
+expectations; of the unwonted procedure adopted by
+the Conference and of the fateful consequences of its
+decisions to the world.</p>
+
+<p>In dealing with all those matters I aimed at impartiality,
+which is an unattainable ideal, but I trust that
+sincerity and detachment have brought me reasonably
+close to it. Having no pet theories of my own to champion,
+my principal standard of judgment is derived from the
+law of causality and the rules of historical criticism.</p>
+
+<p>The fatal tactical mistake chargeable to the Conference
+lay in its making the charter of the League of Nations
+and the treaty of peace with the Central Powers interdependent.
+For the maxims that underlie the former are
+irreconcilable with those that should determine the latter,
+and the efforts to combine them must, among other untoward
+results, create a sharp opposition between the vital
+interests of the people of the United States and the
+apparent or transient interests of their associates. The
+outcome of this unnatural union will be to damage the
+cause of stable peace which it was devised to further.</p>
+
+<p>But the surest touchstone by which to test the capacity
+and the achievements of the world-legislators is their
+attitude toward Russia in the political domain and toward
+the labor problem in the economic sphere. And in neither
+case does their action or inaction appear to have been
+the outcome of statesman-like ideas, or, indeed, of any
+higher consideration than that of evading the central
+issue and transmitting the problem to the League of
+Nations. The results are manifest to all.</p>
+
+<p>The continuity of human progress depends at bottom
+upon labor, and it is becoming more and more doubtful
+whether the civilized races of mankind can be reckoned
+on to supply it for long on conditions akin to those which
+have in various forms prevailed ever since the institutions
+of ancient times and which alone render the present social
+structure viable. If this forecast should prove correct,
+the only alternative to a break disastrous in the continuity
+of civilization is the frank recognition of the
+principle that certain inferior races are destined to serve
+the cause of mankind in those capacities for which alone
+they are qualified and to readjust social institutions to
+this axiom.</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile the Conference which ignored this
+problem of problems has transformed Europe into a
+seething mass of mutually hostile states powerless to
+face the economic competition of their overseas rivals
+and has set the very elements of society in flux.</p>
+
+<p class='right'>E.J. DILLON.</p>
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I" />THE INSIDE STORY OF THE PEACE CONFERENCE</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<h3>THE CITY OF THE CONFERENCE</h3>
+
+
+<p>The choice of Paris for the historic Peace Conference
+was an afterthought. The Anglo-Saxon governments
+first favored a neutral country as the most appropriate
+meeting-ground for the world's peace-makers.
+Holland was mentioned only to be eliminated without
+discussion, so obvious and decisive were the objections.
+French Switzerland came next in order, was actually
+fixed upon, and for a time held the field. Lausanne was
+the city first suggested and nearly chosen. There was a
+good deal to be said for it on its own merits, and in its
+suburb, Ouchy, the treaty had been drawn up which
+terminated the war between Italy and Turkey. But
+misgivings were expressed as to its capacity to receive
+and entertain the formidable peace armies without whose
+co-operation the machinery for stopping all wars could
+not well be fabricated. At last Geneva was fixed
+upon, and so certain were influential delegates of the
+ratification of their choice by all the Allies, that I felt
+justified in telegraphing to Geneva to have a house hired
+for six months in that picturesque city.</p>
+
+<p>But the influential delegates had reckoned without the
+French, who in these matters were far and away the most
+influential. Was it not in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles,
+they asked, that Teuton militarism had received its most
+powerful impulse? And did not poetic justice, which
+was never so needed as in these evil days, ordain that the
+chartered destroyer who had first seen the light of day
+in that hall should also be destroyed there? Was this
+not in accordance with the eternal fitness of things?
+Whereupon the matter-of-fact Anglo-Saxon mind, unable
+to withstand the force of this argument and accustomed
+to give way on secondary matters, assented, and Paris
+was accordingly fixed upon....</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Paris herself again,&quot; tourists remarked, who had not
+been there since the fateful month when hostilities began&mdash;meaning
+that something of the wealth and luxury of
+bygone days was venturing to display itself anew as an
+afterglow of the epoch whose sun was setting behind
+banks of thunder-clouds. And there was a grain of truth
+in the remark. The Ville Lumi&egrave;re was crowded as it
+never had been before. But it was mostly strangers
+who were within her gates. In the throng of Anglo-Saxon
+warriors and cosmopolitan peace-lovers following
+the trailing skirts of destiny, one might with an effort
+discover a Parisian now and again. But they were few
+and far between.</p>
+
+<p>They and their principal European guests made some
+feeble attempts to vie with the Vienna of 1814-15 in
+elegance and taste if not in pomp and splendor. But the
+general effect was marred by the element of the
+<i>nouveaux-riches</i> and <i>nouveaux-pauvres</i> which was prominent,
+if not predominant. A few of the great and would-be great
+ladies outbade one another in the effort to renew the luxury
+and revive the grace of the past. But the atmosphere was
+numbing, their exertions half-hearted, and the smile of
+youth and beauty was cold like the sheen of winter ice.
+The shadow of death hung over the institutions and
+survivals of the various civilizations and epochs which
+were being dissolved in the common melting-pot, and
+even the man in the street was conscious of its chilling
+influence. Life in the capital grew agitated, fitful,
+superficial, unsatisfying. Its gaiety was forced&mdash;something
+between a challenge to the destroyer and a sad
+farewell to the past and present. Men were instinctively
+aware that the morrow was fraught with bitter surprises,
+and they deliberately adopted the maxim, &quot;Let us eat
+and drink, for to-morrow we die.&quot; None of these people
+bore on their physiognomies the dignified impress of the
+olden time, barring a few aristocratic figures from the
+Faubourg St.-Germain, who looked as though they had
+only to don the perukes and the distinctive garb of the
+eighteenth century to sit down to table with Voltaire
+and the Marquise du Ch&acirc;telet. Here and there, indeed,
+a coiffure, a toilet, the bearing, the gait, or the peculiar
+grace with which a robe was worn reminded one that this
+or that fair lady came of a family whose life-story in the
+days of yore was one of the tributaries to the broad stream
+of European history. But on closer acquaintanceship,
+especially at conversational tournaments, one discovered
+that Nature, constant in her methods, distributes more
+gifts of beauty than of intellect.</p>
+
+<p>Festive banquets, sinful suppers, long-spun-out lunches
+were as frequent and at times as Lucullan as in the days
+of the Regency. The outer, coarser attributes of luxury
+abounded in palatial restaurants, hotels, and private mansions;
+but the refinement, the grace, the brilliant conversation
+even of the Paris of the Third Empire were
+seen to be subtle branches of a lost art. The people of
+the armistice were weary and apprehensive&mdash;weary of the
+war, weary of politics, weary of the worn-out framework
+of existence, and filled with a vague, nameless apprehension
+of the unknown. They feared that in the chaotic slough
+into which they had fallen they had not yet touched
+bottom. None the less, with the exception of fervent
+Catholics and a number of earnest sectarians, there were
+few genuine seekers after anything essentially better.</p>
+
+<p>Not only did the general atmosphere of Paris undergo
+radical changes, together with its population, but the
+thoroughfares, many of them, officially changed their
+names since the outbreak of the war.</p>
+
+<p>The Paris of the Conference ceased to be the capital
+of France. It became a vast cosmopolitan caravanserai
+teeming with unwonted aspects of life and turmoil,
+filled with curious samples of the races, tribes, and tongues
+of four continents who came to watch and wait for the
+mysterious to-morrow. The intensity of life there was
+sheer oppressive; to the tumultuous striving of the living
+were added the silent influences of the dead. For it
+was also a trysting-place for the ghosts of sovereignties
+and states, militarisms and racial ambitions, which were
+permitted to wander at large until their brief twilight
+should be swallowed up in night. The dignified Turk
+passionately pleaded for Constantinople, and cast an
+imploring look on the lone Armenian whose relatives he
+had massacred, and who was then waiting for political
+resurrection. Persian delegates wandered about like souls
+in pain, waiting to be admitted through the portals of the
+Conference Paradise. Beggared Croesus passed famishing
+Lucullus in the street, and once mighty viziers shivered
+under threadbare garments in the biting frost as
+they hurried over the crisp February snow. Waning
+and waxing Powers, vacant thrones, decaying dominations
+had, each of them, their accusers, special pleaders,
+and judges, in this multitudinous world-center on which
+tragedy, romance, and comedy rained down potent spells.
+For the Conference city was also the clearing-house of
+the Fates, where the accounts of a whole epoch, the deeds
+and misdeeds of an exhausted civilization, were to be
+balanced and squared.</p>
+
+<p>Here strange yet familiar figures, survivals from the
+past, started up at every hand's turn and greeted one
+with smiles or sighs. Men on whom I last set eyes when
+we were boys at school, playing football together in the
+field or preparing lessons in the school-room, would stop
+me in the street on their way to represent nations or
+peoples whose lives were out of chime, or to inaugurate
+the existence of new republics. One face I shall never
+forget. It was that of the self-made temporary dictator
+of a little country whose importance was dwindling to the
+dimensions of a footnote in the history of the century. I
+had been acquainted with him personally in the halcyon
+day of his transient glory. Like his picturesque land,
+he won the immortality of a day, was courted and subsidized
+by competing states in turn, and then suddenly
+cast aside like a sucked orange. Then he sank into the
+depths of squalor. He was eloquent, resourceful, imaginative,
+and brimful of the poetry of untruth. One day
+through the asphalt streets of Paris he shuffled along in
+the procession of the doomed, with wan face and sunken
+eyes, wearing a tragically mean garb. And soon after I
+learned that he had vanished unwept into eternal oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>An Arabian Nights touch was imparted to the dissolving
+panorama by strange visitants from Tartary and
+Kurdistan, Korea and Aderbeijan, Armenia, Persia, and
+the Hedjaz&mdash;men with patriarchal beards and scimitar-shaped
+noses, and others from desert and oasis, from
+Samarkand and Bokhara. Turbans and fezzes, sugar-loaf
+hats and headgear resembling episcopal miters, old
+military uniforms devised for the embryonic armies of
+new states on the eve of perpetual peace, snowy-white
+burnooses, flowing mantles, and graceful garments like
+the Roman toga, contributed to create an atmosphere of
+dreamy unreality in the city where the grimmest of
+realities were being faced and coped with.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the men of wealth, of intellect, of industrial
+enterprise, and the seed-bearers of the ethical new ordering,
+members of economic committees from the United
+States, Britain, Italy, Poland, Russia, India, and Japan,
+representatives of naphtha industries and far-off coal
+mines, pilgrims, fanatics, and charlatans from all climes,
+priests of all religions, preachers of every doctrine, who
+mingled with princes, field-marshals, statesmen, anarchists,
+builders-up, and pullers-down. All of them burned
+with desire to be near to the crucible in which the political
+and social systems of the world were to be melted and
+recast. Every day, in my walks, in my apartment, or at
+restaurants, I met emissaries from lands and peoples
+whose very names had seldom been heard of before in
+the West. A delegation from the Pont-Euxine Greeks
+called on me, and discoursed of their ancient cities of
+Trebizond, Samsoun, Tripoli, Kerassund, in which I
+resided many years ago, and informed me that they, too,
+desired to become welded into an independent Greek
+republic, and had come to have their claims allowed.
+The Albanians were represented by my old friend Turkhan
+Pasha, on the one hand, and by my friend Essad Pasha,
+on the other&mdash;the former desirous of Italy's protection,
+the latter demanding complete independence. Chinamen,
+Japanese, Koreans, Hindus, Kirghizes, Lesghiens, Circassians,
+Mingrelians, Buryats, Malays, and Negroes and
+Negroids from Africa and America were among the tribes
+and tongues forgathered in Paris to watch the rebuilding
+of the political world system and to see where they
+&quot;came in.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>One day I received a visit from an Armenian deputation;
+its chief was described on his visiting-card as President
+of the Armenian Republic of the Caucasus. When
+he was shown into my apartment in the H&ocirc;tel Vend&ocirc;me,
+I recognized two of its members as old acquaintances
+with whom I had occasional intercourse in Erzerum,
+Kipri Keui, and other places during the Armenian massacres
+of the year 1895. We had not met since then.
+They revived old memories, completed for me the life-stories
+of several of our common friends and acquaintances,
+and narrated interesting episodes of local history. And
+having requested my co-operation, the President and his
+colleagues left me and once more passed out of my life.</p>
+
+<p>Another actor on the world-stage whom I had encountered
+more than once before was the &quot;heroic&quot; King of
+Montenegro. He often crossed my path during the Conference,
+and set me musing on the marvelous ups and
+downs of human existence. This potentate's life offers
+a rich field of research to the psychologist. I had watched
+it myself at various times and with curious results. For
+I had met him in various European capitals during the
+past thirty years, and before the time when Tsar Alexander
+III publicly spoke of him as Russia's only friend. King
+Nikita owes such success in life as he can look back on
+with satisfaction to his adaptation of St. Paul's maxim
+of being all things to all men. Thus in St. Petersburg
+he was a good Russian, in Vienna a patriotic Austrian, in
+Rome a sentimental Italian. He was also a warrior, a
+poet after his own fashion, a money-getter, and a speculator
+on 'Change. His alleged martial feats and his wily,
+diplomatic moves ever since the first Balkan war abound
+in surprises, and would repay close investigation. The
+ease with which the Austrians captured Mount Lovtchen
+and his capital made a lasting impression on those of his
+allies who were acquainted with the story, the consequences
+of which he could not foresee. What everybody
+seemed to know was that if the Teutons had defeated
+the Entente, King Nikita's son Mirko, who had settled
+down for the purpose in Vienna, would have been set
+on the throne in place of his father by the Austrians;
+whereas if the Allies should win, the worldly-wise monarch
+would have retained his crown as their champion. But
+these well-laid plans went all agley. Prince Mirko died
+and King Nikita was deposed. For a time he resided at
+a hotel, a few houses from me, and I passed him now and
+again as he was on his way to plead his lost cause before
+the distinguished wreckers of thrones and r&eacute;gimes.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed as though, in order to provide Paris with a
+cosmopolitan population, the world was drained of its
+rulers, of its prosperous and luckless financiers, of its high
+and low adventurers, of its tribe of fortune-seekers, and
+its pushing men and women of every description. And
+the result was an odd blend of classes and individuals
+worthy, it may be, of the new democratic era, but unprecedented.
+It was welcomed as of good augury, for
+instance, that in the stately H&ocirc;tel Majestic, where the
+spokesmen of the British Empire had their residence,
+monocled diplomatists mingled with spry typewriters,
+smart amanuenses, and even with bright-eyed chambermaids
+at the evening dances.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1" href="#Footnote_1_1">[1]</a> The British Premier himself
+occasionally witnessed the cheering spectacle with
+manifest pleasure. Self-made statesmen, scions of fallen
+dynasties, ex-premiers, and ministers, who formerly
+swayed the fortunes of the world, whom one might have
+imagined <i>capaces imperii nisi imperassent</i>, were now the
+unnoticed inmates of unpretending hotels. Ambassadors
+whose most trivial utterances had once been listened to
+with concentrated attention, sued days and weeks for an
+audience of the greater plenipotentiaries, and some of
+them sued in vain. Russian diplomatists were refused
+permission to travel in France or were compelled to
+undergo more than average discomfort and delay there.
+More than once I sat down to lunch or dinner with
+brilliant commensals, one of whom was understood to
+have made away with a well-known personage in order
+to rid the state of a bad administrator, and another had,
+at a secret <i>Vehmgericht</i> in Turkey, condemned a friend of
+mine, now a friend of his, to be assassinated.</p>
+
+<p>In Paris, this temporary capital of the world, one felt
+the repercussion of every event, every incident of moment
+wheresoever it might have occurred. To reside there
+while the Conference was sitting was to occupy a comfortable
+box in the vastest theater the mind of men has ever
+conceived. From this rare coign of vantage one could
+witness soul-gripping dramas of human history, the happenings
+of years being compressed within the limits of
+days. The revolution in Portugal, the massacre of
+Armenians, Bulgaria's atrocities, the slaughter of the
+inhabitants of Saratoff and Odessa, the revolt of the
+Koreans&mdash;all produced their effect in Paris, where official
+and unofficial exponents of the aims and ambitions, religions
+and interests that unite or divide mankind were
+continually coming or going, working aboveground or
+burrowing beneath the surface.</p>
+
+<p>It was within a few miles of the place where I sat at
+table with the brilliant company alluded to above that a
+few individuals of two different nationalities, one of them
+bearing, it was said, a well-known name, hatched the
+plot that sent Portugal's strong man, President Sidonio
+Paes, to his last account and plunged that ill-starred
+land into chaotic confusion. The plan was discovered by
+the Portuguese military attach&eacute;, who warned the President
+himself and the War Minister. But Sidonio Paes,
+quixotic and foolhardy, refused to take or brook precautions.
+A few weeks later the assassin, firing three shots,
+had no difficulty in taking aim, but none of them took
+effect. The reason was interesting: so determined were
+the conspirators to leave nothing to chance, they had
+steeped the cartridges in a poisonous preparation, whereby
+they injured the mechanism of the revolver, which, in
+consequence, hung fire. But the adversaries of the reform
+movement which the President had inaugurated
+again tried and planned another attempt, and Sidonio
+Paes, who would not be taught prudence, was duly shot,
+and his admirable work undone<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2" href="#Footnote_2_2" >[2]</a> by a band of semi-Bolshevists.</p>
+
+<p>Less than six months later it was rumored that a
+number of specially prepared bombs from a certain
+European town had been sent to Moscow for the speedy
+removal of Lenin. The casual way in which these and
+kindred matters were talked of gave one the measure of
+the change that had come over the world since the outbreak
+of the war. There was nobody left in Europe
+whose death, violent or peaceful, would have made much
+of an impression on the dulled sensibilities of the reading
+public. All values had changed, and that of human life
+had fallen low.</p>
+
+<p>To follow these swiftly passing episodes, occasionally
+glancing behind the scenes, during the pauses of the acts,
+and watch the unfolding of the world-drama, was thrillingly
+interesting. To note the dubious source, the
+chance occasion of a grandiose project of world policy,
+and to see it started on its shuffling course, was a revelation
+in politics and psychology, and reminded one of the
+saying mistakenly attributed to the Swedish Chancellor
+Oxenstjern, &quot;<i>Quam parva sapientia regitur mundus</i>.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3" href="#Footnote_3_3" >[3]</a></p>
+
+<p>The wire-pullers were not always the plenipotentiaries.
+Among those were also outsiders of various conditions,
+sometimes of singular ambitions, who were generally free
+from conventional prejudices and conscientious scruples.
+As traveling to Paris was greatly restricted by the governments
+of the world, many of these unofficial delegates
+had come in capacities widely differing from those in
+which they intended to act. I confess I was myself taken
+in by more than one of these secret emissaries, whom I
+was innocently instrumental in bringing into close touch
+with the human levers they had come to press. I actually
+went to the trouble of obtaining for one of them
+valuable data on a subject which did not interest him
+in the least, but which he pretended he had traveled
+several thousand miles to study. A zealous prelate, whose
+business was believed to have something to do with the
+future of a certain branch of the Christian Church in the
+East, in reality held a brief for a wholly different set of
+interests in the West. Some of these envoys hoped to
+influence decisions of the Conference, and they considered
+they had succeeded when they got their points of view
+brought to the favorable notice of certain of its delegates.
+What surprised me was the ease with which several of
+these interlopers moved about, although few of them spoke
+any language but their own.</p>
+
+<p>Collectivities and religious and political associations,
+including that of the Bolshevists, were represented in
+Paris during the Conference. I met one of the Bolshevists,
+a bright youth, who was a veritable apostle. He occupied
+a post which, despite its apparent insignificance,
+put him occasionally in possession of useful information
+withheld from the public, which he was wont to communicate
+to his political friends. His knowledge of
+languages and his remarkable intelligence had probably
+attracted the notice of his superiors, who can have had
+no suspicion of his leanings, much less of his proselytizing
+activity. However this may have been, he knew a good
+deal of what was going on at the Conference, and he
+occasionally had insight into documents of a certain
+interest. He was a seemingly honest and enthusiastic
+Bolshevik, who spread the doctrine with apostolic zeal
+guided by the wisdom of the serpent. He was ever ready
+to comment on events, but before opening his mind fully
+to a stranger on the subject next to his heart, he usually
+felt his way, and only when he had grounds for believing
+that the fortress was not impregnable did he open his
+batteries. Even among the initiated, few would suspect
+the r&ocirc;le played by this young proselytizer within one of
+the strongholds of the Conference, so naturally and
+unobtrusively was the work done. I may add that
+luckily he had no direct intercourse with the delegates.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the collectivities whose interests were furthered
+at the Conference, the Jews had perhaps the most resourceful
+and certainly the most influential exponents.
+There were Jews from Palestine, from Poland, Russia,
+the Ukraine, Rumania, Greece, Britain, Holland, and
+Belgium; but the largest and most brilliant contingent
+was sent by the United States. Their principal mission,
+with which every fair-minded man sympathized heartily,
+was to secure for their kindred in eastern Europe rights
+equal to those of the populations in whose midst they
+reside.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4" href="#Footnote_4_4" >[4]</a> And to the credit of the Poles, Rumanians, and
+Russians, who were to be constrained to remove all the
+existing disabilities, they enfranchised the Hebrew elements
+spontaneously. But the Western Jews, who championed
+their Eastern brothers, proceeded to demand a
+further concession which many of their own co-religionists
+hastened to disclaim as dangerous&mdash;a kind of autonomy
+which Rumanian, Polish, and Russian statesmen, as well
+as many of their Jewish fellow-subjects, regarded as
+tantamount to the creation of a state within the state.
+Whether this estimate is true or erroneous, the concessions
+asked for were given, but the supplementary treaties
+insuring the protection of minorities are believed to have
+little chance of being executed, and may, it is feared,
+provoke manifestations of elemental passions in the
+countries in which they are to be applied.</p>
+
+<p>Twice every day, before and after lunch, one met the
+&quot;autocrats,&quot; the world's statesmen whose names were in
+every mouth&mdash;the wise men who would have been much
+wiser than they were if only they had credited their friends
+and opponents with a reasonable measure of political
+wisdom. These individuals, in bowler hats, sweeping
+past in sumptuous motors, as rarely seen on foot as
+Roman cardinals, were the destroyers of thrones, the
+carvers of continents, the arbiters of empires, the fashioners
+of the new heaven and the new earth&mdash;or were
+they only the flies on the wheel of circumstance,
+to whom the world was unaccountably becoming a
+riddle?</p>
+
+<p>This commingling of civilizations and types brought
+together in Paris by a set of unprecedented conditions
+was full of interest and instruction to the observer privileged
+to meet them at close quarters. The average observer,
+however, had little chance of conversing with them,
+for, as these foreigners had no common meeting-place,
+they kept mostly among their own folk. Only now and
+again did three or four members of different races, when
+they chanced to speak some common language, get an
+opportunity of enjoying their leisure together. A friend
+of mine, a highly gifted Frenchman of the fine old type, a
+descendant of Talleyrand, who was born a hundred and
+fifty years too late, opened his hospitable house once a
+week to the &eacute;lite of the world, and partially met the
+pressing demand.</p>
+
+<p>To the gaping tourist the Ville Lumi&egrave;re resembled
+nothing so much as a huge world fair, with enormous
+caravanserais, gigantic booths, gaudy merry-go-rounds,
+squalid taverns, and huge inns. Every place of entertainment
+was crowded, and congregations patiently
+awaited their turn in the street, undeterred by rain or
+wind or snow, offering absurdly high prices for scant
+accommodation and disheartened at having their offers
+refused. Extortion was rampant and profiteering went
+unpunished. Foreigners, mainly American and British,
+could be seen wandering, portmanteau in hand, from post
+to pillar, anxiously seeking where to lay their heads, and
+made desperate by failure, fatigue, and nightfall. The
+cost of living which harassed the bulk of the people was
+fast becoming the stumbling-block of governments and
+the most powerful lever of revolutionaries. The chief of
+the peace armies resided in sumptuous hotels, furnished
+luxuriously in dubious taste, flooded after sundown with
+dazzling light, and filled by day with the buzz of idle
+chatter, the shuffling of feet, the banging of doors, and the
+ringing of bells. Music and dancing enlivened the inmates
+when their day's toil was over and time had to be
+killed. Thus, within, one could find anxious deliberation
+and warm debate; without, noisy revel and vulgar brawl.
+&quot;Fate's a fiddler; life's a dance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To few of those visitors did Paris seem what it really
+was&mdash;a nest of golden dreams, a mist of memories, a seed-plot
+of hopes, a storehouse of time's menaces.</p>
+
+
+<p class='center'>THE PARIS CONFERENCE AND THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA</p>
+
+<p>There were no solemn pageants, no impressive ceremonies,
+such as those that rejoiced the hearts of the
+Viennese in 1814-15 until the triumphal march of the
+Allied troops.</p>
+
+<p>The Vienna of Congress days was transformed into a
+paradise of delights by a brilliant court which pushed
+hospitality to the point of lavishness. In the burg alone
+were two emperors, two empresses, four kings, one queen,
+two crown-princes, two archduchesses, and three princes.
+Every day the Emperor's table cost fifty thousand gulden&mdash;every
+Congress day cost him ten times that sum.
+Galaxies of Europe's eminent personages flocked to the
+Austrian capital, taking with them their ministers, secretaries,
+favorites, and &quot;confidential agents.&quot; So eager
+were these world-reformers to enjoy themselves that the
+court did not go into mourning for Queen Marie Caroline
+of Naples, the last of Marie Theresa's daughters. Her
+death was not even announced officially lest it should
+trouble the festivities of the jovial peace-makers!</p>
+
+<p>The Paris of the Conference, on the other hand, was
+democratic, with a strong infusion of plutocracy. It
+attempted no such brilliant display as that which flattered
+the senses or fired the imagination of the Viennese.
+In 1919 mankind was simpler in its tastes and perhaps
+less esthetic. It is certain that the froth of contemporary
+frivolity had lost its sparkling whiteness and was grown
+turbid. In Vienna, balls, banquets, theatricals, military
+reviews, followed one another in dizzy succession and enabled
+politicians and adventurers to carry on their intrigues
+and machinations unnoticed by all except the
+secret police. And, as the Congress marked the close of
+one bloody campaign and ushered in another, one might
+aptly term it the interval between two tragedies. For a
+time it seemed as though this part of the likeness might
+become applicable to the Conference of Paris.</p>
+
+<p>Moving from pleasure to politics, one found strong contrasts
+as well as surprising resemblances between the two
+peace-making assemblies, and, it was assumed, to the
+advantage of the Paris Conference. Thus, at the Austrian
+Congress, the members, while seemingly united, were
+pulling hard against one another, each individual or
+group tugging in a different direction. The Powers had
+been compelled by necessity to unite against a common
+enemy and, having worsted him on the battlefield, fell to
+squabbling among themselves in the Council Chamber as
+soon as they set about dividing the booty. In this respect
+the Paris Conference&mdash;the world was assured in the
+beginning&mdash;towered aloft above its historic predecessor.
+Men who knew the facts declared repeatedly that the
+delegates to the Quai d'Orsay were just as unanimous,
+disinterested, and single-minded during the armistice as
+they were through the war. Probably they were.</p>
+
+<p>Another interesting point of comparison was supplied
+by the <i>dramatis person&aelig;</i>? of both illustrious companies.
+They were nearly all representatives of old states, but
+there was one exception.</p>
+
+
+<p class='center'>THE CONGRESS CHIEF</p>
+
+<p class='center'><i>Mistrusted, Feared, Humored, and Obeyed</i></p>
+
+<p>A relatively new Power took part in the deliberations
+of the Vienna Congress, and, perhaps, because of its loftier
+intentions, introduced a jarring note into the concert
+of nations. Russia was then a newcomer into the
+European councils; indeed she was hardly yet recognized
+as European. Her gifted Tsar, Alexander I, was an
+idealist who wanted, not so much peace with the vanquished
+enemy as a complete reform of the ordering of
+the whole world, so that wars should thenceforward be
+abolished and the welfare of mankind be set developing
+like a sort of pacific <i>perpetuum mobile</i>. This blessed
+change, however, was to be compassed, not by the
+peoples or their representatives, but by the governments,
+led by himself and deliberating in secret. At the Paris
+Conference it was even so.</p>
+
+<p>This curious type of public worker&mdash;a mixture of the
+mystical and the practical&mdash;was the terror of the Vienna
+delegates. He put spokes in everybody's wheel, behaved
+as the autocrat of the Congress and felt as self-complacent
+as a saint. Countess von Thurheim wrote of
+him: &quot;He mistrusted his environment and let himself
+be led by others. But he was thoroughly good and high-minded
+and sought after the weal, not merely of his own
+country, but of the whole world. <i>Son coeur e&ucirc;t embrass&eacute; le
+bonheur du monde</i>.&quot; He realized in himself the dreams of
+the philosophers about love for mankind, but their
+Utopias of human happiness were based upon the perfection
+both of subjects and of princes, and, as Alexander
+could fulfil only one-half of these conditions, his work
+remained unfinished and the poor Emperor died, a victim
+of his high-minded illusions.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5" href="#Footnote_5_5" >[5]</a></p>
+
+<p>The other personages, Metternich in particular, were
+greatly put out by Alexander's presence. They labeled
+him a marplot who could not and would not enter into
+the spirit of their game, but they dared not offend him.
+Without his brave troops they could not have been
+victorious and they did not know how soon they might
+need him again, for he represented a numerous and
+powerful people whose economic and military resources
+promised it in time the hegemony of the world. So, while
+they heartily disliked the chief of this new great country,
+they also feared and, therefore, humored him. They all
+felt that the enemy, although defeated and humbled, was
+not, perhaps, permanently disabled, and might, at any
+moment, rise, phoenix-like and soar aloft again. The
+great visionary was therefore f&ecirc;ted and lauded and raised
+to a dizzy pedestal by men who, in their hearts, set him
+down as a crank. His words were reverently repeated
+and his smiles recorded and remembered. Hardly any
+one had the bad taste to remark that even this millennial
+philosopher in the statesman's armchair left unsightly
+flaws in his system for the welfare of man. Thus, while
+favoring equality generally, he obstinately refused to
+concede it to one race, in fact, he would not hear of
+common fairness being meted out to that race. It was
+the Polish people which was treated thus at the Vienna
+Congress, and, owing to him, Poland's just claims were
+ignored, her indefeasible rights were violated, and the
+work of the peace-makers was botched....</p>
+
+<p>Happily, optimists said, the Paris Conference was
+organized on a wholly different basis. Its members
+considered themselves mere servants of the public&mdash;stewards,
+who had to render an account of their stewardship
+and who therefore went in salutary fear of the electorate
+at home. This check was not felt by the plenipotentiaries
+in Vienna. Again, everything the Paris
+delegates did was for the benefit of the masses, although
+most of it was done by stealth and unappreciated by them.</p>
+
+<p>The remarkable document which will forever be associated
+with the name of President Wilson was the <i>clou</i>
+of the Conference. The League of Nations scheme
+seemed destined to change fundamentally the relations of
+peoples toward one another, and the change was expected
+to begin immediately after the Covenant had been voted,
+signed, and ratified. But it was not relished by any
+government except that of the United States, and it was
+in order to enable the delegates to devise such a wording
+of the Covenant as would not bind them to an obnoxious
+principle or commit their electorates to any irksome
+sacrifice, that the peace treaty with Germany and the
+liquidation of the war were postponed. This delay caused
+profound dissatisfaction in continental Europe, but it
+had the incidental advantage of bringing home to the
+victorious nations the marvelous recuperative powers
+of the German race. It also gave time for the drafting
+of a compact so admirably tempered to the human weaknesses
+of the rival signatory nations, whose passions were
+curbed only by sheer exhaustion, that all their spokesmen
+saw their way to sign it. There was something almost
+genial in the simplicity of the means by which the eminent
+promoter of the Covenant intended to reform the peoples
+of the world. He gave them credit for virtues which would
+have rendered the League unnecessary and displayed indulgence
+for passions which made its speedy realization
+hopeless, thus affording a <i>superfluous</i> illustration of the
+truth that the one deadly evil to be shunned by those
+who would remain philanthropists is a practical knowledge
+of men, and of the truism that the statesman's bane is
+an inordinate fondness for abstract ideas.</p>
+
+<p>One of the decided triumphs of the Paris Peace Conference
+over the Vienna Congress lay in the amazing
+speed with which it got through the difficult task of
+solving offhandedly some of the most formidable problems
+that ever exercised the wit of man. One of the Paris
+journals contained the following remarkable announcement:
+&quot;The actual time consumed in constituting the
+League of Nations, which it is hoped will be the means
+of keeping peace in the world, was thirty hours. This
+doesn't seem possible, but it is true.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6" href="#Footnote_6_6" >[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>How provokingly slowly the dawdlers of Vienna moved
+in comparison may be read in the chronicles of that time.
+The peoples hoped and believed that the Congress would
+perform its tasks in a short period, but it was only after
+nine months' gestation and sore travail that it finally
+brought forth its offspring&mdash;a mountain of Acts which
+have been moldering in dust ever since.</p>
+
+<p>The Wilsonian Covenant, which bound together thirty-two
+states&mdash;a league intended to be incomparably more
+powerful than was the Holy Alliance&mdash;will take rank
+as the most rapid improvisation of its kind in diplomatic
+history.</p>
+
+<p>A comparison between the features common to the two
+international legislatures struck many observers as even
+more reassuring than the contrast between their differences.
+Both were placed in like circumstances, faced
+with bewildering and fateful problems to which an exhausting
+war, just ended, had imparted sharp actuality.
+One of the delegates to the Vienna Congress wrote:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Everything had to be recast and made new, the
+destinies of Germany, Italy, and Poland settled, a solid
+groundwork laid for the future, and a commercial system
+to be outlined.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7" href="#Footnote_7_7" >[7]</a> Might not those very words have
+been penned at any moment during the Paris Conference
+with equal relevance to its undertakings?</p>
+
+<p>Or these: &quot;However easily and gracefully the fine
+old French wit might turn the topics of the day, people
+felt vaguely beneath it all that these latter times were
+very far removed from the departed era and, in many
+respects, differed from it to an incomprehensible degree.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8" href="#Footnote_8_8" >[8]</a>
+And the veteran Prince de Ligne remarked to the Comte
+de la Garde: &quot;From every side come cries of Peace,
+Justice, Equilibrium, Indemnity.... Who will evolve
+order from this chaos and set a dam to the stream of
+claims?&quot; How often have the same cries and queries
+been uttered in Paris?</p>
+
+<p>When the first confidential talks began at the Vienna
+Congress, the same difficulties arose as were encountered
+over a century later in Paris about the number of states
+that were entitled to have representatives there. At the
+outset, the four Cabinet Ministers of Austria, Russia,
+England, and Prussia kept things to themselves, excluding
+vanquished France and the lesser Powers. Some time
+afterward, however, Talleyrand, the spokesman of the
+worsted nation, accompanied by the Portuguese Minister,
+Labrador, protested vehemently against the form and
+results of the deliberations. At one sitting passion rose
+to white heat and Talleyrand spoke of quitting the Congress
+altogether, whereupon a compromise was struck
+and eight nations received the right to be represented.
+In this way the Committee of Eight was formed.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9" href="#Footnote_9_9" >[9]</a> In
+Paris discussion became to the full as lively, and on the
+first Saturday, when the representatives of Belgium,
+Greece, Poland, and the other small states delivered
+impassioned speeches against the attitude of the Big
+Five they were maladroitly answered by M. Clemenceau,
+who relied, as the source from which emanated the
+superior right of the Great Powers, upon the twelve million
+soldiers they had placed in the field. It was unfortunate
+that force should thus confer privileges at a Peace
+Conference which was convoked to end the reign of
+force and privilege. In Vienna it was different, but so
+were the times.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the entries and comments of the chroniclers
+of 1815 read like extracts from newspapers of the first
+three months of 1919. &quot;About Poland, they are fighting
+fiercely and, down to the present, with no decisive result,&quot;
+writes Count Carl von Nostitz, a Russian military observer....
+&quot;Concerning Germany and her future federative
+constitution, nothing has yet been done, absolutely
+nothing.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10" href="#Footnote_10_10" >[10]</a> Here is a gloss written by Countess Elise
+von Bernstorff, wife of the Danish Minister: &quot;Most
+comical was the mixture of the very different individuals
+who all fancied they had work to do at the Congress ...
+One noticed noblemen and scholars who had never transacted
+any business before, but now looked extremely consequential
+and took on an imposing bearing, and professors
+who mentally set down their university chairs
+in the center of a listening Congress, but soon turned
+peevish and wandered hither and thither, complaining
+that they could not, for the life of them, make out what
+was going on.&quot; Again: &quot;It would have been to the
+interest of all Europe&mdash;rightly understood&mdash;to restore
+Poland. This matter may be regarded as the most
+important of all. None other could touch so nearly the
+policy of all the Powers represented,&quot;<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11" href="#Footnote_11_11" >[11]</a> wrote the Bavarian
+Premier, Graf von Montgelas, just as the Entente press
+was writing in the year 1919.</p>
+
+<p>The plenipotentiaries of the Paris Conference had for a
+short period what is termed a good press, and a rigorous
+censorship which never erred on the side of laxity, whereas
+those of the Vienna Congress were criticized without
+truth. For example, the population of Vienna, we are
+told by Bavaria's chief delegate, was disappointed when
+it discerned in those whom it was wont to worship as
+demigods, only mortals. &quot;The condition of state affairs,&quot;
+writes Von Gentz, one of the clearest heads at the
+Congress, &quot;is weird, but it is not, as formerly, in consequence
+of the crushing weight that is hung around our
+necks, but by reason of the mediocrity and clumsiness
+of nearly all the workers.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12" href="#Footnote_12_12" >[12]</a> One consequence of this
+state of things was the constant upspringing of new and
+unforeseen problems, until, as time went on, the bewildered
+delegates were literally overwhelmed. &quot;So
+many interests cross each other here,&quot; comments Count
+Carl von Nostitz, &quot;which the peoples want to have
+mooted at the long-wished-for League of Nations, that
+they fall into the oddest shapes.... Look wheresoever
+you will, you are faced with incongruity and confusion....
+Daily the claims increase as though more and more
+evil spirits were issuing forth from hell at the invocation
+of a sorcerer who has forgotten the spell by which to
+lay them.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13" href="#Footnote_13_13" >[13]</a> It was of the Vienna Congress that those
+words were written.</p>
+
+<p>In certain trivial details, too, the likeness between the
+two great peace assemblies is remarkable. For example,
+Lord Castlereagh, who represented England at Vienna,
+had to return to London to meet Parliament, thus inconveniencing
+the august assembly, as Mr. Wilson and Mr.
+George were obliged to quit Paris, with a like effect.
+Before Castlereagh left the scene of his labors, uncharitable
+judgments were passed on him for allowing home
+interests to predominate over his international activities.</p>
+
+<p>The destinies of Poland and of Germany, which were
+then about to become a confederation, occupied the forefront
+of interest at the Congress as they did at the Conference.
+A similarity is noticeable also in the state of
+Europe generally, then and now. &quot;The uncertain condition
+of all Europe,&quot; writes a close observer in 1815, &quot;is
+appalling for the peoples: every country has mobilized ... and
+the luckless inhabitants are crushed by taxation.
+On every side people complain that this state of
+peace is worse than war ... individuals who despised Napoleon
+say that under him the suffering was not greater ... every
+country is sapping its own prosperity, so that
+financial conditions, in lieu of improving since Napoleon's
+collapse, are deteriorating every where.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14" href="#Footnote_14_14" >[14]</a></p>
+
+<p>In 1815, as in 1919, the world pacifiers had their court
+painters, and Isabey, the French portraitist, was as much
+run after as was Sir William Orpen in 1919. In some
+respects, however, there was a difference. &quot;Isabey,&quot; said
+the Prince de Ligne, &quot;is the Congress become painter.
+Come! His talk is as clever as his brush.&quot; But Sir
+William Orpen was so absorbed by his work that he never
+uttered a word during a sitting. The contemporaries of
+the Paris Conference were luckier than their forebears of
+the Vienna Congress&mdash;for they could behold the lifelike
+features of their benefactors in a cinema. &quot;It is understood,&quot;
+wrote a Paris journal, &quot;that the necessity of preserving
+a permanent record of the personalities and proceedings
+at the Peace Conference has not been lost sight
+of. Very shortly a series of cinematographic films of the
+principal delegates and of the commissions is to be made
+on behalf of the British government, so that, side by side
+with the Treaty of Paris, posterity will be able to study the
+physiognomy of the men who made it.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15" href="#Footnote_15_15" >[15]</a> In no case is it
+likely to forget them.</p>
+
+<p>So the great heart of Paris, even to a greater degree
+than that of Vienna over a hundred years ago, beat and
+throbbed to cosmic measures while its brain worked
+busily at national, provincial, and economic questions.</p>
+
+<p>Side by side with the good cheer prevalent that kept the
+eminent lawgivers of the Vienna Congress in buoyant
+spirits went the cost of living, prohibitive outside the
+charmed circle in consequence of the high and rising prices.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Every article,&quot; writes the Comte de la Garde, one of the
+chroniclers of the Vienna Congress, &quot;but more especially
+fuel, soared to incredible heights. The Austrian government
+found it necessary, in consequence, to allow all its
+officials supplements to their salaries and indemnities.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16" href="#Footnote_16_16" >[16]</a>
+In Paris things were worse. Greed and disorganization
+combined to make of the French capital a vast fleecing-machine.
+The sums of money expended by foreigners in
+France during all that time and a much longer period is
+said to have exceeded the revenue from foreign trade.
+There was hardly any coal, and even the wood fuel gave
+out now and again. Butter was unknown. Wine was
+bad and terribly dear. A public conveyance could not be
+obtained unless one paid &quot;double, treble, and quintuple
+fares and a gratuity.&quot; The demand was great and the
+supply sometimes abundant, but the authorities contrived
+to keep the two apart systematically.</p>
+
+<p class='center'>THE COST OF LIVING</p>
+
+<p>In no European country did the cost of living attain the
+height it reached in France in the year 1919. Not only
+luxuries and comforts, but some of life's necessaries, were
+beyond the reach of home-coming soldiers, and this was
+currently ascribed to the greed of merchants, the disorganization
+of transports, the strikes of workmen, and the
+supineness of the authorities, whose main care was to keep
+the nation tranquil by suppressing one kind of news,
+spreading another, and giving way to demands which
+could no longer be denied. There was another and more
+effectual cause: the war had deprived the world of twelve
+million workmen and a thousand milliard francs' worth
+of goods. But of this people took no account. The
+demobilized soldiers who for years had been well fed and
+relieved of solicitude for the morrow returned home,
+flushed with victory, proud of the commanding position
+which they had won in the state, and eager to reap the
+rewards of their sacrifices. But they were bitterly disillusioned.
+They expected a country fit for heroes to
+live in, and what awaited them was a condition of things
+to which only a defeated people could be asked to resign
+itself. The food to which the poilu had, for nearly five
+years, been accustomed at the front was become, since
+the armistice, the exclusive monopoly of the capitalist or
+the <i>nouveau-riche</i> in the rear. To obtain a ration of
+sugar he or his wife had to stand in a long queue for
+hours, perhaps go away empty-handed and return on the
+following morning. When his sugar-card was eventually
+handed to him he had again to stand in line outside the
+grocer's door and, when his turn came to enter it, was
+frequently told that the supply was exhausted and would
+not be replenished for a week or longer. Yet his newspaper
+informed him that there was plenty of colonial
+sugar, ready for shipment, but forbidden by the authorities
+to be imported into France. I met many poor
+people from the provinces and some resident in Paris who
+for four years had not once eaten a morsel of sugar,
+although the well-to-do were always amply supplied. In
+many places even bread was lacking, while biscuits, shortbread,
+and fancy cakes, available at exorbitant prices, were
+exhibited in the shop windows. Tokens of unbridled
+luxury and glaring evidences of wanton waste were
+flaunted daily and hourly in the faces of the humbled men
+who had saved the nation and wanted the nation to realize
+the fact. Lucullan banquets, opulent lunches, all-night
+dances, high revels of an exotic character testified to the
+peculiar psychic temper as well as to the material prosperity
+of the passive elements of the community and stung
+the poilus to the quick. &quot;But what justice,&quot; these asked,
+&quot;can the living hope for, when the glorious dead are so
+soon forgotten?&quot; For one ghastly detail remains to complete
+a picture to which Boccaccio could hardly have done
+justice. &quot;While all this wild dissipation was going on
+among the moneyed class in the capital the corpses of
+many gallant soldiers lay unburied and uncovered on the
+shell-plowed fields of battle near Rheims, on the road to
+Neuville-sur-Margival and other places&mdash;sights pointed
+out to visitors to tickle their interest in the grim spectacle
+of war. In vain individuals expostulated and the press
+protested. As recently as May persons known to me&mdash;my
+English secretary was one&mdash;looked with the fascination
+of horror on the bodies of men who, when they
+breathed, were heroes. They lay there where they had
+fallen and agonized, and now, in the heat of the May sun,
+were moldering in dust away&mdash;a couple of hours' motor
+drive from Paris....&quot;<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17" href="#Footnote_17_17" >[17]</a></p>
+
+<p>The soldiers mused and brooded. Since the war began
+they had undergone a great psychic transformation.
+Stationed at the very center of a sustained fiery crisis,
+they lost their feeling of acquiescence in the established
+order and in the place of their own class therein. In the
+sight of death they had been stirred to their depths and
+volcanic fires were found burning there. Resignation had
+thereupon made way for a rebellious mood and rebellion
+found sustenance everywhere. The poilu demobilized
+retained his military spirit, nay, he carried about with him
+the very atmosphere of the trenches. He had rid himself
+of the sentiment of fear and the faculty of reverence
+went with it. His outlook on the world had changed
+completely and his inner sense reversed the social order
+which he beheld, as the eye reverses the object it apprehends.
+Respect for persons and institutions survived
+in relatively few instances the sacredness of life and the
+fear of death. He was impressed, too, with the all-importance
+of his class, which he had learned during the
+war to look upon as the Atlas on whose shoulders rest
+the Republic and its empire overseas. He had saved the
+state in war and he remained in peace-time its principal
+mainstay. With his value as measured by these priceless
+services he compared the low estimate put upon him
+by those who continued to identify themselves with the
+state&mdash;the over-fed, lazy, self-seeking money-getters who
+reserved to themselves the fruits of his toil.</p>
+
+<p>One can well imagine&mdash;I have actually heard&mdash;the
+poilus putting their case somewhat as follows: &quot;So
+long as we filled the gap between the death-dealing
+Teutons and our privileged compatriots we were well fed,
+warmly clad, made much of. During the war we were
+raised to the rank of pillars of the state, saviors of the
+nation, arbiters of the world's destinies. So long as we
+faced the enemy's guns nothing was too good for us.
+We had meat, white bread, eggs, wine, sugar in plenty.
+But, now that we have accomplished our task, we have
+fallen from our high estate and are expected to become
+pariahs anew. We are to work on for the old gang
+and the class from which it comes, until they plunge us
+into another war. For what? What is the reward for
+what we have achieved, what the incentive for what
+we are expected to accomplish? We cannot afford as
+much food as before the war, nor of the same quality.
+We are in want even of necessaries. Is it for this that we
+have fought? A thousand times no. If we saved our
+nation we can also save our class. We have the will
+and the power. Why should we not exert them?&quot; The
+purpose of the section of the community to which these
+demobilized soldiers mainly belonged grew visibly definite
+as consciousness of their collective force grew and became
+keener. Occasionally it manifested itself openly in symptomatic
+spurts.</p>
+
+<p>One dismal night, at a brilliant ball in a private mansion,
+a select company of both sexes, representatives
+of the world of rank and fashion, were enjoying themselves
+to their hearts' content, while their chauffeurs
+watched and waited outside in the cold, dark streets,
+chewing the cud of bitter reflections. Between the
+hours of three and four in the morning the latter held
+an open-air meeting, and adopted a resolution which they
+carried out forthwith. A delegation was sent upstairs
+to give notice to the light-hearted guests that they must
+be down in their respective motors within ten minutes
+on pain of not finding any conveyances to take them
+home. The mutineers were nearly all private chauffeurs
+in the employ of the personages to whom they sent this
+indelicate ultimatum. The resourceful host, however,
+warded off the danger and placated the rebellious drivers
+by inviting them to an improvised little banquet of
+<i>p&acirc;t&eacute;s de foie gras</i>, dry champagne, and other delicacies.
+The general temper of the proletariat remained unchanged.
+Tales of rebellion still more disquieting were
+current in Paris, which, whether true or false, were aids
+to a correct diagnosis of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>A dancing mania broke out during the armistice,
+which was not confined to the French capital. In Berlin,
+Rome, London, it aroused the indignation of those whose
+sympathy with the spiritual life of their respective nations
+was still a living force. It would seem, however,
+to be the natural reaction produced by a tremendous
+national calamity, under which the mainspring of the
+collective mind temporarily gives way and the psychical
+equilibrium is upset. Disillusion, despondency, and contempt
+for the passions that lately stirred them drive
+the people to seek relief in the distractions of pleasures,
+among which dancing is perhaps one of the mildest.
+It was so in Paris at the close of the long period of stress
+which ended with the rise of Napoleon. Dancing then
+went on uninterruptedly despite national calamities and
+private hardships. &quot;Luxury,&quot; said Victor Hugo, &quot;is a
+necessity of great states and great civilizations, but there
+are moments when it must not be exhibited to the masses.&quot;
+There was never a conjuncture when the danger of such
+an exhibition was greater or more imminent than during
+the armistice on the Continent&mdash;for it was the period of
+incubation preceding the outbreak of the most malignant
+social disease to which civilized communities are subject.</p>
+
+<p>The festivities and amusements in the higher circles
+of Paris recall the glowing descriptions of the fret and
+fever of existence in the Austrian capital during the
+historic Vienna Congress a hundred years ago. Dancing
+became epidemic and shameless. In some salons the
+forms it took were repellent. One of my friends, the
+Marquis X., invited to a dance at the house of a plutocrat,
+was so shocked by what he saw there that he left almost
+at once in disgust. Madame Machin, the favorite
+teacher of the choreographic art, gave lessons in the new
+modes of dancing, and her fee was three hundred francs
+a lesson. In a few weeks she netted, it is said, over one
+hundred thousand francs.</p>
+
+<p>The Prince de Ligne said of the Vienna Congress: &quot;Le
+Congr&egrave;s danse mais il ne marche pas.&quot; The French press
+uttered similar criticisms of the Paris Conference, when
+its delegates were leisurely picking up information about
+the countries whose affairs they were forgathered to
+settle. The following paragraph from a Paris journal&mdash;one
+of many such&mdash;describes a characteristic scene:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The domestic staff at the H&ocirc;tel Majestic, the headquarters of the
+British Delegation at the Peace Conference, held a very successful
+dance on Monday evening, attended by many members of the British
+Mission and Staff. The ballroom was a medley of plenipotentiaries
+and chambermaids, generals and orderlies, Foreign Office attach&eacute;s
+and waitresses. All the latest forms of dancing were to be seen,
+including the jazz and the hesitation waltz, and, according to the
+opinion of experts, the dancing reached an unusually high standard of
+excellence. Major Lloyd George, one of the Prime Minister's sons,
+was among the dancers. Mr. G.H. Roberts, the Food Controller,
+made a very happy little speech to the hotel staff.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18" href="#Footnote_18_18" >[18]</a></p>
+
+<p>The following extract is also worth quoting:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>A packed house applauded 'Hullo, Paris!' from the rise of the curtain
+to the finale at the new Palace Theater (in the rue Mogador), Paris,
+last night.... President Wilson, Mr. A.J. Balfour, and Lord Derby
+all remained until the fall of the curtain at 12.15 ... and ... were
+given cordial cheers from the dispersing audience as they passed
+through the line of Municipal Guards, who presented arms as the
+distinguished visitors made their way to their motor-cars.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19" href="#Footnote_19_19" >[19]</a></p>
+
+<p>Juxtaposed with the grief, discontent, and physical
+hardships prevailing among large sections of the population
+which had provided most of the holocausts for the
+Moloch of War, the ostentatious gaiety of the prosperous
+few might well seem a challenge. And so it was construed
+by the sullen lack-alls who prowled about the
+streets of Paris and told one another that their turn
+would come soon.</p>
+
+<p>When the masses stare at the wealthy with the eyes
+one so often noticed during the eventful days of the
+armistice one may safely conclude, in the words of Victor
+Hugo, that &quot;it is not thoughts that are harbored by
+those brains; it is events.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>By the laboring classes the round of festivities, the
+theatrical representations, the various negro and other
+foreign dances, and the less-refined pleasures of the world's
+blithest capital were watched with ill-concealed resentment.
+One often witnessed long lines of motor-cars
+driving up to a theater, fashionable restaurant, or concert-hall,
+through the opening portals of which could be caught
+a glimpse of the dazzling illumination within, while, a
+few yards farther off, queues of anemic men and women
+were waiting to be admitted to the shop where milk or
+eggs or fuel could be had at the relatively low prices fixed
+by the state. The scraps of conversation that reached
+one's ears were far from reassuring.</p>
+
+<p>I have met on the same afternoon the international
+world-regenerators, smiling, self-complacent, or preoccupied,
+flitting by in their motors to the Quai d'Orsay,
+and also quiet, determined-looking men, trudging along
+in the snow and slush, wending their way toward their
+labor conventicles, where they, too, were drafting laws
+for a new and strange era, and I voluntarily fell to gaging
+the distance that sundered the two movements, and
+asked myself which of the inchoate legislations would
+ultimately be accepted by the world. The question
+since then has been partially answered. As time passed,
+the high cost of living was universally ascribed, as we
+saw, to the insatiable greed of the middlemen and the
+sluggishness of the authorities, whose incapacity to organize
+and unwillingness to take responsibility increased
+and augured ill of the future of the country unless men
+of different type should in the meanwhile take the reins.
+Practically nothing was done to ameliorate the carrying
+power of the railways, to utilize the waterways, to employ
+the countless lorries and motor-vans that were lying
+unused, to purchase, convey, and distribute the provisions
+which were at the disposal of the government. Various
+ministerial departments would dispute as to which should
+take over consignments of meat or vegetables, and while
+reports, notes, and replies were being leisurely written and
+despatched, weeks or months rolled by, during which the
+foodstuffs became unfit for human consumption. In the
+middle of May, to take but one typical instance, 2,401
+eases of lard and 1,418 cases of salt meat were left rotting
+in the docks at Marseilles. In the storage magazines at
+Murumas, 6,000 tons of salt meat were spoiled because
+it was nobody's business to remove and distribute them.
+Eighteen refrigerator-cars loaded with chilled meat arrived
+in Paris from Havre in the month of June. When
+they were examined at the cold-storage station it was
+discovered that, the doors having been negligently left
+open, the contents of the cases had to be destroyed.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20" href="#Footnote_20_20" >[20]</a>
+From Belgium 108,000 kilos of potatoes were received and
+allowed to lie so long at one of the stations that they went
+bad and had to be thrown away. When these and
+kindred facts were published, the authorities, who had
+long been silent, became apologetic, but remained throughout
+inactive. In other countries the conditions, if less
+accentuated, were similar.</p>
+
+<p>One of the dodges to which unscrupulous dealers resorted
+with impunity and profit was particularly ingenious.
+At the central markets, whenever any food is condemned,
+the public-health authorities seize it and pay the owner
+full value at the current market rates. The marketmen
+often turned this equitable arrangement to account by
+keeping back large quantities of excellent vegetables, for
+which the population was yearning, and when they rotted
+and had to be carted away, received their money value
+from the Public Health Department, thus attaining their
+object, which was to lessen the supply and raise the prices
+on what they kept for sale.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21" href="#Footnote_21_21" >[21]</a> The consequence was that
+Paris suffered from a continual dearth of vegetables and
+fruits. Statistics published by the United States government
+showed the maximum increase in the cost of
+living in four countries as follows: France, 235 per cent.;
+Britain, 135 per cent.; Canada, 115 per cent.; and the
+United States, 107 per cent.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22" href="#Footnote_22_22" >[22]</a> But since these data were
+published prices continued to rise until, at the beginning
+of July, they had attained the same level as those of
+Russia on the eve of the revolution there. In Paris,
+Lyons, Marseilles, the prices of various kinds of fish,
+shell-fish, jams, apples, had gone up 500 per cent., cabbage
+over 900 per cent., and celeriac 2,000 per cent.
+Anthracite coal, which in the year 1914 cost 56 francs a
+ton, could not be purchased in 1919 for less than 360
+francs.</p>
+
+<p>The restaurants and hotels waged a veritable war of
+plunder on their guests, most of whom, besides the
+scandalous prices, which bore no reasonable relation to
+the cost of production, had to pay the government luxury
+tax of 10 per cent, over and above. A well-known press
+correspondent, who entertained seven friends to a simple
+dinner in a modest restaurant, was charged 500 francs,
+90 francs being set down for one chicken, and 28 for three
+cocktails. The <i>ma&icirc;tre d'hotel</i>, in response to the pressman's
+expostulations, assured him that these charges
+left the proprietor hardly any profit. As it chanced,
+however, the journalist had just been professionally investigating
+the cost of living, and had the data at his
+finger-ends. As he displayed his intimate knowledge to
+his host, and obviously knew where to look for redress,
+he had the satisfaction of obtaining a rebate of 150
+francs.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23" href="#Footnote_23_23" >[23]</a></p>
+
+<p>Nothing could well be more illuminating than the following
+curious picture contributed by a journal whose
+representative made a special inquiry into the whole
+question of the cost of living.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24" href="#Footnote_24_24" >[24]</a> &quot;I was dining the other
+day at a restaurant of the Bois de Boulogne. There was
+a long queue of people waiting at the door, some sixty
+persons all told, mostly ladies, who pressed one another
+closely. From time to time a voice cried: 'Two places,'
+whereupon a door was held opened, two patients entered,
+and then it was loudly slammed, smiting some of those
+who stood next to it. At last my turn came, and I went
+in. The guests were sitting so close to one another that
+they could not move their elbows. Only the hands and
+fingers were free. There sat women half naked, and men
+whose voices and dress betrayed newly acquired wealth.
+Not one of them questioned the bills which were presented.
+And what bills! The <i>hors d'oeuvre</i>, 20 francs. Fish, 90
+francs. A chicken, 150 francs. Three cigars, 45 francs.
+The repast came to 250 francs a person at the very lowest.&quot;
+Another journalist commented upon this story as follows:
+&quot;Since the end of last June,&quot; he said, &quot;445,000 quintals
+of vegetables, the superfluous output of the Palatinate,
+were offered to France at nominal prices. And the cost
+of vegetables here at home is painfully notorious. Well,
+the deal was accepted by the competent Commission in
+Paris. Everything was ready for despatching the consignment.
+The necessary trains were secured. All that
+was wanting was the approval of the French authorities,
+who were notified. Their answer has not yet been
+given and already the vegetables are rotting in the
+magazines.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The authorities pleaded the insufficiency of rolling
+stock, but the press revealed the hollowness of the excuse
+and the responsibility of those who put it forward, and
+showed that thousands of wagons, lorries, and motor-vans
+were idle, deteriorating in the open air. For instance,
+between Cognac and Jarnac the state railways had left
+about one thousand wagons unused, which were fast
+becoming unusable.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25" href="#Footnote_25_25" >[25]</a> And this was but one of many
+similar instances.</p>
+
+<p>It would be hard to find a parallel in history for the
+rapacity combined with unscrupulousness and ingenuity
+displayed during that fateful period by dishonest individuals,
+and left unpunished by the state. Doubtless
+France was not the only country in which greed was
+insatiable and its manifestations disastrous. From other
+parts of the Continent there also came bitter complaints
+of the ruthlessness of profiteers, and in Italy their heartless
+vampirism contributed materially to the revolutionary
+outbreaks throughout that country in July.
+Even Britain was not exempt from the scourge. But
+the presence of whole armies of well-paid, easy-going
+foreign troops and officials on French soil stimulated
+greed by feeding it, and also their complaints occasionally
+bared it to the world. The impression it left on certain
+units of the American forces was deplorable. When
+United States soldiers who had long been stationed in a
+French town were transferred to Germany, where charges
+were low, the revulsion of feeling among the straightforward,
+honest Yankees was complete and embarrassing.
+And by way of keeping it within the bounds of political
+orthodoxy, they were informed that the Germans had
+conspired to hoodwink them by selling at undercost
+prices, in order to turn them against the French. It was
+an insidious form of German propaganda!</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the experience of British and
+American warriors in France sometimes happened to be
+so unfortunate that many of them gave credence to the
+absurd and mischievous legend that their governments
+were made to pay rent for the trenches in which their
+troops fought and died, and even for the graves in which
+the slain were buried.</p>
+
+<p>An acquaintance of mine, an American delegate,
+wanted an abode to himself during the Conference, and,
+having found one suitable for which fifteen to twenty-five
+thousand francs a year were deemed a fair rent, he
+inquired the price, and the proprietor, knowing that he
+had to do with a really wealthy American, answered,
+&quot;A quarter of a million francs.&quot; Subsequently the landlord
+sent to ask whether the distinguished visitor would
+take the place; but the answer he received ran, &quot;No, I
+have too much self-respect.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hotel prices in Paris, beginning from December, 1918,
+were prohibitive to all but the wealthy. Yet they were
+raised several times during the Conference. Again,
+despite the high level they had reached by the beginning
+of July, they were actually quintupled in some hotels and
+doubled in many for about a week at the time of the
+peace celebrations. Rents for flats and houses soared
+proportionately.</p>
+
+<p>One explanation of the fantastic rise in rents is characteristic.
+During the war and the armistice, the government&mdash;and
+not only the French government&mdash;proclaimed
+a moratorium, and no rents at all were paid,
+in consequence of which many house-owners were impoverished
+and others actually beggared. And it was with a
+view to recoup themselves for these losses that they
+fleeced their tenants, French and foreign, as soon as the
+opportunity presented itself. An amusing incident arising
+out of the moratorium came to light in the course of
+a lawsuit. An ingenious tenant, smitten with the passion
+of greed, not content with occupying his flat without
+paying rent, sublet it at a high figure to a man who paid
+him well and in advance, but by mischance set fire to the
+place and died. Thereupon the <i>tenant</i> demanded and
+received a considerable sum from the insurance company
+in which the defunct occupant had had to insure the
+flat and its contents. He then entered an action at law
+against the proprietor of the house for the value of the
+damage caused by the fire, and he won his case. The
+unfortunate owner was condemned to pay the sum
+claimed, and also the costs of the action.<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26" href="#Footnote_26_26" >[26]</a> But he could
+not recover his rent.</p>
+
+<p>Disorganization throughout France, and particularly in
+Paris, verged on the border of chaos. Every one felt
+its effects, but none so severely as the men who had won
+the war. The work of demobilization, which began soon
+after the armistice, but was early interrupted, proceeded
+at snail-pace. The homecoming soldiers sent hundreds
+of letters to the newspapers, complaining of the wearisome
+delays on the journey and the sharp privations which
+they were needlessly forced to endure. Thus, whereas
+they took but twenty-eight hours to travel from Hanover
+to Cologne&mdash;the lines being German, and therefore relatively
+well organized&mdash;they were no less than a fortnight
+on the way between Cologne and Marseilles.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27" href="#Footnote_27_27" >[27]</a> During
+the German section of the journey they were kept warm,
+supplied with hot soup and coffee twice daily; but during
+the second half, which lasted fourteen days, they received
+no beverage, hot or cold. &quot;The men were cared for much
+less than horses.&quot; That these poilus turned against the
+government and the class responsible for this gross neglect
+was hardly surprising. One of them wrote: &quot;They [the
+authorities] are frightened of Bolshevism. But we who
+have not got home, we all await its coming. I don't,
+of course, mean the real Bolshevism, but even that kind
+which they paint in such repellent hues.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28" href="#Footnote_28_28" >[28]</a> The conditions
+of telegraphic and postal communications were on a
+par with everything else. There was no guarantee that
+a message paid for would even be sent by the telegraph-operators,
+or, if withheld, that the sender would be
+apprised of its suppression. The war arrangements were
+retained during the armistice. And they were superlatively
+bad. A committee appointed by the Chamber of
+Deputies to inquire into the matter officially, reported
+that,<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29" href="#Footnote_29_29" >[29]</a> at the Paris Telegraph Bureau alone, 40,000 despatches
+were held back every day&mdash;40,000 a day, or
+58,400,000 in four years! And from the capital alone.
+The majority of them were never delivered, and the
+others were distributed after great delay. The despatches
+which were retained were, in the main, thrown into a
+basket, and, when the accumulation had become too
+great, were destroyed. The Control Section never made
+any inquiry, and neither the senders nor those to whom
+the despatches were addressed were ever informed.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30" href="#Footnote_30_30" >[30]</a>
+Even important messages of neutral ambassadors in Rome
+and London fell under the ban. The recklessness of these
+censors, who ceased even to read what they destroyed,
+was such that they held up and made away with state
+orders transmitted by the great munitions factories, and
+one of these was constrained to close down because it was
+unable to obtain certain materials in time.</p>
+
+<p>The French Ambassador in Switzerland reported that,
+owing to these holocausts, important messages from that
+country, containing orders for the French national loan,
+never reached their destination, in consequence of which
+the French nation lost from ten to twenty million francs.
+And even the letters and telegrams that were actually
+passed were so carelessly handled that many of them were
+lost on the way or delayed until they became meaningless
+to the addressee. So, for instance, an official letter
+despatched by the Minister of Commerce to the Minister
+of Finance in Paris was sent to Calcutta, where the French
+Consul-General came across it, and had it directed back
+to Paris. The correspondent of the <i>Echo de Paris</i>, who
+was sent to Switzerland by his journal, was forbidden by
+law to carry more than one thousand francs over the
+frontier, nor was the management of the journal permitted
+to forward to him more than two hundred francs
+at a time. And when a telegram was given up in Paris,
+crediting him with two hundred francs, it was stopped
+by the censor. Eleven days were let go by without informing
+the persons concerned. When the administrator
+of the journal questioned the chief censor, he declined
+responsibility, having had nothing to do with the matter,
+but he indicated the Central Telegraph Control as the
+competent department. There, too, however, they were
+innocent, having never heard of the suppression. It took
+another day to elicit the fact that the economic section
+of the War Ministry was alone answerable for the decision.
+The indefatigable manager of the <i>Echo de Paris</i>
+applied to the department in question, but only to learn
+that it, too, was without any knowledge of what had
+happened, but it promised to find out. Soon afterward
+it informed the zealous manager that the department
+which had given the order could only be the Exchange
+Commission of the Ministry of Finances. And during
+all the time the correspondent was in Zurich without
+money to pay for telegrams or to settle his hotel and
+restaurant bills.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31" href="#Footnote_31_31" >[31]</a></p>
+
+<p>The Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself, in a report on
+the whole subject, characterized the section of Telegraphic
+Control as &quot;an organ of confusion and disorder which
+has engendered extraordinary abuses, and risked compromising
+the government seriously.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32" href="#Footnote_32_32" >[32]</a> It did not merely
+risk, it actually went far to compromise the government
+and the entire governing class as well.</p>
+
+<p>It looked as though the rulers of France were still unconsciously
+guided by the maxim of Richelieu, who wrote
+in his testament, &quot;If the peoples were too comfortable
+there would be no keeping them to the rules of duty.&quot;
+The more urgent the need of resourcefulness and guidance,
+the greater were the listlessness and confusion. &quot;There
+is neither unity of conduct,&quot; wrote a press organ of the
+masses, &quot;nor co-ordination of the Departments of War,
+Public Works, Revictualing, Transports. All these services
+commingle, overlap, clash, and paralyze one another.
+There is no method. Thus, whereas France has coffee
+enough to last her a twelvemonth, she has not sufficient
+fuel for a week. Scruples, too, are wanting, as are
+punishments; everywhere there is a speculator who offers
+his purse, and an official, a station-master, or a subaltern
+to stretch out his hand.... Shortsightedness, disorder,
+waste, the frittering away of public moneys and irresponsibility:
+that is the balance....&quot;<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33" href="#Footnote_33_33" >[33]</a></p>
+
+<p>That the spectacle of the country sinking in this administrative
+quagmire was not conducive to the maintenance
+of confidence in its ruling classes can well be
+imagined. On all sides voices were uplifted, not merely
+against the Cabinet, whose members were assumed to be
+actuated by patriotic motives and guided by their own
+lights, but against the whole class from which they sprang,
+and not in France only, but throughout Europe. Nothing,
+it was argued, could be worse than what these
+leaders had brought upon the country, and a change from
+the bourgeoisie to the proletariat could not well be inaugurated
+at a more favorable conjuncture.</p>
+
+<p>In truth the bourgeoisie were often as impatient of the
+restraints and abuses as the homecoming poilu. The
+middle class during the armistice was subjected to some
+of the most galling restraints that only the war could
+justify. They were practically bereft of communications.
+To use the telegraph, the post, the cable, or the telephone
+was for the most part an exhibition of childish faith,
+which generally ended in the loss of time and money.</p>
+
+<p>This state of affairs called for an immediate and drastic
+remedy, for, so long as it persisted, it irritated those whom
+it condemned to avoidable hardship, and their name was
+legion. It was also part of an almost imperceptible
+revolutionary process similar to that which was going on
+in several other countries for transferring wealth and
+competency from one class to another and for goading
+into rebellion those who had nothing to lose by &quot;violent
+change in the politico-social ordering.&quot; The government,
+whose powers were concentrated in the hands of
+M. Clemenceau, had little time to attend to these grievances.
+For its main business was the re-establishment of
+peace. What it did not fully realize was the gravity of
+the risks involved. For it was on the cards that the
+utmost it could achieve at the Conference toward the
+restoration of peace might be outweighed and nullified
+by the consequences of what it was leaving undone and
+unattempted at home. At no time during the armistice
+was any constructive policy elaborated in any of the
+Allied countries. Rhetorical exhortations to keep down
+expenditure marked the high-water level of ministerial
+endeavor there.</p>
+
+<p>The strikes called by the revolutionary organizations
+whose aim was the subversion of the regime under which
+those monstrosities flourished at last produced an effect
+on the parliament. One day in July the French Chamber
+left the Cabinet in a minority by proposing the following
+resolution: &quot;The Chamber, noting that the cost of living
+in Belgium has diminished by a half and in England
+by a fourth since the armistice, while it has continually
+increased in France since that date, judges the government's
+economic policy by the results obtained and
+passes to the order of the day.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34" href="#Footnote_34_34" >[34]</a></p>
+
+<p>Shortly afterward the same Chamber recanted and gave
+the Cabinet a majority. In Great Britain, too, the House
+of Commons put pressure on the government, which at
+last was forced to act.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, extravagance was systematically
+encouraged everywhere by the shortsighted measures
+which the authorities adopted and maintained as well
+as by the wanton waste promoted or tolerated by the
+incapacity of their representatives. In France the moratorium
+and immunity from taxation gave a fillip to recklessness.
+People who had hoarded their earnings before
+the war, now that they were dispensed from paying rent
+and relieved of fair taxes, paid out money ungrudgingly
+for luxuries and then struck for higher salaries and wages.</p>
+
+<p>Even the Deputies of the Chamber, which did nothing to
+mitigate the evil complained of, manifested a desire to have
+their own salaries&mdash;six hundred pounds a year&mdash;augmented
+proportionately to the increased cost of living;
+but in view of the headstrong current of popular opinion
+against parliamentarism the government deemed it impolitic
+to raise the point at that conjuncture.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the working-men's demands in France as in
+Britain were granted, but the relief they promised was
+illusory, for prices still went up, leaving the recipients of
+the relief no better off. And as the wages payable for
+labor are limited, whereas prices may ascend to any
+height, the embittered laborer fancied he could better his
+lot by an appeal to the force which his organization
+wielded. The only complete solution of the problem, he
+was assured, was to be found in the supersession of the
+governing classes and the complete reconstruction of the
+social fabric on wholly new foundations.<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35" href="#Footnote_35_35" >[35]</a> And some of
+the leaders rashly declared that they were unable to
+discern the elements of any other.</p>
+
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1" href="#FNanchor_1_1">[1]</a> Cf. <i>The Daily Mail</i> (Paris edition), March 12,1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2" href="#FNanchor_2_2">[2]</a> On December 18, 1918.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3" href="#FNanchor_3_3">[3]</a> &quot;With what little wisdom the world is governed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4" href="#FNanchor_4_4">[4]</a> &quot;Mr. Bernard Richards, Secretary of the
+delegation from the American
+Jewish Congress to the Peace Conference, expressed much satisfaction with
+the work done in Paris for the protection of Jewish rights and the furtherance
+of the interests of other minorities involved in the peace settlement.&quot;
+(<i>The New York Herald</i>, July 20, 1919.) How successful was the influence
+of the Jewish community at the Peace Conference may be inferred from
+the following: &quot;Mr. Henry H. Rosenfelt, Director of the American Jewish
+Relief Committee, announces that all New York agencies engaged in Jewish
+relief work will join in a united drive in New York in December to raise
+$7,500,000 (&pound;1,500,000) to provide clothing, food, and medicines for the
+six million Jews throughout Eastern Europe <i>as well as to make possible a
+comprehensive programme for their complete rehabilitation</i>.&mdash;American Radio
+News Service.&quot; Cf. <i>The Daily Mail</i>, August 19, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5" href="#FNanchor_5_5">[5]</a> Countess Lulu von Thurheim, <i>My Life</i>, 1788-1852. German edition,
+Munich, 1913-14.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6" href="#FNanchor_6_6">[6]</a> <i>The New York Herald</i> (Paris edition), February 23, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7" href="#FNanchor_7_7">[7]</a> Grafen von Montgelas, <i>Denw&uuml;rdigkeiten des bayrischen Staatsministers
+Maximilian.</i> See also Dr. Karl Soll, <i>Der Wiener Kongress</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8" href="#FNanchor_8_8">[8]</a> Varnhagen von Ense.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9" href="#FNanchor_9_9">[9]</a> Friedrich von Gentz.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10" href="#FNanchor_10_10"> [10]</a> Dr. Karl Soll, <i>Count Carl von Nostitz</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11" href="#FNanchor_11_11"> [11]</a> Cf. Dr. Karl Soll, <i>Der Wiener Kongress</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12" href="#FNanchor_12_12"> [12]</a> Dr. Karl Soll, <i>Friedrich von Gentz</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13" href="#FNanchor_13_13"> [13]</a> Dr. Karl Soll, <i>Count Carl von Nostitz</i>, p. 109.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14" href="#FNanchor_14_14"> [14]</a> Jean Gabriel Eynard&mdash;the representative of Geneva.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15" href="#FNanchor_15_15"> [15]</a> <i>The Daily Mail</i> (Paris edition), March 22, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16" href="#FNanchor_16_16"> [16]</a> Count de la Garde.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17" href="#FNanchor_17_17"> [17]</a> Cf. <i>Le Matin</i>, May 31, 1919. A noteworthy example of the negligence
+of the authorities was narrated by this journal on the same day. To a
+wooden cross with an inscription recording that the grave was tenanted by
+&quot;an unknown Frenchman&quot; was hung a disk containing his name and regiment!
+And here and there the skulls of heroes protruded from the grass,
+but the German tombs were piously looked after by Boche prisoners.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18" href="#FNanchor_18_18"> [18]</a> <i>The Daily Mail</i> (Continental edition), March 12, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19" href="#FNanchor_19_19"> [19]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, April 23, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20" href="#FNanchor_20_20"> [20]</a> Cf. <i>The New York Herald</i> (Paris edition), June 8, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21" href="#FNanchor_21_21"> [21]</a> Cf. <i>The New York Herald</i>, June 2, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22" href="#FNanchor_22_22"> [22]</a> Cf. <i>The New York Herald</i> (Paris edition), April 20, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23" href="#FNanchor_23_23"> [23]</a> <i>Le Figaro</i>, June 8, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24" href="#FNanchor_24_24"> [24]</a> <i>L'Humanit&eacute;</i>, July 10, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25" href="#FNanchor_25_25"> [25]</a> <i>La Democratie Nouvelle</i>, June 14, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26" href="#FNanchor_26_26"> [26]</a> <i>Le Figaro</i>, March 6, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27" href="#FNanchor_27_27"> [27]</a> <i>L'Humanit&eacute;</i>, May 23, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28" href="#FNanchor_28_28"> [28]</a> <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29" href="#FNanchor_29_29"> [29]</a> <i>Le Gaulois</i>, March 23, 1919. <i>The New York Herald</i> (Paris edition),
+March 22, 1919. <i>L'Echo de Paris</i>, June 12, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30" href="#FNanchor_30_30"> [30]</a> <i>The New York Herald</i>, March 22, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31" href="#FNanchor_31_31"> [31]</a> <i>L'Echo de Paris</i>, June 12, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32" href="#FNanchor_32_32"> [32]</a> <i>The New York Herald</i>, March 22, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33" href="#FNanchor_33_33"> [33]</a> <i>L'Humanit&eacute;</i>, May 23, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34" href="#FNanchor_34_34"> [34]</a> on July 18, 1919. Cf. <i>Matin, Echo de Paris, Figaro</i>, July 10, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35" href="#FNanchor_35_35"> [35]</a> Cf. <i>L'Humanit&eacute;</i> (French Syndicalist organ), July 11, 1919.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II" />II</h3>
+
+<h3>SIGNS OF THEIR TIMES</h3>
+
+
+<p>Society during the transitional stage through which
+it has for some years been passing underwent an
+unprecedented change the extent and intensity of which
+are as yet but imperfectly realized. Its more striking
+characteristics were determined by the gradual decomposition
+of empires and kingdoms, the twilight of their
+gods, the drying up of their sources of spiritual energy,
+and the psychic derangement of communities and individuals
+by a long and fearful war. Political principles,
+respect for authority and tradition, esteem for high
+moral worth, to say nothing of altruism and public spirit,
+either vanished or shrank to shadowy simulacra. In
+contemporary history currents and cross-currents, eddies
+and whirlpools, became so numerous and bewildering
+that it is not easy to determine the direction of the main
+stream. Unsocial tendencies coexisted with collectivity
+of effort, both being used as weapons against the larger
+community and each being set down as a manifestation
+of democracy. Against every kind of authority the
+world, or some of its influential sections, was up in revolt,
+and the emergence of the passions and aims of classes and
+individuals had freer play than ever before.</p>
+
+<p>To this consummation conservative governments, and
+later on their chiefs at the Peace Conference, systematically
+contributed with excellent intentions and efficacious
+measures. They implicitly denied, and acted on the
+denial, that a nation or a race, like an individual, has
+something distinctive, inherent, and enduring that may
+aptly be termed soul or character. They ignored the
+fact that all nations and races are not of the same age
+nor endowed with like faculties, some being young and
+helpless, others robust and virile, and a third category
+senescent and decrepit, and that there are some races
+which Nature has wholly and permanently unfitted for
+service among the pioneers of progress. In consequence
+of these views, which I venture to think erroneous, they
+applied the same treatment to all states. Just as President
+Wilson, by striving to impose his pinched conception
+of democracy and his lofty ideas of political
+morality on Mexico, had thrown that country into
+anarchy, the two Anglo-Saxon governments by enforcing
+their theories about the protection of minorities and
+other political conceptions in various states of Europe
+helped to loosen the cement of the politico-social structure
+there.</p>
+
+<p>Through these as well as other channels virulent poison
+penetrated to the marrow of the social organism. Language
+itself, on which all human intercourse hinges, was
+twisted to suit unwholesome ambitions, further selfish
+interests, and obscure the vision of all those who wanted
+real reforms and unvarnished truth. During the war
+the armies were never told plainly what they were struggling
+for; officially they were said to be combating for
+justice, right, self-determination, the sacredness of treaties,
+and other abstract nouns to which the heroic soldiers
+never gave a thought and which a section of the civil
+population misinterpreted. Indeed, so little were these
+shibboleths understood even by the most intelligent
+among the politicians who launched them that one half
+of the world still more or less conscientiously labors to
+establish their contraries and is anathematizing the other
+half for championing injustice, might, and unveracity&mdash;under
+various misnomers.</p>
+
+<p>Anglo-Saxondom, taking the lead of humanity, imitated
+the Catholic states of by-past days, and began to impose
+on other peoples its own ideas, as well as its practices
+and institutions, as the best fitted to awaken their dormant
+energies and contribute to the social reconstruction of the
+world. In the interval, language, whether applied to
+history, journalism, or diplomacy, was perverted and
+words lost their former relations to the things connoted,
+and solemn promises were solemnly broken in the name
+of truth, right, or equity. For the new era of good faith,
+justice and morality was inaugurated, oddly enough,
+by a general tearing up of obligatory treaties and an
+ethical violation of the most binding compacts known to
+social man. This happened coincidently to be in keeping
+with the general insurgence against all checks and
+restraints, moral and social, for which the war is mainly
+answerable, and to be also in harmony with the regular
+supersession of right by might which characterizes the
+present epoch and with the disappearance of the sense of
+law. In a word, under the auspices of the amateur
+world-reformers, the tendency of Bolshevism throve and
+spread&mdash;an instructive case of people serving the devil
+at the bidding of God's best friends.</p>
+
+<p>As in the days of the Italian despots, every individual
+has the chance of rising to the highest position in many
+of the states, irrespective of his antecedents and no
+matter what blots may have tarnished his 'scutcheon.
+Neither aristocratic descent, nor public spirit nor even a
+blameless past is now an indispensable condition of
+advancement. In Germany the head of the Republic
+is an honest saddler. In Austria the chief of the government
+until recently was the assassin of a prime minister.
+The chief of the Ukraine state was an ex-inmate of an
+asylum. Trotzky, one of the Russian duumvirs, is said
+to have a record which might of itself have justified his
+change of name from Braunstein. Bela Kuhn, the
+Semitic Dictator of Hungary, had the reputation of a
+thief before rising to the height of ruler of the Magyars....
+In a word, Napoleon's ideal is at last realized, &quot;La
+carri&egrave;re est ouverte aux talents.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Among the peculiar traits of this evanescent epoch
+may be mentioned inaccessibility to the teaching of facts
+which run counter to cherished prejudices, aims, and
+interests. People draw from facts which they cannot
+dispute only the inferences which they desire. An amusing
+instance of this occurred in Paris, where a Syndicalist
+organ<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36" href="#Footnote_36_36" >[36]</a> published an interesting and on the whole
+truthful account of the chaotic confusion, misery, and
+discontent prevailing in Russia and of the brutal violence
+and foxy wiles of Lenin. The dreary picture included
+the cost of living; the disorganization of transports; the
+terrible mortality caused by the after-effects of the war;
+the crowding of prisons, theaters, cinemas, and dancing-saloons;
+the eagerness of employers to keep their war
+prisoners employed while thousands of demobilized soldiers
+were roaming about the cities and villages vainly looking
+for work; the absence of personal liberty; the numerous
+arrests, and the relative popularity withal of the Dictator.
+This popularity, it was explained, the press contributed
+to keep alive, especially since the abortive attempt made
+on his life, when the journals declared that he was indispensable
+for the time being to his country.</p>
+
+<p>He himself was described as a hard despot, ruthless as
+a tiger who strikes his fellow-workers numb and dumb
+with fear. &quot;But he is under no illusions as to the real
+sentiments of the members of the Soviet who back him,
+nor does he deign to conceal those which he entertains
+toward them.... Whenever Lenin himself is concerned
+justice is expeditious. Some men will be delivered from
+prison after many years of preventive confinement without
+having been brought to trial, others who fired on
+Kerensky will be kept untried for an indefinite period,
+whereas the brave Russian patriot who aimed his revolver
+at Lenin, and whom the French press so justly
+applauded, had only three weeks to wait for his condemnation
+to death.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This article appearing in a Syndicalist organ seemed
+an event. Some journals summarized and commented it
+approvingly, until it was discovered to be a skit on the
+transient conditions in France, whereupon the &quot;admirable
+<i>expos&eacute;</i> based upon convincing evidence&quot; and the &quot;forcible
+arguments&quot; became worthless.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37" href="#Footnote_37_37" >[37]</a></p>
+
+<p>An object-lesson in the difficulty of legislating in Anglo-Saxon
+fashion for foreign countries and comprehending
+their psychology was furnished by two political trials
+which, taking place in Paris during the Conference,
+enabled the delegates to estimate the distance that
+separates the Anglo-Saxon from the Continental mode
+of thought and action in such a fundamental problem
+as the administration of justice. Raoul Villain, the
+murderer of Jean Jaur&egrave;s&mdash;France's most eminent statesman&mdash;was
+kept in prison for nearly five years without a
+trial. He had assassinated his victim in cold blood. He
+had confessed and justified the act. The eye-witnesses all
+agreed as to the facts. Before the court, however, a
+long procession of ministers of state, politicians, historians,
+and professors defiled, narrating in detail the
+life-story, opinions, and strivings of the victim, who,
+in the eyes of a stranger, unacquainted with its methods,
+might have seemed to be the real culprit. The jury
+acquitted the prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>The other accused man was a flighty youth who had
+fired on the French Premier and wounded him. He,
+however, had not long to wait for his trial. He was
+taken before the tribunal within three weeks of his arrest
+and was promptly condemned to die.<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38" href="#Footnote_38_38" >[38]</a> Thus the assassin
+was justified by the jury and the would-be assassin condemned
+to be shot. &quot;Suppose these trials had taken
+place in my country,&quot; remarked a delegate of an Eastern
+state, &quot;and that of the two condemned men one had been
+a member of the privileged minority, what an uproar the
+incident would have created in the United States and
+England! As it happened in western Europe, it passed
+muster.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>How far removed some continental nations are from
+the Anglo-Saxons in their mode of contemplating and
+treating another momentous category of social problems
+may be seen from the circumstance that the Great
+Council in Basel adopted a bill brought in by the Socialist
+Welti, authorizing the practice of abortion down to the
+third month, provided that the husband and wife are
+agreed, and in cases where there is no marriage provided
+it is the desire of the woman and that the operation is
+performed by a regular physician.<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39" href="#Footnote_39_39" >[39]</a></p>
+
+<p>Another striking instance of the difference of conceptions
+between the Anglo-Saxon and continental peoples is
+contained in the following unsavory document, which the
+historian, whose business it is to flash the light of criticism
+upon the dark nooks of civilization, can neither ignore
+nor render into English. It embodies a significant decision
+taken by the General Staff of the 256th Brigade of
+the Army of Occupation<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40" href="#Footnote_40_40" >[40]</a> and was issued on June 21, 1919.<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41" href="#Footnote_41_41" >[41]</a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<blockquote><h3>SIGNS OF THE TIMES</h3>
+
+<h3>EXPLOITATION ET POLICE DE LA MAISON PUBLIQUE DE M&Uuml;NCHEN-GLADBACH</h3>
+
+<p>(1.) Les deux femmes composant l'unique personnel de la maison
+publique de Gladbach (2, Gasthausstrasse), sont venues en d&eacute;l&eacute;gation
+d&eacute;clarer qu'elles ne pouvaient suffire &agrave; la nombreuse client&egrave;le,
+qui envahit leur maison, devant laquelle stationneraient en permanence
+de nombreux groupes de clients affam&eacute;s.</p>
+
+<p>Elles d&eacute;clarent que d&eacute;falcation faite du service qu'elles doivent
+assurer &agrave; leurs abonn&eacute;s belges et allemands, elles ne peuvent
+fournir &agrave; la division qu'un total de vingt entr&eacute;es par jour (10 pour
+chacune d'elle).</p>
+
+<p>L'&eacute;tablissement d'ailleurs ne travaille pas la nuit et observe
+strictement le repos dominical. D'autre part les ressources de la
+ville ne permettent pas, para&icirc;t-il, d'augmenter le personnel. Dans
+ces conditions, en vue d'&eacute;viter tout d&eacute;sordre et de ne pas demander
+&agrave; ces femmes un travail audessus de leurs forces, les mesures
+suivantes seront prises:</p>
+
+<p>(2.) JOURS DE TRAVAIL: Tous les jours de la semaine, sauf le
+dimanche.</p>
+
+<p>RENDEMENT MAXIMUM: Chaque jour chaque femme
+re&ccedil;oit 10 hommes, soit 20 pour les deux personnes, 120 par semaine.</p>
+
+<p>HEURES D'OUVERTURE: 17 heures &agrave; 21 heures. Aucune
+r&eacute;ception n'aura lieu en dehors de ces heures.</p>
+
+<p>TARIF: Pour un s&eacute;jour d'un quart heure (entr&eacute;e et sortie de
+l'&eacute;tablissement comprises) ... 5 marks.</p>
+
+<p>CONSOMMATIONS: La maison ne vend aucune boisson. Il
+n'y a pas de salle d'attente. Les clients doivent donc se pr&eacute;senter
+par deux.</p>
+
+<p>(3.) R&Eacute;PARTITION: Les 6 jours de la semaine sont donn&eacute;s:</p>
+        <p>Le lundi&mdash;1er bat. du 164 et C.H.R.<br />
+        Le mardi&mdash;1er bat. du 169 et C.H.R.<br />
+        Le mercredi&mdash;2e bat. du 164 et C.H.R.<br />
+        Le jeudi&mdash;2e bat. du 169 et C.H.R.<br />
+        Le vendredi&mdash;3e bat. du 164.<br />
+        Le samedi&mdash;3e bat. du 169.</p>
+
+<p>(4.) Dans chaque bataillon il sera &eacute;tabli le jour qui leur est fix&eacute;, 20
+tickets d&eacute;pos&eacute;s aux bureaux des sergents-majeur &agrave; raison de 5 par
+compagnie. Les hommes d&eacute;sireux de rendre visite &agrave; l'&eacute;tablissement
+r&eacute;clamerout au bureau de leur sergent-majeur, 1 ticket qui
+leur donnera driot de priorit&eacute;.</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The value of that document derives from its having
+been issued as an ordinary regulation, from its having
+been reproduced in a widely circulated journal of the
+capital without evolving comment, and from the strong
+light which it projects upon one of the darkest corners
+of the civilization which has been so often and so eloquently
+eulogized.</p>
+
+<p>Manifestly the currents of the new moral life which the
+Conference was to have set flowing are as yet somewhat
+weak, the new ideals are still remote and the foreshadowings
+of a nobler future are faint. Another token of the
+change which is going forward in the world was reported
+from the Far East, but passed almost unnoticed in
+Europe. The Chinese Ministry of Public Instruction,
+by an edict of November 3, 1919, officially introduced in
+all secondary schools a phonetic system of writing in
+place of the ideograms theretofore employed. This is
+undoubtedly an event of the highest importance in the
+history of culture, little though it may interest the
+Western world to-day. At the same time, as a philologist
+by profession, I agree with a continental authority<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42" href="#Footnote_42_42" >[42]</a>
+who holds that, owing to the monosyllabic character of
+the Chinese language and to the further disadvantage that
+it lacks wholly or partly several consonants,<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43" href="#Footnote_43_43" >[43]</a> it will be
+practically impossible, as the Japanese have already
+found, to apply the new alphabet to the traditional
+literary idiom. Neither can it be employed for the needs
+of education, journalism, of the administration, or for
+telegraphing. It will, however, be of great value for
+elementary instruction and for postal correspondence.
+It is also certain to develop and extend. But its main
+significance is twofold: as a sign of China's awakening
+and as an innovation, the certain effect of which will be to
+weaken national unity and extend regionalism at its
+expense. From this point of view the reform is portentous.</p>
+
+<p>Another of the signs of the new times which calls for
+mention is the spread and militancy of the labor movement,
+to which the war and its concomitants gave a
+potent impulse. It is differentiated from all previous
+ferments by this, that it constitutes merely an episode
+in the universal insurgency of the masses, who are fast
+breaking through the thin social crust formed by the
+upper classes and are emerging rapidly above the surface.
+One of the most impressive illustrations of this general
+phenomenon is the rise of wages, which in Paris has set
+the municipal street-sweepers above university professors,
+the former receiving from 7,600 to 8,000 francs a year,
+whereas the salary of the latter is some 500 francs less.<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44" href="#Footnote_44_44" >[44]</a></p>
+
+<p>This general disturbance is the outcome of many
+causes, among which are the over-population of the
+world, the spread of education and of equal opportunity,
+the anonymity of industrial enterprises, scientific and
+unscientific theories, the specialization of labor and its
+depressing influence.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45" href="#Footnote_45_45" >[45]</a> These factors produced a labor
+organization which the railways, newspapers, and telegraph
+contributed to perfect and transform into a proletarian
+league, and now all progressive humanity is tending
+steadily and painfully to become one vast collectivity
+for producing and sharing on more equitable lines the
+means of living decently. This consummation is coming
+about with the fatality of a natural law, and the utmost
+the wisest of governments can do is to direct it through
+pacific channels and dislodge artificial obstacles in its
+course.</p>
+
+<p>One of the first reforms toward which labor is tending
+with more or less conscious effort is the abolition of the
+hereditary principle in the possession of wealth and influence
+and of the means of obtaining them. The division
+of labor in the past caused the dissociation of the so-called
+nobler avocations from manual work, and gradually
+those who followed higher pursuits grew into a sort of
+hereditary caste which bestowed relative immunity from
+the worst hardships of life's struggle and formed a ruling
+class. To-day the masses have their hands on the
+principal levers for shattering this top crust of the social
+sphere and seem resolved to press them.</p>
+
+<p>The problem for the solution of which they now
+menacingly clamor is the establishment of an approximately
+equitable principle for the redistribution of the
+world's resources&mdash;land, capital, industries, monopolies,
+mines, transports, and colonies. Whether socialization&mdash;their
+favorite prescription&mdash;is the most effectual way
+of achieving this object may well be doubted, but must
+be thoroughly examined and discussed. The end once
+achieved, it is expected that mankind will have become
+one gigantic living entity, endowed with senses, nerves,
+heart, arteries, and all the organs necessary to operate
+and employ the forces and wealth of the planet. The
+process will be complex because the factors are numerous
+and of various orders, and for this reason few political
+thinkers have realized that its many phases are aspects of
+one phenomenon. That is also a partial explanation of
+the circumstance that at the Conference the political
+questions were separated from the economic and treated
+by politicians as paramount, the others being relegated
+to the background. The labor legislation passed in Paris
+reduced itself, therefore, to counsels of perfection.</p>
+
+<p>That the Conference was incapable of solving a problem
+of this magnitude is self-evident. But the delegates
+could and should have referred it to an international
+parliament, fully representative of all the interests concerned.
+For the best way of distributing the necessaries
+and comforts of life, which have been acquired or created
+by manual toil, is a problem that can neither be ignored
+nor reasoned away. So long as it remains a problem it
+will be a source of intermittent trouble and disorder
+throughout the civilized world. The titles, which the
+classes heretofore privileged could invoke in favor of
+possession, are now being rapidly acquired by the workers,
+who in addition dispose of the force conferred by organization,
+numbers, and resolve. At the same time
+most of the stimuli and inventives to individual enterprise
+are being gradually weakened by legislation, which
+it would be absurd to condemn and dangerous to regard
+as a settlement. In the meanwhile productivity is
+falling off, while the demand for the products of labor
+is growing proportionately to the increase of population
+and culture.</p>
+
+<p>Hitherto the laws of distribution were framed by the
+strong, who were few and utilized the many. To-day
+their relative positions have shifted; the many have waxed
+strong and are no longer minded to serve as instruments
+in the hands of a class, hereditary or selected. But the
+division of mankind into producers and utilizers has ever
+been the solid and durable mainstay of that type of
+civilization from which progressive nations are now fast
+moving away, and the laws and usages against which the
+proletariat is up in arms are but its organic expression.</p>
+
+<p>From the days of the building of the Pyramids down to
+those of the digging of the Panama Canal the chasm between
+the two social orders remained open. The abolition
+of slavery changed but little in the arrangement&mdash;was,
+indeed, effected more in the interests of the old
+economics than in deference to any strong religious or
+moral sentiment. In substance the traditional ordering
+continued to exist in a form better adapted to the modified
+conditions. But the filling up of that chasm, which
+is now going forward, involves the overthrow of the
+system in its entirety, and the necessity of either rearing
+a wholly new structure, of which even the keen-sighted
+are unable to discern the outlines, or else the restoration
+of the old one on a somewhat different basis. And the
+only basis conceivable to-day is that which would start
+from the postulate that some races of men come into the
+world devoid of the capacity for any more useful part in
+the progress of mankind than that which was heretofore
+allotted to the proletariat. It cannot be gainsaid that
+there are races on the globe which are incapable of assimilating
+the higher forms of civilization, but which
+might well be made to render valuable services in the
+lower without either suffering injustice themselves or
+demoralizing others. And it seems nowise impossible
+that one day these reserves may be mobilized and systematically
+employed in virtue of the principle that the
+weal of the great progressive community necessitates
+such a distribution of parts as will set each organ to
+perform the functions for which it is best qualified.</p>
+
+<p>Since the close of the war internationalism was in the
+air, and the labor movement intensified it. It stirred
+the thought and warmed the imagination alike of exploiters
+and exploited. Reformers and pacifists yearned
+for it as a means of establishing a well-knit society of
+progressive and pacific peoples and setting a term to
+sanguinary wars. Some financiers may have longed for
+it in a spirit analogous to that in which Nero wished that
+the Roman people had but one neck. And the Conference
+chiefs seemed to have pictured it to themselves&mdash;if,
+indeed, they meditated such an abstract matter&mdash;in
+the guise of a <i>pax Anglo-Saxonica</i>, the distinctive
+feature of which would lie in the transfer to the two
+principal peoples&mdash;and not to a board representing all
+nations&mdash;of those attributes of sovereignty which the other
+states would be constrained to give up. Of these three
+currents flowing in the direction of internationalism only
+one&mdash;that of finance&mdash;appears for the moment likely to
+reach its goal....</p>
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36" href="#FNanchor_36_36"> [36]</a> <i>L'Humanit&eacute;,</i> March 6 and 18, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37" href="#FNanchor_37_37"> [37]</a> Cf. <i>L'Humanit&eacute;</i>, April 10,1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38" href="#FNanchor_38_38"> [38]</a> The sentence was subsequently commuted.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39" href="#FNanchor_39_39"> [39]</a> <i>La Gazette de Lausanne</i>, May 26, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40" href="#FNanchor_40_40"> [40]</a> 128th Division.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41" href="#FNanchor_41_41"> [41]</a> It was reproduced by the French Syndicalist organ, <i>L'Humanit&eacute;</i> of
+July 7, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42" href="#FNanchor_42_42"> [42]</a> R. de Saussure. Cf. <i>Journal de Gen&egrave;ve</i>, August 18, and also May 26,
+1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43" href="#FNanchor_43_43"> [43]</a> d, r, t, l, g (partly) and p, except at the beginning of a word.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44" href="#FNanchor_44_44"> [44]</a> Cf. the French papers generally for the month of May&mdash;also <i>Bonsoir</i>,
+July 26, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45" href="#FNanchor_45_45"> [45]</a> Walther Rathenau has dealt with this question in several of his recent
+pamphlets, which are not before me at the moment.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III" />III</h3>
+
+<h3>THE DELEGATES</h3>
+
+
+<p>The plenipotentiaries, who became the world's arbiters for a while, were
+truly representative men. But they mirrored forth not so much the souls
+of their respective peoples as the surface spirit that flitted over an
+evanescent epoch. They stood for national grandeur, territorial
+expansion, party interests, and even abstract ideas. Exponents of a
+narrow section of the old order at its lowest ebb, they were in no sense
+heralds of the new. Amid a labyrinth of ruins they had no clue to guide
+their footsteps, in which the peoples of the world were told to follow.
+Only true political vision, breadth of judgment, thorough mastery of the
+elements of the situation, an instinct for discerning central issues,
+genuine concern for high principles of governance, and the rare moral
+courage that disregards popularity as a mainspring of action&mdash;could have
+fitted any set of legislators to tackle the complex and thorny problems
+that pressed for settlement and to effect the necessary preliminary
+changes. That the delegates of the principal Powers were devoid of many
+of these qualities cannot fairly be made a subject of reproach. It was
+merely an accident. But it was as unfortunate as their honest conviction
+that they could accomplish the grandiose enterprise of remodeling the
+communities of the world without becoming conversant with their
+interests, acquainted with their needs, or even aware of their
+whereabouts. For their failure, which was inevitable, was also bound to
+be tragic, inasmuch as it must involve, not merely their own ambition to
+live in history as the makers of a new and regenerate era, but also the
+destinies of the nations and races which confidently looked up to them
+for the conditions of future pacific progress, nay, of normal existence.</p>
+
+<p>During the Conference it was the fashion in most European countries to
+question the motives as well as to belittle the qualifications of the
+delegates. Now that political passion has somewhat abated and the
+atmosphere is becoming lighter and clearer, one may without provoking
+contradiction pay a well-deserved tribute to their sincerity, high
+purpose, and quick response to the calls of public duty and moral
+sentiment. They were animated with the best intentions, not only for
+their respective countries, but for humanity as a whole. One and all
+they burned with the desire to go as far as feasible toward ending the
+era of destructive wars. Steady, uninterrupted, pacific development was
+their common ideal, and they were prepared to give up all that they
+reasonably could to achieve it. It is my belief, for example, that if
+Mr. Wilson had persisted in making his League project the cornerstone of
+the new world structure and in applying his principles without favor,
+the Italians would have accepted it almost without discussion, and the
+other states would have followed their example. All the delegates must
+have felt that the old order of things, having been shaken to pieces by
+the war and its concomitants, could not possibly survive, and they
+naturally desired to keep within evolutionary bounds the process of
+transition to the new system, thus accomplishing by policy what
+revolution would fain accomplish by violence. It was only when they came
+to define that policy with a view to its application that their
+unanimity was broken up and they split into two camps, the pacifists and
+the militarists, or the democrats and imperialists, as they have been
+roughly labeled. Here, too, each member of the assembly worked with
+commendable single-mindedness, and under a sense of high responsibility,
+for that solution of the problem which to him seemed the most conducive
+to the general weal. And they wrestled heroically one with the other for
+what they held to be right and true relatively to the prevalent
+conditions. The circumstance that the cause and effects of this clash of
+opinions and sentiments were so widely at variance with early
+anticipations had its roots partly in their limited survey of the
+complex problem, and partly, too, in its overwhelming vastness and their
+own unfitness to cope with it.</p>
+
+<p>The delegates who aimed at disarmament and a society of pacific peoples
+made out as good a case&mdash;once their premises were admitted&mdash;as those who
+insisted upon guarantees, economic and territorial. Everything depended,
+for the theory adopted, upon each individual's breadth of view, and for
+its realization upon the temper of the peoples and that of their
+neighbors. As under the given circumstances either solution was sure to
+encounter formidable opposition, which only a doughty spirit would dare
+to affront, compromise, offering a side-exit out of the quandary, was
+avidly taken. In this way the collective sagacities, working in
+materials the nature of which they hardly understood, brought forth
+strange products. Some of the incongruities of the details, such, for
+instance, as the invitation to Prinkipo, despatched anonymously,
+occasionally surpass satire, but their bewildered authors are entitled
+to the benefit of extenuating circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>On the momentous issue of a permanent peace based on Mr. Wilson's
+pristine concept of a league of nations, and in accordance with rigid
+principles applied equally to all the states, there was no discussion.
+In other words, it was tacitly agreed that the fourteen points should
+not form a bar to the vital postulates of any of the Great Powers. It
+was only on the subject of the lesser states and the equality of nations
+that the debates were intense, protracted, and for a long while
+fruitless. At times words flamed perilously high. For months the
+solutions of the Adriatic, the Austrian, Turkish, and Thracian problems
+hung in poignant suspense, the public looking on with diminishing
+interest and waxing dissatisfaction. The usual optimistic assurances
+that all would soon run smoothly and swiftly fell upon deaf ears. Faith
+in the Conference was melting away.</p>
+
+<p>The plight of the Supreme Council and the vain exhortations to believe
+in its efficiency reminded me of the following story.</p>
+
+<p>A French parish priest was once spiritually comforting a member of his
+flock who was tormented by doubts about the goodness of God as measured
+by the imperfection of His creation. Having listened to a vivid account
+of the troubled soul's high expectation of its Maker and of its deep
+disappointment at His work, the pious old cur&eacute; said: &quot;Yes, my child. The
+world is indeed bad, as you say, and you are right to deplore it. But
+don't you think you may have formed to yourself an exaggerated idea of
+God?&quot; An analogous reflection would not be out of place when passing
+judgment on the Conference which implicitly arrogated to itself some of
+the highest attributes of the Deity, and thus heightened the contrast
+between promise and achievement. Certainly people expected much more
+from it than it could possibly give. But it was the delegates themselves
+who had aroused these expectations announcing the coming of a new epoch
+at their fiat. The peoples were publicly told by Mr. Lloyd George and
+several of his colleagues that the war of 1914-18 would be the last. His
+&quot;Never again&quot; became a winged phrase, and the more buoyant optimists
+expected to see over the palace of arbitration which was to be
+substituted for the battlefield, the inspiring inscription: &quot;A la
+derni&egrave;re des guerres, l'humanit&eacute; reconnaissante.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46" href="#Footnote_46_46" >[46]</a> Mr. Wilson's vast
+project was still more attractive.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lloyd George is too well known in his capacity of British
+parliamentarian to need to be characterized. The splendid services he
+rendered the Empire during the war, when even his defects proved
+occasionally helpful, will never be forgotten. Typifying not only the
+aims, but also the methods, of the British people, he never seems to
+distrust his own counsels whencesoever they spring nor to lack the
+courage to change them in a twinkling. He stirred the soul of the nation
+in its darkest hour and communicated his own glowing faith in its star.
+During the vicissitudes of the world struggle he was the right man for
+the responsible post which he occupied, and I am proud of having been
+one of the first to work in my own modest way to have him placed there.
+But a good war-leader may be a poor peace-negotiator, and, as a matter
+of fact, there are few tasks concerned with the welfare of the nation
+which Mr. Lloyd George could not have tackled with incomparably greater
+chances of accomplishing it than that of remodeling the world. His
+antecedents were all against him. His lack of general equipment was
+prohibitive; even his inborn gifts were disqualifications. One need not
+pay too great heed to acrimonious colleagues who set him down as a
+word-weaving trimmer, between whose utterances and thoughts there is no
+organic nexus, who declines to take the initiative unless he sees
+adequate forces behind him ready to his to his support, who lacks the
+moral courage that serves as a parachute for a fall from popularity,
+but possesses in abundance that of taking at the flood the rising tide
+which balloon-like lifts its possessor high above his fellows. But
+judging him in the light of the historic events in which he played a
+prominent part, one cannot dismiss these criticisms as groundless.</p>
+
+<p>Opportunism is an essential element of statecraft, which is the art of
+the possible. But there is a line beyond which it becomes shiftiness,
+and it would be rash to assert that Mr. Lloyd George is careful to keep
+on the right side of it. At the Conference his conduct appeared to
+careful observers to be traced mainly by outside influences, and as
+these were various and changing the result was a zigzag. One day he
+would lay down a certain proposition as a dogma not to be modified, and
+before the week was out he would advance the contrary proposition and
+maintain that with equal warmth and doubtless with equal conviction.
+Guided by no sound knowledge and devoid of the ballast of principle, he
+was tossed and driven hither and thither like a wreck on the ocean. Mr.
+Melville Stone, the veteran American journalist, gave his countrymen his
+impression of the first British delegate. &quot;Mr. Lloyd George,&quot; he said,
+&quot;has a very keen sense of humor and a great power over the multitude,
+but with this he displays a startling indifference to, if not ignorance
+of, the larger affairs of nations.&quot; In the course of a walk Mr. Lloyd
+George expressed surprise when informed that in the United States the
+war-making power was invested in Congress. &quot;What!&quot; exclaimed the
+Premier, &quot;you mean to tell me that the President of the United States
+cannot declare war? I never heard that before.&quot; Later, when questions of
+national ambitions were being discussed, Mr. Lloyd George asked, &quot;What
+is that place Rumania is so anxious to get?&quot; meaning Transylvania.<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47" href="#Footnote_47_47" >[47]</a></p>
+
+<p>The stories current of his praiseworthy curiosity about the places
+which he was busy distributing to the peoples whose destinies he was
+forging would be highly amusing if the subject were only a private
+individual and his motive a desire for useful information, but on the
+representative of a great Empire they shed a light in which the dignity
+of his country was necessarily affected and his own authority deplorably
+diminished. For moral authority at that conjuncture was the sheet anchor
+of the principal delegates. Although without a program, Mr. Lloyd George
+would appear to have had an instinctive feeling, if not a reasoned
+belief, that in matters of general policy his safest course would be to
+keep pace with the President of the United States. For he took it for
+granted that Mr. Wilson's views were identical with those of the
+American people. One of his colleagues, endeavoring to dispel this
+illusion, said: &quot;Your province at this Conference is to lead. Your
+colleagues, including Mr. Wilson, will follow. You have the Empire
+behind you. Voice its aspirations. They coincide with those of the
+English-speaking peoples of the world. Mr. Wilson has lost his
+elections, therefore he does not stand for as much as you imagine. You
+have won your elections, so you are the spokesman of a vast community
+and the champion of a noble cause. You can knead the Conference at your
+will. Assert your will. But even if you decide to act in harmony with
+the United States, that does not mean subordinating British interests to
+the President's views, which are not those of the majority of his
+people.&quot; But Mr. Lloyd George, invincibly diffident&mdash;if diffidence it
+be&mdash;shrank from marching alone, and on certain questions which mattered
+much Mr. Wilson had his way.</p>
+
+<p>One day there was an animated discussion in the twilight of the Paris
+conclave while the press was belauding the plenipotentiaries for their
+touching unanimity. The debate lay between the United States as voiced
+by Mr. Wilson and Great Britain as represented by Mr. Lloyd George. On
+the morrow, before the conversation was renewed, a colleague adjured the
+British Premier to stand firm, urging that his contention of the
+previous day was just in the abstract and beneficial to the Empire as
+well. Mr. Lloyd George bowed to the force of these motives, but yielded
+to the greater force of Mr. Wilson's resolve. &quot;Put it to the test,&quot;
+urged the colleague. &quot;I dare not,&quot; was the rejoinder. &quot;Wilson won't
+brook it. Already he threatens, if we do, to leave the Conference and
+return home.&quot; &quot;Well then, let him. If he did, we should be none the
+worse off for his absence. But rest assured, he won't go. He cannot
+afford to return home empty-handed after his splendid promises to his
+countrymen and the world.&quot; Mr. Lloyd George insisted, however, and said,
+&quot;But he will take his army away, too.&quot; &quot;What!&quot; exclaimed the tempter.
+&quot;His army? Well, I only ...&quot; but it would serve no useful purpose to
+quote the vigorous answer in full.</p>
+
+<p>This odd mixture of exaggerated self-confidence, mismeasurement of
+forces, and pliability to external influences could not but be baleful
+in one of the leaders of an assembly composed, as was the Paris
+Conference, of men each with his own particular ax to grind and
+impressible only to high moral authority or overwhelming military force.
+It cannot be gainsaid that no one, not even his own familiars, could
+ever foresee the next move in Mr. Lloyd George's game of statecraft, and
+it is demonstrable that on several occasions he himself was so little
+aware of what he would do next that he actually advocated as
+indispensable measures diametrically opposed to those which he was to
+propound, defend, and carry a week or two later. A conversation which
+took place between him and one of his fellow-workers gives one the
+measure of his irresolution and fitfulness. &quot;Do tell me,&quot; said this
+collaborator, &quot;why it is that you members of the Supreme Council are
+hurriedly changing to-day the decisions you came to after five months'
+study, which you say was time well spent?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because of fresh information we have received in the meanwhile. We know
+more now than we knew then and the different data necessitate different
+treatment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, but the conditions have not changed since the Conference opened.
+Surely they were the same in January as they are in June. Is not that
+so?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No doubt, no doubt, but we did not ascertain them before June, so we
+could not act upon them until now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With the leading delegates thus drifting and the pieces on the political
+chessboard bewilderingly disposed, outsiders came to look upon the
+Conference as a lottery. Unhappily, it was a lottery in which there were
+no mere blanks, but only prizes or heavy forfeits.</p>
+
+<p>To sum up: the first British delegate, essentially a man of expedients
+and shifts, was incapable of measuring more than an arc of the political
+circle at a time. A comprehensive survey of a complicated situation was
+beyond his reach. He relied upon imagination and intuition as
+substitutes for precise knowledge and technical skill. Hence he himself
+could never be sure that his decision, however carefully worked out,
+would be final, seeing that in June facts might come to his cognizance
+with which five months' investigations had left him unacquainted. This
+incertitude about the elements of the problem intensified the ingrained
+hesitancy that had characterized his entire public career and warped his
+judgment effectually. The only approach to a guiding principle one can
+find in his work at the Conference was the loosely held maxim that Great
+Britain's best policy was to stand in with the United States in all
+momentous issues and to identify Mr. Wilson with the United States for
+most purposes of the Congress. Within these limits Mr. Lloyd George was
+unyielding in fidelity to the cause of France, with which he merged that
+of civilization.</p>
+
+<p>M. Clemenceau is the incarnation of the tireless spirit of destruction.
+Pulling down has ever been his delight, and it is largely to his success
+in demolishing the defective work of rivals&mdash;and all human work is
+defective&mdash;that he owes the position of trust and responsibility to
+which the Parliament raised him during the last phase of the war.
+Physically strong, despite his advanced age, he is mentally brilliant
+and superficial, with a bias for paradox, epigram, and racy,
+unconventional phraseology. His action is impulsive. In the Dreyfus days
+I saw a good deal of M. Clemenceau in his editorial office, when he
+would unburden his soul to M.M. Vaughan, the poet Quillard, and others.
+Later on I approached him while he was chief of the government on a
+delicate matter of international combined with national politics, on
+which I had been requested to sound him by a friendly government, and I
+found him, despite his developed and sobering sense of responsibility,
+whimsical, impulsive, and credulous as before. When I next talked with
+him he was the rebellious editor of _L'Homme Encha&icirc;n&eacute;_, whose corrosive
+strictures upon the government of the day were the terror of Ministers
+and censors. Soon afterward he himself became the wielder of the great
+national gagging-machine, and in the stringency with which he
+manipulated it he is said by his own countrymen to have outdone the
+government of the Third Empire. His _alter ego_, Georges Mandel, is
+endowed with qualities which supplement and correct those of his
+venerable chief. His grasp of detail is comprehensive and firm, his
+memory retentive, and his judgment bold and deliberate. A striking
+illustration of the audacity of his resolve was given in the early part
+of 1918. Marshal Joffre sent a telegram to President Wilson in
+Washington, and because he had omitted to despatch it through the War
+Ministry, M. Mandel, who is a strict disciplinarian, proposed that he be
+placed under arrest. It was with difficulty that some public men moved
+him to leniency.</p>
+
+<p>M. Clemenceau, the professional destroyer, who can boast that he
+overthrew eighteen Cabinets, or nineteen if we include his own, was
+unquestionably the right man to carry on the war. He acquitted himself
+of the task superbly. His faith in the Allies' victory was unwavering.
+He never doubted, never flagged, never was intimidated by obstacles nor
+wheedled by persons. Once during the armistice, in May or June, when
+Marshal Foch expressed his displeasure that the Premier should have
+issued military orders to troops under his command<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48" href="#Footnote_48_48" >[48]</a> without first
+consulting him, he was on the point of dismissing the Marshal and
+appointing General P&eacute;tain to succeed him.<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49" href="#Footnote_49_49" >[49]</a> Whether the qualities
+which stood him in such good stead during the world struggle could be of
+equal, or indeed of much, avail in the general constructive work for
+which the Conference was assembled is a question that needs only to be
+formulated. But in securing every advantage that could be conferred on
+his own country his influence on the delegates was decisive. M.
+Clemenceau, who before the war was the intimate friend of Austrian
+journalists, hated his country's enemies with undying hate. And he loved
+France passionately. I remember significant words of his, uttered at the
+end of the year 1899 to an enterprising young man who had founded a
+Franco-German review in Munich and craved his moral support. &quot;Is it
+possible,&quot; he exclaimed, &quot;that it has already come to that? Well, a
+nation is not conquered until it accepts defeat. Whenever France gives
+up she will have deserved her humiliation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the Conference M. Clemenceau moved every lever to deliver his country
+for all time from the danger of further invasions. And, being a realist,
+he counted only on military safeguards. At the League of Nations he was
+wont to sneer until it dawned upon him that it might be forged into an
+effective weapon of national defense. And then he included it in the
+litany of abstract phrases about right, justice, and the
+self-determination of peoples which it became the fashion to raise to
+the inaccessible heights where those ideals are throned which are to be
+worshiped but not incarnated. The public somehow never took his
+conversion to Wilsonianism seriously, neither did his political friends
+until the League bade fair to become serviceable in his country's hands.
+M. Clemenceau's acquaintanceship with international politics was at once
+superior to that of the British Premier and very slender. But his
+program at the Conference was simple and coherent, because independent
+of geography and ethnography: France was to take Germany's leading
+position in the world, to create powerful and devoted states in eastern
+Europe, on whose co-operation she could reckon, and her allies were to
+do the needful in the way of providing due financial and economic
+assistance so as to enable her to address herself to the cultural
+problems associated with her new r&ocirc;le. And he left nothing undone that
+seemed conducive to the attainment of that object. Against Mr. Wilson he
+maneuvered to the extent which his adviser, M. Tardieu, deemed safe, and
+one of his most daring speculations was on the President's journey to
+the States, during which M. Clemenceau and his European colleagues hoped
+to get through a deal of work on their own lines and to present Mr.
+Wilson with the decisions ready for ratification on his return. But the
+stratagem was not merely apparent; it was bruited abroad with indiscreet
+details, whereupon the first American delegate on his return broke the
+tables of their laws&mdash;one of which separated the Treaty from the
+Covenant&mdash;and obliged them to begin anew. It is fair to add that M.
+Clemenceau was no uncompromising partisan of the conquest of the left
+bank of the Rhine, nor of colonial conquests. These currents took their
+rise elsewhere. &quot;We don't want protesting deputies in the French
+Parliament,&quot; he once remarked in the presence of the French Minister of
+Foreign Affairs.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50" href="#Footnote_50_50" >[50]</a> Offered the choice between a number of bridgeheads
+in Germany and the military protection of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, he
+unhesitatingly decided for the latter, which had been offered to him by
+President Wilson after the rejection of the Rhine frontier.</p>
+
+<p>M. Clemenceau, whose remarkable mental alacrity, self-esteem, and love
+of sharp repartee occasionally betrayed him into tactless sallies and
+epigrammatic retorts, deeply wounded the pride of more than one delegate
+of the lesser Powers in a way which they deemed incompatible alike with
+circumspect statesmanship and the proverbial hospitality of his country.
+For he is incapable of resisting the temptation to launch a _bon mot_,
+however stinging. It would be ungenerous, however, to attach more
+importance to such quickly forgotten utterances than he meant them to
+carry. An instance of how he behaved toward the representatives of
+Britain and France is worth recording, both as characterizing the man
+and as extenuating his offense against the delegates of the lesser
+Powers.</p>
+
+<p>One morning<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51" href="#Footnote_51_51" >[51]</a> M. Clemenceau appeared at the Conference door, and
+seemed taken aback by the large number of unfamiliar faces and figures
+behind Mr. Balfour, toward whom he sharply turned with the brusque
+interrogation: &quot;Who are those people behind you? Are they English?&quot;
+&quot;Yes, they are,&quot; was the answer. &quot;Well, what do they want here?&quot; &quot;They
+have come on the same errand as those who are now following you.&quot;
+Thereupon the French Premier, whirling round, beheld with astonishment
+and displeasure a band of Frenchmen moving toward him, led by M. Pichon,
+the Minister of Foreign Affairs. In reply to his question as to the
+motive of their arrival, he was informed that they were all experts, who
+had been invited to give the Conference the benefit of their views about
+the revictualing of Hungary. &quot;Get out, all of you. You are not wanted
+here,&quot; he cried in a commanding voice. And they all moved away meekly,
+led by M. Pichon, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Their services proved
+to be unnecessary, for the result reached by the Conference was
+negative.</p>
+
+<p>M. Tardieu cannot be separated from his chief, with whom he worked
+untiringly, placing at his disposal his intimate knowledge of the nooks
+and crannies of professional and unprofessional diplomacy. He is one of
+the latest arrivals and most pushing workers in the sphere of the Old
+World statecraft, affects Yankee methods, and speaks English. For
+several years political editor of the _Temps_, he obtained access to the
+state archives, and wrote a book on the Agadir incident which was well
+received, and also a monograph on Prince von B&uuml;low, became Deputy, aimed
+at a ministerial portfolio, and was finally appointed Head Commissary to
+the United States. Faced by difficulties there&mdash;mostly the specters of
+his own former utterances evoked by German adversaries&mdash;his progress at
+first was slow. He was accused of having approved some of the drastic
+methods&mdash;especially the U-boat campaign&mdash;which the Germans subsequently
+employed, because in the year 1912, when he was writing on the subject,
+France believed that she herself possessed the best submarines, and she
+meant to employ them. He was also challenged to deny that he had
+written, in August, 1912, that in every war churches and monuments of
+art must suffer, and that &quot;no army, whatever its nationality, can
+renounce this.&quot; He was further charged with having taken a kindly
+interest in air-war and bomb-dropping, and given it as his opinion that
+it would be absurd &quot;to deprive of this advantage those who had made most
+progress in perfecting this weapon.&quot; But M. Tardieu successfully
+exorcised these and other ghosts. And on his return from the United
+States he was charged with organizing a press bureau of his own, to
+supply American journalists with material for their cablegrams, while at
+the same time he collaborated with M. Clemenceau in reorganizing the
+political communities of the world. It is only in the French Chamber, of
+which he is a distinguished member, that M. Tardieu failed to score a
+brilliant success. Few men are prophets in their own country, and he is
+far from being an exception. At the Conference, in its later phases, he
+found himself in frequent opposition to the chief of the Italian
+delegation, Signor Tittoni. One of the many subjects on which they
+disagreed was the fate of German Austria and the political structure and
+orientation of the independent communities which arose on the ruins of
+the Dual Monarchy. M. Tardieu favored an arrangement which would bring
+these populations closely together and impart to the whole an
+anti-Teutonic impress. If Germany could not be broken up into a number
+of separate states, as in the days of her weakness, all the other
+European peoples in the territories concerned could, and should, be
+united against her, and at the least hindered from making common cause
+with her. The unification of Germany he considered a grave danger, and
+he strove to create a countervailing state system.</p>
+
+<p>To the execution of this project there were formidable difficulties.
+For one thing, none of the peoples in question was distinctly
+anti-German. Each one was for itself. Again, they were not particularly
+enamoured of one another, nor were their interests always concordant,
+and to constrain them by force to unite would have been not to prevent
+but to cause future wars. A Danubian federation&mdash;the concrete shape
+imagined for this new bulwark of European peace&mdash;did not commend itself
+to the Italians, who had their own reasons for their opposition besides
+the Wilsonian doctrine, which they invoked. If it be true, Signor
+Tittoni argues, that Austria does not desire to be amalgamated with
+Germany, why not allow her to exercise the right of self-determination
+accorded to other peoples? M. Tardieu, on the other hand, not content
+with the prohibition to Germany to unite with Austria, proposed<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52" href="#Footnote_52_52" >[52]</a> that
+in the treaty with Austria this country should be obliged to repress the
+unionist movement in the population. This amendment was inveighed
+against by the Italian delegation in the name of every principle
+professed and transgressed by the world-mending Powers. Even from the
+French point of view he declared it perilous, inasmuch as there was, and
+could be, no guarantee that a Danubian confederation would not become a
+tool in Germany's hands.</p>
+
+<p>Two things struck me as characteristic of the principal
+plenipotentiaries: as a rule, they eschewed first-rate men as
+fellow-workers, one integer and several zeros being their favorite
+formula, and they took no account of the flight of time, planning as
+though an eternity were before them and then suddenly improvising as
+though afraid of being late for a train or a steamer. These
+peculiarities were baleful. The lesser states, having mainly first-class
+men to represent them, illustrated the law of compensation, which
+assigned many mediocrities to the Great Powers. The former were also the
+most strenuous toilers, for their task bristled with difficulties and
+abounded in startling surprises, and its accomplishment depended on the
+will of others. Time and again they went over the ground with infinite
+care, counting and gaging the obstacles in their way, devising means to
+overcome them, and rehearsing the effort in advance. So much stress had
+been laid during the war on psychology, and such far-reaching
+consequences were being drawn from the Germans' lack of it, that these
+public men made its cultivation their personal care. Hence, besides
+tracing large-scale maps of provinces and comprehensive maps<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53" href="#Footnote_53_53" >[53]</a> of the
+countries to be reconstituted, and ransacking history for arguments and
+precedents, they conscientiously ascertained the idiosyncrasies of their
+judges, in order to choose the surest ways to impress, convince, or
+persuade them. And it was instructive to see them try their hand at this
+new game.</p>
+
+<p>One and all gave assent to the axiom that moderation would impress the
+arbiters more favorably than greed, but not all of them wielded
+sufficient self-command to act upon it. The more resourceful delegates,
+whose tasks were especially redoubtable because they had to demand large
+provinces coveted by others, prepared the ground by visiting personally
+some of the more influential arbiters before these were officially
+appointed, forcibly laying their cases before them and praying for their
+advice. In reality they were striving to teach them elementary
+geography, history, and politics. The Ulysses of the Conference, M.
+Venizelos, first pilgrimaged to London, saying: &quot;If the Foreign Office
+is with Greece, what matters it who is against her.&quot; He hastened to call
+on President Wilson as soon as that statesman arrived in Europe, and,
+to the surprise of many, the two remained a long time closeted together.
+&quot;Whatever did you talk about?&quot; asked a colleague of the Greek Premier.
+&quot;How did you keep Wilson interested in your national claims all that
+time? You must have&mdash;&quot; &quot;Oh no,&quot; interrupted the modest statesman. &quot;I
+disposed of our claims succinctly enough. A matter of two minutes. Not
+more. I asked him to dispense me from taking up his time with such
+complicated issues which he and his colleagues would have ample
+opportunity for studying. The rest of the time I was getting him to give
+me the benefit of his familiarity with the subject of the League of
+Nations. And he was good enough to enumerate the reasons why it should
+be realized, and the way in which it must be worked. I was greatly
+impressed by what he said.&quot; &quot;Just fancy!&quot; exclaimed a colleague,
+&quot;wasting all that time in talking about a scheme which will never come
+to anything!&quot; But M. Venizelos knew that the time was not misspent.
+President Wilson was at first nowise disposed to lend a favorable ear to
+the claims of Greece, which he thought exorbitant, and down to the very
+last he gave his support to Bulgaria against Greece whole-heartedly. The
+Cretan statesman passed many an hour of doubt and misgiving before he
+came within sight of his goal. But he contrived to win the President
+over to his way of envisaging many Oriental questions. He is a
+past-master in practical psychology.</p>
+
+<p>The first experiments of M. Venizelos, however, were not wholly
+encouraging. For all the care he lavished on the chief luminaries of the
+Conference seemingly went to supplement their education and fill up a
+few of the geographical, historical, philological, ethnological, and
+political gaps in their early instruction rather than to guide them in
+their concrete decisions, which it was expected would be always left to
+the &quot;commissions of experts.&quot; But the fruit which took long to mature
+ripened at last, and Greece had many of her claims allowed. Thus in
+reorganizing the communities of the world the personal factor played a
+predominant part. Venizelos was, so to say, a fixed star in the
+firmament, and his light burned bright through every rift in the clouds.
+His moderation astonished friends and opponents. Every one admired his
+_expos&eacute;_ of his case as a masterpiece. His statesman-like setting, in
+perspective, the readiness with which he put himself in the place of his
+competitor and struck up a fair compromise, endeared him to many, and
+his praises were in every one's mouth. His most critical hour&mdash;it lasted
+for months&mdash;struck when he found himself struggling with the President
+of the United States, who was for refusing the coast of Thrace to Greece
+and bestowing it on Bulgaria. But with that dispute I deal in another
+place.</p>
+
+<p>Of Italy's two plenipotentiaries during the first five months one was
+the most supple and the other the most inflexible of her statesmen,
+Signor Orlando and Baron Sonnino. If her case was presented to the
+Conference with less force than was attainable, the reasons are obvious.
+Her delegates had a formal treaty on which they relied; to the attitude
+of their country from the outbreak of the war to its finish they rightly
+ascribed the possibility of the Allies' victory, and they expected to
+see this priceless service recognized practically; the moderation and
+suppleness of Signor Orlando were neutralized by the uncompromising
+attitude of Baron Sonnino, and, lastly, the gaze of both statesmen was
+fixed upon territorial questions and sentimental aspirations to the
+neglect of economic interests vital to the state&mdash;in other words, they
+beheld the issues in wrong perspective. But one of the most popular
+figures among the delegates was Signor Orlando, whose eloquence and
+imagination gave him advantages which would have been increased a
+hundredfold if he might have employed his native language in the
+conclave. For he certainly displayed resourcefulness, humor, a historic
+sense, and the gift of molding the wills of men. But he was greatly
+hampered. Some of his countrymen alleged that Baron Sonnino was his evil
+genius. One of the many sayings attributed to him during the Conference
+turned upon the quarrels of some of the smaller peoples among
+themselves. &quot;They are,&quot; the Premier said, &quot;like a lot of hens being held
+by the feet and carried to market. Although all doomed to the same fate,
+they contrive to fight one another while awaiting it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After the fall of Orlando's Cabinet, M. Tittoni repaired to Paris as
+Italy's chief delegate. His reputation as one of Europe's principal
+statesmen was already firmly established; he had spent several years in
+Paris as Ambassador, and he and the late Di San Giuliano and Giolitti
+were the men who broke with the Central Empires when these were about to
+precipitate the World War. In French nationalist circles Signor Tittoni
+had long been under a cloud, as the man of pro-German leanings. The
+suspicion&mdash;for it was nothing more&mdash;was unfounded. On the contrary, M.
+Tittoni is known to have gone with the Allies to the utmost length
+consistent with his sense of duty to his own country. To my knowledge he
+once gave advice which his Italian colleagues and political friends and
+adversaries now bitterly regret was disregarded. The nature of that
+counsel will one day be disclosed....</p>
+
+<p>Of Japan's delegates, the Marquis Saionji and Baron Makino, little need
+be said, seeing that their qualifications for their task were
+demonstrated by the results. Mainly to statesmanship and skilful
+maneuvering Japan is indebted for her success at the Paris Conference,
+where her cause was referred by Mr. Lloyd George and M. Clemenceau to
+Mr. Wilson to deal with. The behavior of her representatives was an
+illuminating object-lesson in the worth of psychological tactics in
+practical politics. They hardly ever appeared in the footlights,
+remained constantly silent and observant, and were almost ignored by the
+press. But they kept their eyes fixed on the goal. Their program was
+simple. Amid the flitting shadows of political events they marched
+together with the Allies, until these disagreed among themselves, and
+then they voted with Great Britain and the United States. Occasionally
+they went farther and proposed measures for the lesser states which
+Britain framed, but desired to second rather than propose. Japan, at the
+Conference, was a stanch collaborator of the two English-speaking
+principals until her own opportunity came, and then she threw all her
+hoarded energies into her cause, and by her firm resolve dispelled any
+opposition that Mr. Wilson may have intended to offer. One of the most
+striking episodes of the Conference was the swift, silent, and
+successful campaign by which Japan had her secret treaty with China
+hall-marked by the puritanical President of the United States, whose
+sense of morality could not brook the secret treaties concluded by Italy
+and Rumania with the Greater and Greatest Powers of Europe. Again, it
+was with statesman-like sagacity that the Japanese judged the Russian
+situation and made the best of it&mdash;first, shortly before the invitation
+to Prinkipo, and, later, before the celebrated eight questions were
+submitted to Admiral Kolchak. I was especially struck by an occurrence,
+trivial in appearance, which demonstrated the weight which they rightly
+attached to the psychological side of politics. Everybody in Paris
+remarked, and many vainly complained of, the indifference, or rather,
+unfriendliness, of which Russians were the innocent victims. Among the
+Allied troops who marched under the Arc de Triomphe on July 14th there
+were Rumanians, Greeks, Portuguese, and Indians, but not a single
+Russian. A Russian general drove about in the forest of flags and
+banners that day looking eagerly for symbols of his own country, but for
+hours the quest was fruitless. At last, when passing the Japanese
+Embassy, he perceived, to his delight, an enormous Russian flag waving
+majestically in the breeze, side by side with that of Nippon. &quot;I shed
+tears of joy,&quot; he told his friend that evening, &quot;and I vowed that
+neither I nor my country would ever forget this touching mark of
+friendship.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Japanese public opinion criticized severely the failure of their
+delegates to obtain recognition of the equality of races or nations.
+This judgment seems unjust, for nothing that they could have done or
+said would have wrung from Mr. Wilson and Mr. Hughes their assent to the
+doctrine, nor, if they had been induced to proclaim it, would it have
+been practically applied.</p>
+
+<p>In general, the lawyers were the most successful in stating their cases.
+But one of the delegates of the lesser states who made the deepest
+impression on those of the greater was not a member of the bar. The head
+of the Polish delegation, Roman Dmowski, a picturesque, forcible
+speaker, a close debater and resourceful pleader, who is never at a loss
+for an image, a comparison, an _argumentum ad hominem_, or a repartee,
+actually won over some of the arbiters who had at first leaned toward
+his opponents&mdash;a noteworthy feat if one realizes all that it meant in an
+assembly where potent influences were working against some of the
+demands of resuscitated Poland. His speech in September on the future of
+eastern Galicia was a veritable masterpiece.</p>
+
+<p>M. Dmowski appeared at the Conference under all the disadvantages that
+could be heaped upon a man who has incurred the resentment of the most
+powerful international body of modern times. He had the misfortune to
+have the Jews of the world as his adversaries. His Polish friends
+explained this hostility as follows. His ardent nationalist sentiments
+placed him in antagonism to every movement that ran counter to the
+progress of his country on nationalist lines. For he is above all things
+a Pole and a patriot. And as the Hebrew population of Poland,
+disbelieving in the resurrection of that nation, had long since struck
+up a cordial understanding with the states that held it in bondage, the
+gifted author of a book on the _Foundations of Nationalism_, which went
+through four editions, was regarded by the Hebrew elements of the
+population as an irreconcilable enemy. In truth, he was only the leader
+of a movement that was a historical necessity. One of the theses of the
+work was the necessity of cultivating an anti-German spirit in Poland as
+the only antidote against the Teuton virus introduced from Berlin
+through economic and other channels. And as the Polish Jews, whose idiom
+is a corrupted German dialect and whose leanings are often Teutonic,
+felt that the attack upon the whole was an attack on the part, they
+anathematized the author and held him up to universal obloquy. And there
+has been no reconciliation ever since. In the United States, where the
+Jewish community is numerous and influential, M. Dmowski found spokes in
+his wheel at every stage of his journey, and in Paris, too, he had to
+full-front a tremendous opposition, open and covert. Whatever unbiased
+people may think of this explanation and of his hostility to the Germans
+and their agents, Roman Dmowski deservedly enjoys the reputation of a
+straightforward and loyal fighter for his country's cause, a man who
+scorns underhand machinations and proclaims aloud&mdash;perhaps too
+frankly&mdash;the principles for which he is fighting. Polish Jews who
+appeared in Paris, some of them his bitterest antagonists, recognized
+the chivalrous way in which he conducts his electoral and other
+campaigns. Among the delegates his practical acquaintanceship with East
+European polities entitled him to high rank. For he knows the world
+better than any living statesman, having traveled over Europe, Asia, and
+America. He undertook and successfully accomplished a delicate mission
+in the Far East in the year 1905, rendering valuable services to his
+country and to the cause of civilization.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;M. Dmowski's activity,&quot; his friends further assert, &quot;is impassioned and
+unselfish. The ambition that inspires and nerves him is not of the
+personal sort, nor is his patriotism a ladder leading to place and
+power. Polish patriotism occupies a category apart from that of other
+European peoples, and M. Dmowski has typified it with rare fidelity and
+completeness. If Wilsonianism had been realized, Polish nationalism
+might have become an anachronism. To-day it is a large factor in
+European politics and is little understood in the West. M. Dmowski lives
+for his country. Her interests absorb his energies. He would probably
+agree with the historian Paolo Sarpi, who said, 'Let us be Venetians
+first and Christians after.' Of the two widely divergent currents into
+which the main stream of political thought and sentiment throughout the
+world is fast dividing itself, M. Dmowski moves with the national away
+from the international championed by Mr. Wilson. The frequency with
+which the leading spirits of Bolshevism turn out to be Jews&mdash;to the
+dismay and disgust of the bulk of their own community&mdash;and the ingenuity
+they displayed in spreading their corrosive tenets in Poland may not
+have been without effect upon the energy of M. Dmowski's attitude toward
+the demand of the Polish Jews to be placed in the privileged position of
+wards of the League of Nations. But the principle of the protection of
+minority&mdash;Jewish or Gentile&mdash;is assailable on grounds which have nothing
+to do with race or religion.&quot; Some of the most interesting and
+characteristic incidents at the Conference had the Polish statesman for
+their principal actor, and to him Poland owes some of the most solid and
+enduring benefits conferred on her at the Conference.</p>
+
+<p>Of a different temper is M. Paderewski, who appeared in Paris to plead
+his country's cause at a later stage of the labors of the Conference.
+This eminent artist's energies were all blended into one harmonious
+whole, so that his meetings with the great plenipotentiaries were never
+disturbed by a jarring note. As soon as it was borne in upon him that
+their decisions were as irrevocable as decrees of Fate, he bowed to them
+and treated the authors as Olympians who had no choice but to utter the
+stern fiat. Even when called upon to accept the obnoxious clause
+protecting religious and ethnic minorities against which his colleague
+had vainly fought, M. Paderewski sunk political passion in reason and
+attuned himself to the helpful role of harmonizer. He held that it would
+have been worse than useless to do otherwise. He was grieved that his
+country must acquiesce in that decree, he regretted intensely the
+necessity which constrained such proven friends of Poland as the Four to
+pass what he considered a severe sentence on her; but he resigned
+himself gracefully to the inevitable and thanked Fate's executioners for
+their personal sympathy. This attitude evoked praise and admiration from
+Messrs. Lloyd George and Wilson, and the atmosphere of the conclave
+seemed permeated with a spirit that induced calm satisfaction and the
+joy of elevated thoughts. M. Paderewski made a deep and favorable
+impression on the Supreme Council.</p>
+
+<p>Belgium sent her most brilliant parliamentarian, M. Hymans, as first
+plenipotentiary to the Conference. He was assisted by the chief of the
+Socialist party, M. Vandervelde, and by an eminent authority on
+international law, M. Van den Heuvel. But for reasons which elude
+analysis, none of the three delegates hit it off with the duumvirate
+who were spinning the threads of the world's destinies. M. Hymans,
+however, by his warmth, sincerity, and courage impressed the
+representatives of the lesser states, won their confidence, became their
+natural spokesman, and blazed out against all attempts&mdash;and they were
+numerous and deliberate&mdash;to ignore their existence. It was he who by his
+direct and eloquent protest took M. Clemenceau off his guard and
+elicited the amazing utterance that the Powers which could put twelve
+million soldiers in the field were the world's natural arbiters. In this
+way he cleared the atmosphere of the distorting mists of catchwords and
+shibboleths.</p>
+
+<p>How decisive a role internal politics played in the designation of
+plenipotentiaries to the Conference was shown with exceptional clearness
+in the case of Rumania. That country had no legislature. The Constituent
+Assembly, which had been dissolved owing to the German invasion, was
+followed by no fresh elections. The King, with whom the initiative thus
+rested, had reappointed M. Bratiano Chief of the Government, and M.
+Bratiano was naturally desirous of associating his own historic name
+with the aggrandizement of his country. But he also desired to secure
+the services of his political rival, M. Take Jonescu, whose reputation
+as a far-seeing statesman and as a successful negotiator is world-wide.
+Among his qualifications are an acquaintanceship with European countries
+and their affairs and a rare facility for give and take which is of the
+essence of international politics. He can assume the initiative in
+_pourparlers_, however uncompromising the outlook; frame plausible
+proposals; conciliate his opponents by showing how thoroughly he
+understands and appreciates their point of view, and by these means he
+has often worked out seemingly hopeless negotiations to a satisfactory
+issue. M. Clemenceau wrote of him, &quot;C'est un grand Europ&eacute;en.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54" href="#Footnote_54_54" >[54]</a></p>
+
+<p>M. Bratiano's bid for the services of his eminent opponent was coupled
+with the offer of certain portfolios in the Cabinet to M. Jonescu and to
+a number of his parliamentary supporters. While negotiations were slowly
+proceeding by telegraph, M. Jonescu, who had already taken up his abode
+in Paris, was assiduously weaving his plans. He began by assuming what
+everybody knew, that the Powers would refuse to honor the secret treaty
+with France, Britain, and Russia, which assigned to Rumania all the
+territories to which she had laid claim, and he proposed first striking
+up a compromise with the other interested states, then compacting
+Rumania, Jugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Greece into a solid
+block, and asking the Powers to approve and ratify the new league. Truly
+it was a genial conception worthy of a broad-minded statesman. It aimed
+at a durable peace based on what he considered a fair settlement of
+claims satisfactory to all, and it would have lightened the burden of
+the Big Four. But whether it could have been realized by peoples moved
+by turbid passions and represented by trustees, some of whom were
+avowedly afraid to relinquish claims which they knew to be exorbitant,
+may well be doubted.</p>
+
+<p>But the issue was never put to the test. The two statesmen failed to
+agree on the Cabinet question; M. Jonescu kept aloof from office, and
+the post of second delegate fell to Rumania's greatest diplomatist and
+philologist, M. Mishu, who had for years admirably represented his
+country as Minister in the British capital. From the outset M.
+Bratiano's position was unenviable, because he based his country's case
+on the claims of the secret treaty, and to Mr. Wilson every secret
+treaty which he could effectually veto was anathema. Between the two
+men, in lieu of a bond of union, there was only a strong force of mutual
+repulsion, which kept them permanently apart. They moved on different
+planes, spoke different languages, and Rumania, in the person of her
+delegates, was treated like Cinderella by her stepmother. The Council of
+Three kept them systematically in the dark about matters which it
+concerned them to know, negotiated over their heads, transmitted to
+Bucharest injunctions which only they were competent to receive,
+insisted on their compromising to accept future decrees of the
+Conference without an inkling as to their nature, and on their admitting
+the right of an alien institution&mdash;the League of Nations&mdash;to intervene
+in favor of minorities against the legally constituted government of the
+country. M. Bratiano, who in a trenchant speech inveighed against these
+claims of the Great Powers to take the governance of Europe into their
+own hands, withdrew from the Conference and laid his resignation in the
+hands of the King.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most remarkable debaters in this singular parliament, where
+self-satisfied ignorance and dullness of apprehension were so hard to
+pierce, was the youthful envoy of the Czechoslovaks, M. Benes. This
+politician, who before the Conference came to an end was offered the
+honorable task of forming a new Cabinet, which he wisely declined,
+displayed a masterly grasp of Continental politics and a rare gift of
+identifying his country's aspirations with the postulates of a settled
+peace. A systematic thinker, he made a point of understanding his case
+at the outset. He would begin his _expos&eacute;_ by detaching himself from all
+national interests and starting from general assumptions recognized by
+the Olympians, and would lead his hearers by easy stages to the
+conclusions which he wished them to draw from their own premises. And
+two of them, who had no great sympathy with his thesis, assured me that
+they could detect no logical flaw in his argument. Moderation and
+sincerity were the virtues which he was most eager to exhibit, and they
+were unquestionably the best trump cards he could play. Not only had he
+a firm grasp of facts and arguments, but he displayed a sense of measure
+and open-mindedness which enabled him to implant his views on the minds
+of his hearers.</p>
+
+<p>Armenia's cause found a forcible and suasive pleader in Boghos Pasha,
+whose way of marshaling arguments in favor of a contention that was
+frowned upon by many commanded admiration. The Armenians asked for a
+vast stretch of territory with outlets on the Black Sea and the
+Mediterranean, but they were met with the objections that their total
+population was insignificant; that only in one province were they in a
+majority, and that their claim to Cilicia clashed with one of the
+reserved rights of France. The ice, therefore, was somewhat thin in
+parts, but Boghos Pasha skated over it gracefully. His description of
+the Armenian massacres was thrilling. Altogether his _expos&eacute;_ was a
+masterpiece, and was appreciated by Mr. Wilson and M. Clemenceau.</p>
+
+<p>The Jugoslav delegates, MM. Vesnitch and Trumbitch, patriotic,
+tenacious, uncompromising, had an early opportunity of showing the stuff
+of which they were made. When they were told that the Jugoslav state was
+not yet recognized and that the kingdom of Serbia must content itself
+with two delegates, they lodged an indignant protest against both
+decisions, and refused to appear at the Conference unless they were
+allowed an adequate number of representatives. Thereupon the Great
+Powers compromised the matter by according them three, and with stealthy
+rage they submitted to the refusal of recognition. They were not again
+heard of until one day they proposed that their dispute with Italy
+about Fiume and the Dalmatian coast should be solved by submitting it to
+President Wilson for arbitration. The expedient was original. President
+Wilson, people remembered, had had an animated talk on the subject with
+the Italian Premier, Orlando, and it was known that he had set his face
+against Italy's claim and against the secret treaty that recognized it.
+Consequently the Serbs were running no risk by challenging Signor
+Orlando to lay the matter before the American delegate. Whether, all
+things considered, it was a wise move to make has been questioned.
+Anyhow, the Italian delegation declined the suggestion on a number of
+grounds which several delegates considered convincing. The Conference,
+it urged, had been convoked precisely for the purpose of hearing and
+settling such disputes as theirs, and the Conference consisted, not of
+one, but of many delegates, who collectively were better qualified to
+deal with such problems than any one man. Europeans, too, could more
+fully appreciate the arguments, and the atmosphere through which the
+arguments should be contemplated, than the eminent American idealist,
+who had more than once had to modify his judgment on European matters.
+Again, to remove the discussion from the international court might well
+be felt as a slight put upon the men who composed it. For why should
+their verdict be less worth soliciting than that of the President of the
+United States? True, Italy's delegates were themselves judges in that
+tribunal, but the question to be tried was not a matter between two
+countries, but an issue of much wider import&mdash;namely, what frontiers
+accorded to the embryonic state of Jugoslavia would be most conducive to
+the world's peace. And nobody, they held, could offer a more complete or
+trustworthy answer than they and their European colleagues, who were
+conversant with all the elements of the problem. Besides&mdash;but this
+objection was not expressly formulated&mdash;had not Mr. Wilson already
+decided against Italy? On these and other grounds, then, they decided to
+leave the matter to the Conference. It was a delicate subject, and few
+onlookers cared to open their minds on its merits.</p>
+
+<p>Albania was represented by an old friend of mine, the venerable Turkhan
+Pasha, who had been in diplomacy ever since the Congress of Berlin in
+the 'seventies of last century, and who looked like a modernized Nestor.
+I made his acquaintance many years ago, when he was Ambassador of Turkey
+in St. Petersburg. He was then a favorite everywhere in the Russian
+capital as a conscientious Ambassador, a charming talker, and a
+professional peace-maker, who wished well to everybody. The Young Turks
+having recalled him from St. Petersburg, he soon afterward became Grand
+Vizier to the Mbret of Albania. Far resonant events removed the Mbret
+from the throne, Turkhan Pasha from the Vizierate, and Albania from the
+society of nations, and I next found my friend in Switzerland ill in
+health, eating the bitter bread of exile, temporarily isolated from the
+world of politics and waiting for something to turn up. A few years more
+gave the Allies an unexpectedly complete victory and brought back
+Turkhan Pasha to the outskirts of diplomacy and politics. He suddenly
+made his appearance at the Paris Conference as the representative of
+Albania and the friend of Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Another Albanian friend of mine, Essad Pasha, whose plans for the
+regeneration of his country differed widely from those of Turkhan, was
+for a long while detained in Saloniki. By dint of solicitations and
+protests, he at last obtained permission to repair to Paris and lay his
+views before the Conference, where he had a curious interview with Mr.
+Wilson. The President, having received from Albanians in the United
+States many unsolicited judgments on the character and antecedents of
+Essad Pasha, had little faith in his fitness to introduce and popularize
+democratic institutions in Albania. And he unburdened himself of these
+doubts to friends, who diffused the news. The Pasha asked for an
+audience, and by dint of patience and perseverance his prayer was heard.
+Five minutes before the appointed hour he was at the President's house,
+accompanied by his interpreter, a young Albanian named Stavro, who
+converses freely in French, Greek, and Turkish, besides his native
+language. But while in the antechamber Essad, remembering that the
+American President speaks nothing but pure English, suggested that
+Stavro should drive over to the H&ocirc;tel Crillon for an interpreter to
+translate from French. Thereupon one of the secretaries stopped him,
+saying: &quot;Although he cannot speak French, the President understands it,
+so that a second interpreter will be unnecessary.&quot; Essad then addressed
+Mr. Wilson in Albanian, Stavro translated his words into French, and the
+President listened in silence. It was the impression of those in the
+room that, at any rate, Mr. Wilson understood and appreciated the gist
+of the Pasha's sharp criticism of Italy's behavior. But, to be on the
+safe side, the President requested his visitor to set down on paper at
+his leisure everything he had said and to send it to him.</p>
+
+
+<p class='center'>PRESIDENT WILSON</p>
+
+
+<p>President Wilson, before assuming the redoubtable r&ocirc;le of world arbiter,
+was hardly more than a name in Europe, and it was not a synonym for
+statecraft. His ethical objections to the rule of Huerta in Mexico, his
+attempt to engraft democratic principles there, and the anarchy that
+came of it were matters of history. But the President of the nation to
+whose unbounded generosity and altruism the world owes a debt of
+gratitude that can only be acknowledged, not repaid, deservedly enjoyed
+a superlative measure of respect from his foreign colleagues, and the
+author of the project which was to link all nations together by ties of
+moral kinship was literally idolized by the masses. Never has it fallen
+to my lot to see any mortal so enthusiastically, so spontaneously
+welcomed by the dejected peoples of the universe. His most casual
+utterances were caught up as oracles. He occupied a height so far aloft
+that the vicissitudes of everyday life and the contingencies of politics
+seemingly could not touch him. He was given credit for a rare degree of
+selflessness in his conceptions and actions and for a balance of
+judgment which no storms of passion could upset. So far as one could
+judge by innumerable symptoms, President Wilson was confronted with an
+opportunity for good incomparably vaster than had ever before been
+within the reach of man.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after the opening of the Conference the shadowy outlines of his
+portrait began to fill in, slowly at first, and before three months had
+passed the general public beheld it fairly complete, with many of its
+natural lights and shades. The quality of an active politician is never
+more clearly brought out than when, raised to an eminent place, he is
+set an arduous feat in sight of the multitude. Mr. Wilson's task was
+manifestly congenial to him, for it was deliberately chosen by himself,
+and it comprised the most tremendous problems ever tackled by man born
+of woman. The means by which he set to work to solve them were
+startlingly simple: the regeneration of the human race was to be
+compassed by means of magisterial edicts secretly drafted and sternly
+imposed on the interested peoples, together with a new and not wholly
+appropriate nomenclature.</p>
+
+<p>In his own country, where he has bitter adversaries as well as devoted
+friends, Mr. Wilson was regarded by many as a composite being made up
+of preacher, teacher, and politician. To these diverse elements they
+refer the fervor and unction, the dogmatic tone, and the practised
+shrewdness that marked his words and acts. Independent American opinion
+doubted his qualifications to be a leader. As a politician, they said,
+he had always followed the crowd. He had swum with the tide of public
+sentiment in cardinal matters, instead of stemming or canalizing and
+guiding it. Deficient in courageous initiative, he had contented himself
+with merely executive functions. No new idea, no fresh policy, was
+associated with his name. His singular attitude on the Mexican imbroglio
+had provoked the sharp criticism even of friends and the condemnation of
+political opponents. His utterances during the first stages of the World
+War, such as the statement that the American people were too proud to
+fight and had no concern with the causes and objects of the war,<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55" href="#Footnote_55_55" >[55]</a>
+when contrasted with the opposite views which he propounded later on,
+were ascribed to quick political evolution&mdash;but were not taken as
+symptoms of a settled mind. He seemed a pacifist when his pride revolted
+at the idea of settling any intelligible question by an appeal to
+violence, and a semi-militarist when, having in his own opinion created
+a perfectly safe and bloodless peace guarantee in the shape of the
+League of Nations, he agreed to safeguard it by a military compact which
+sapped its foundation. He owed his re-election for a second term partly,
+it was alleged, to the belief that during the first he had kept his
+country out of the war despite the endeavors of some of its eminent
+leaders to bring it in; yet when firmly seated in the saddle, he
+followed the leaders whom he had theretofore with-stood and obliged the
+nation to fight.</p>
+
+<p>As chief of the great country, his domestic critics add, which had just
+turned victory's scale in favor of the Allies, Mr. Wilson saw a superb
+opportunity to hitch his wagon to a star, and now for the first time he
+made a determined bid for the leadership of the world. Here the idealist
+showed himself at his best. But by the way of preparation he asked the
+nation at the elections to refuse their votes to his political
+opponents, despite the fact that they were loyally supporting his
+policy, and to return only men of his own party, and in order to silence
+their misgivings he declared that to elect Republican Senators would be
+to repudiate the administration of the President of the United States at
+a critical conjuncture. This was urged against him as the inexpiable
+sin. The electors, however, sent his political opponents to the Senate,
+whereupon the President organized his historic visit to Europe. It might
+have become a turning-point in the world's history had he transformed
+his authority and prestige into the driving-power requisite to embody
+his beneficent scheme. But he wasted the opportunity for lack of moral
+courage. Thus far American criticism. But the peoples of Europe ignored
+the estimates of the President made by his fellow-countrymen, who, as
+such, may be forgiven for failing to appreciate his apostleship, or set
+the full value on his humanitarian strivings. The war-weary masses
+judged him not by what he had achieved or attempted in the past, but by
+what he proposed to do in the future. And measured by this standard, his
+spiritual statue grew to legendary proportions.</p>
+
+<p>Europe, when the President touched its shores, was as clay ready for the
+creative potter. Never before were the nations so eager to follow a
+Moses who would take them to the long-promised land where wars are
+prohibited and blockades unknown. And to their thinking he was that
+great leader. In France men bowed down before him with awe and
+affection. Labor leaders in Paris told me that they shed tears of joy in
+his presence, and that their comrades would go through fire and water to
+help him to realize his noble schemes.<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56" href="#Footnote_56_56" >[56]</a> To the working classes in
+Italy his name was a heavenly clarion at the sound of which the earth
+would be renewed. The Germans regarded him and his humane doctrine as
+their sheet-anchor of safety. The fearless Herr Muehlon said, &quot;If
+President Wilson were to address the Germans, and pronounce a severe
+sentence upon them, they would accept it with resignation and without a
+murmur and set to work at once.&quot; In German-Austria his fame was that of
+a savior, and the mere mention of his name brought balm to the suffering
+and surcease of sorrow to the afflicted. A touching instance of this
+which occurred in the Austrian capital, when narrated to the President,
+moved him to tears. There were some five or six thousand Austrian
+children in the hospitals at Vienna who, as Christmas was drawing near,
+were sorely in need of medicaments and much else. The head of the
+American Red Cross took up their case and persuaded the Americans in
+France to send two million dollars' worth of medicaments to Vienna.
+These were duly despatched, and had got as far as Berne, when the French
+authorities, having got wind of the matter, protested against this
+premature assistance to infant enemies on grounds which the other
+Allies had to recognize as technically tenable, and the medicaments were
+ordered back to France from Berne. Thereupon Doctor Ferries, of the
+International Red Cross, became wild with indignation and laid the
+matter before the Swiss government, which undertook to send some
+medicaments to the children, while the Americans were endeavoring to
+move the French to allow at least some of the remedies to go through.
+The children in the hospitals, when told that they must wait, were
+bright and hopeful. &quot;It will be all right,&quot; some of them exclaimed.
+&quot;Wilson is coming soon, and he will bring us everything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thus Mr. Wilson had become a transcendental hero to the European
+proletarians, who in their homely way adjusted his mental and moral
+attributes to their own ideal of the latter-day Messiah. His legendary
+figure, half saint, half revolutionist, emerged from the transparent
+haze of faith, yearning, and ignorance, as in some ecstatic vision. In
+spite of his recorded acts and utterances the mythopeic faculty of the
+peoples had given itself free scope and created a messianic democrat
+destined to free the lower orders, as they were called, in each state
+from the shackles of capitalism, legalized thraldom, and crushing
+taxation, and each nation from sanguinary warfare. Truly, no human being
+since the dawn of history has ever yet been favored with such a superb
+opportunity. Mr. Wilson might have made a gallant effort to lift society
+out of the deep grooves into which it had sunk, and dislodge the secular
+obstacles to the enfranchisement and transfiguration of the human race.
+At the lowest it was open to him to become the center of a countless
+multitude, the heart of their hearts, the incarnation of their noblest
+thought, on condition that he scorned the prudential motives of
+politicians, burst through the barriers of the old order, and deployed
+all his energies and his full will-power in the struggle against sordid
+interests and dense prejudice. But he was cowed by obstacles which his
+will lacked the strength to surmount, and instead of receiving his
+promptings from the everlasting ideals of mankind and the inspiriting
+audacities of his own highest nature and appealing to the peoples
+against their rulers, he felt constrained in the very interest of his
+cause to haggle and barter with the Scribes and the Pharisees, and ended
+by recording a pitiful answer to the most momentous problems couched in
+the impoverished phraseology of a political party.</p>
+
+<p>Many of his political friends had advised the President not to visit
+Europe lest the vast prestige and influence which he wielded from a
+distance should dwindle unutilized on close contact with the realists'
+crowd. Even the war-god Mars, when he descended into the ranks of the
+combatants on the Trojan side, was wounded by a Greek, and, screaming
+with pain, scurried back to Olympus with paling halo. But Mr. Wilson
+decided to preside and to direct the fashioning of his project, and to
+give Europe the benefit of his advice. He explained to Congress that he
+had expressed the ideals of the country for which its soldiers had
+consciously fought, had had them accepted &quot;as the substance of their own
+thoughts and purpose&quot; by the statesmen of the associated governments,
+and now, he concluded: &quot;I owe it to them to see to it, in so far as in
+me lies, that no false or mistaken interpretation is put upon them, and
+no possible effort omitted to realize them. It is now my duty to play my
+full part in making good what they offered their lives and blood to
+obtain. I can think of no call to service which could transcend
+this.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57" href="#Footnote_57_57" >[57]</a> No intention could well be more praiseworthy.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after the _George Washington_, flying the presidential flag, had
+steamed out of the Bay on her way to Europe, the United Press received
+from its correspondent on board, who was attached to Mr. Wilson's
+person, a message which invigorated the hopes of the world and evoked
+warm outpourings of the seared soul of suffering man in gratitude toward
+the bringer of balm. It began thus: &quot;The President sails for Europe to
+uphold American ideals, and literally to fight for his Fourteen Points.
+The President, at the Peace Table, will insist on the freedom of the
+seas and a general disarmament.... The seas, he holds, ought to be
+guarded by the whole world.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Since then the world knows what to think of the literal fighting at the
+Peace Table. The freedom of the seas was never as much as alluded to at
+the Peace Table, for the announcement of Mr. Wilson's militant
+championship brought him a wireless message from London to the effect
+that that proposal, at all events, must be struck out of his program if
+he wished to do business with Britain. And without a fight or a
+remonstrance the President struck it out. The Fourteen Points were not
+discussed at the Conference.<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58" href="#Footnote_58_58" >[58]</a> One may deplore, but one cannot
+misunderstand, what happened. Mr. Wilson, too, had his own fixed aim to
+attain: intent on associating his name with a grandiose humanitarian
+monument, he was resolved not to return to his country without some sort
+of a covenant of the new international life. He could not afford to go
+home empty-handed. Therein lay his weakness and the source of his
+failure. For whenever his attitude toward the Great Powers was taken to
+mean, &quot;Unless you give me my Covenant, you cannot have your Treaty,&quot; the
+retort was ready: &quot;Without our Treaty there will be no Covenant.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Like Dejoces, the first king of the Medes, who, having built his palace
+at Ecbatana, surrounded it with seven walls and permanently withdrew his
+person from the gaze of his subjects, Mr. Wilson in Paris admitted to
+his presence only the authorized spokesmen of states and causes, and not
+all of these. He declined to receive persons who thought they had a
+claim to see him, and he received others who were believed to have none.
+During his sojourn in Paris he took many important Russian affairs in
+hand after having publicly stated that no peace could be stable so long
+as Russia was torn by internal strife. And as familiarity with Russian
+conditions was not one of his accomplishments, he presumably needed
+advice and help from those acquainted with them. Now a large number of
+Russians, representing all political parties and four governments, were
+in Paris waiting to be consulted. But between January and May not one of
+them was ever asked for information or counsel. Nay, more, those who
+respectfully solicited an audience were told to wait. In the meanwhile
+men unacquainted with the country and people were sent by Mr. Wilson to
+report on the situation, and to begin by obtaining the terms of an
+acceptable treaty from the Bolshevik government.</p>
+
+<p>The first plenipotentiary of one of the principal lesser states was for
+months refused an audience, to the delight of his political adversaries,
+who made the most of the circumstance at home. An eminent diplomatist
+who possessed considerable claims to be vouchsafed an interview was put
+off from week to week, until at last, by dint of perseverance, as it
+seemed to him, the President consented to see him. The diplomatist,
+pleased at his success, informed a friend that the following Wednesday
+would be the memorable day. &quot;But are you not aware,&quot; asked the friend,
+&quot;that on that day the President will be on the high seas on his way back
+to the United States?&quot; He was not aware of it. But when he learned that
+the audience had been deliberately fixed for a day when Mr. Wilson would
+no longer be in France he felt aggrieved.</p>
+
+<p>In Italy the President's progress was a veritable triumph. Emperors and
+kings had roused no such enthusiasm. One might fancy him a deity
+unexpectedly discovered under the outward appearance of a mortal and now
+being honored as the god that he was by ecstatic worshipers. Everything
+he did was well done, everything he said was nobly conceived and worthy
+of being treasured up. In these dispositions a few brief months wrought
+a vast difference.</p>
+
+<p>In this respect an instructive comparison might be made between Tsar
+Alexander I at the Vienna Congress and the President of the United
+States at the Conference of Paris. The Russian monarch arrived in the
+Austrian capital with the halo of a Moses focusing the hopes of all the
+peoples of Europe. His reputation for probity, public spirit, and lofty
+aspirations had won for him the good-will and the anticipatory blessings
+of war-weary nations. He, too, was a mystic, believed firmly in occult
+influences, so firmly indeed that he accepted the fitful guidance of an
+ecstatic lady whose intuition was supposed to transcend the sagacity of
+professional statesmen. And yet the Holy Alliance was the supreme
+outcome of his endeavors, as the League of Nations was that of Mr.
+Wilson's. In lieu of universal peace all eastern Europe was still
+warring and revolting in September and the general outlook was
+disquieting. The disheartening effect of the contrast between the
+promise and the achievement of the American statesman was felt
+throughout the world. But Mr. Wilson has the solace to know that people
+hardly ever reach their goal&mdash;though they sometimes advance fairly near
+to it. They either die on the way or else it changes or they do.</p>
+
+<p>It was doubtless a noble ambition that moved the Prime Ministers of the
+Great Powers and the chief of the North American Republic to give their
+own service to the Conference as heads of their respective missions. For
+they considered themselves to be the best equipped for the purpose, and
+they were certainly free from such prejudices as professional traditions
+and a confusing knowledge of details might be supposed to engender. But
+in almost every respect it was a grievous mistake and the source of
+others still more grievous. True, in his own particular sphere each of
+them had achieved what is nowadays termed greatness. As a war leader Mr.
+Lloyd George had been hastily classed with Marlborough and Chatham, M.
+Clemenceau compared to Danton, and Mr. Wilson set apart in a category to
+himself. But without questioning these journalistic certificates of fame
+one must admit that all three plenipotentiaries were essentially
+politicians, old parliamentary hands, and therefore expedient-mongers
+whose highest qualifications for their own profession were drawbacks
+which unfitted them for their self-assumed mission. Of the concrete
+world which they set about reforming their knowledge was amazingly
+vague. &quot;Frogs in the pond,&quot; says the Japanese proverb, &quot;know naught of
+the ocean.&quot; There was, of course, nothing blameworthy in their
+unacquaintanceship with the issues, but only in the offhandedness with
+which they belittled its consequences. Had they been conversant with the
+subject or gifted with deeper insight, many of the things which seemed
+particularly clear to them would have struck them as sheer inexplicable,
+and among these perhaps their own leadership of the world-parliament.</p>
+
+<p>What they lacked, however, might in some perceptible degree have been
+supplied by enlisting as their helpers men more happily endowed than
+themselves. But they deliberately chose mediocrities. It is a mark of
+genial spirits that they are well served, but the plenipotentiaries of
+the Conference were not characterized by it. Away in the background some
+of them had familiars or casual prompters to whose counsels they were
+wont to listen, but many of the adjoints who moved in the limelight of
+the world-stage were gritless and pithless.</p>
+
+<p>As the heads of the principal governments implicitly claimed to be the
+authorized spokesmen of the human race and endowed with unlimited
+powers, it is worth noting that this claim was boldly challenged by the
+peoples' organs in the press. Nearly all the journals read by the masses
+objected from the first to the dictatorship of the group of Premiers,
+Mr. Wilson being excepted. &quot;The modern parasite,&quot; wrote a respectable
+democratic newspaper,<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59" href="#Footnote_59_59" >[59]</a> &quot;is the politician. Of all the privileged
+beings who have ever governed us he is the worst. In that, however,
+there is nothing surprising ... he is not only amoral, but incompetent
+by definition. And it is this empty-headed individual who is intrusted
+with the task of settling problems with the very rudiments of which he
+is unacquainted.&quot; Another French journal<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60" href="#Footnote_60_60" >[60]</a> wrote: &quot;In truth it is a
+misfortune that the leaders of the Conference are Cabinet chiefs, for
+each of them is obsessed by the carking cares of his domestic policy.
+Besides, the Paris Conference takes on the likeness of a lyrical drama
+in which there are only tenors. Now would even the most beautiful work
+in the world survive this excess of beauties?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The truth as revealed by subsequent facts would seem to be that each of
+the plenipotentiaries recognizing parliamentary success as the source of
+his power was obsessed by his own political problems and stimulated by
+his own immediate ends. As these ends, however incompatible with each
+other, were believed by each one to tend toward the general object, he
+worked zealously for their attainment. The consequences are notorious.
+M. Clemenceau made France the hub of the universe. Mr. Lloyd George
+harbored schemes which naturally identified the welfare of mankind with
+the hegemony of the English-speaking races. Signor Orlando was inspired
+by the &quot;sacred egotism&quot; which had actuated all Italian Cabinets since
+Italy entered the war, and President Wilson was burning to associate his
+name and also that of his country with the vastest and noblest
+enterprise inscribed in the annals of history. And each one moved over
+his own favorite route toward his own goal. It was an apt illustration
+of the Russian fable of the swan, the crab, and the pike being harnessed
+together in order to remove a load. The swan flew upward, the crab
+crawled backward, the pike made with all haste for the water, and the
+load remained where it was.</p>
+
+<p>A lesser but also a serious disadvantage of the delegation of government
+chiefs made itself felt in the procedure. Embarrassing delays were
+occasioned by the unavoidable absences of the principal delegates whom
+pressure of domestic politics called to their respective capitals, as
+well as by their tactics, and their colleagues profited by their absence
+for the sake of the good cause. Thus all Paris, as we saw, was aware
+that the European chiefs, whose faith in Wilsonian orthodoxy was still
+feeble at that time, were prepared to take advantage of the President's
+sojourn in Washington to speed up business in their own sense and to
+confront him on his return with accomplished facts. But when, on his
+return, he beheld their handiwork he scrapped it, and a considerable
+loss of time ensued for which the world has since had to pay very
+heavily.</p>
+
+<p>Again, when Premier Orlando was in Rome after Mr. Wilson's appeal to
+the Italian people, a series of measures was passed by the delegates in
+Paris affecting Italy, diminishing her importance at the Conference, and
+modifying the accepted interpretation of the Treaty of London. Some of
+these decisions had to be canceled when the Italians returned. These
+stratagems had an undesirable effect on the Italians.</p>
+
+<p>Not the least of the Premiers' disabilities lay in the circumstance that
+they were the merest novices in international affairs. Geography,
+ethnography, psychology, and political history were sealed books to
+them. Like the rector of Louvain University who told Oliver Goldsmith
+that, as he had become the head of that institution without knowing
+Greek, he failed to see why it should be taught there, the chiefs of
+state, having attained the highest position in their respective
+countries without more than an inkling of international affairs, were
+unable to realize the importance of mastering them or the impossibility
+of repairing the omission as they went along.</p>
+
+<p>They displayed their contempt for professional diplomacy and this
+feeling was shared by many, but they extended that sentiment to certain
+diplomatic postulates which can in no case be dispensed with, because
+they are common to all professions. One of them is knowledge of the
+terms of the problems to be solved. No conjuncture could have been less
+favorable for an experiment based on this theory. The general situation
+made a demand on the delegates for special knowledge and experience,
+whereas the Premiers and the President, although specialists in nothing,
+had to act as specialists in everything. Traditional diplomacy would
+have shown some respect for the law of causality. It would have sent to
+the Conference diplomatists more or less acquainted with the issues to
+be mooted and also with the mentality of the other negotiators, and it
+would have assigned to them a number of experts as advisers. It would
+have formed a plan similar to that proposed by the French authorities
+and rejected by the Anglo-Saxons. In this way at least the technical
+part of the task would have been tackled on right lines, the war would
+have been liquidated and normal relations quickly re-established among
+the belligerent states. It may be objected that this would have been a
+meager contribution to the new politico-social fabric. Undoubtedly it
+would, but, however meager, it would have been a positive gain. Possibly
+the first stone of a new world might have been laid once the ruins of
+the old were cleared away. But even this modest feat could not be
+achieved by amateurs working in desultory fashion and handicapped by
+their political parties at home. The resultant of their apparent
+co-operation was a sum in subtraction because dispersal or effort was
+unavoidably substituted for concentration.</p>
+
+<p>Whether one contemplates them in the light of their public acts or
+through the prism of gossip, the figures cut by the delegates of the
+Great Powers were pathetic. Giants in the parliamentary sphere, they
+shrank to the dimensions of dwarfs in the international. In matters of
+geography, ethnography, history, and international politics they were
+helplessly at sea, and the stories told of certain of their efforts to
+keep their heads above water while maintaining a simulacrum of dignity
+would have been amusing were the issues less momentous. &quot;Is it after
+Upper or Lower Silesia that those greedy Poles are hankering?&quot; one
+Premier is credibly reported to have asked some months after the Polish
+delegation had propounded and defended its claims and he had had time to
+familiarize himself with them. &quot;Please point out to me Dalmatia on the
+map,&quot; was another characteristic request, &quot;and tell me what connection
+there is between it and Fiume.&quot; One of the principal plenipotentiaries
+addressed a delegate who is an acquaintance of mine approximately as
+follows: &quot;I cannot understand the spokesmen of the smaller states. To me
+they seem stark mad. They single out a strip of territory and for no
+intelligible reason flock round it like birds of prey round a corpse on
+the field of battle. Take Silesia, for example. The Poles are clamoring
+for it as if the very existence of their country depended on their
+annexing it. The Germans are still more crazy about it. But for their
+eagerness I suppose there is some solid foundation. But how in Heaven's
+name do the Armenians come to claim it? Just think of it, the Armenians!
+The world has gone mad. No wonder France has set her foot down and
+warned them off the ground. But what does France herself want with it?
+What is the clue to the mystery?&quot; My acquaintance, in reply, pointed out
+as considerately as he could that Silesia was the province for which
+Poles and Germans were contending, whereas the Armenians were pleading
+for Cilicia, which is farther east, and were, therefore, frowned upon by
+the French, who conceive that they have a civilizing mission there and
+men enough to accomplish it.</p>
+
+<p>It is characteristic of the epoch, and therefore worthy of the
+historian's attention, that not only the members of the Conference, but
+also other leading statesmen of Anglo-Saxon countries, were wont to make
+a very little knowledge of peoples and countries go quite a far way. Two
+examples may serve to familiarize the reader with the phenomenon and to
+moderate his surprise at the defects of the world-dictators in Paris.
+One English-speaking statesman, dealing with the Italian government<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61" href="#Footnote_61_61" >[61]</a>
+and casting around for some effective way of helping the Italian people
+out of their pitiable economic plight, fancied he hit upon a felicitous
+expedient, which he unfolded as follows. &quot;I venture,&quot; he said, &quot;to
+promise that if you will largely increase your cultivation of bananas
+the people of my country will take them all. No matter how great the
+quantities, our market will absorb them, and that will surely make a
+considerable addition to your balance on the right side.&quot; At first the
+Italians believed he was joking. But finding that he really meant what
+he said, they ruthlessly revealed his idea to the nation under the
+heading, &quot;Italian bananas!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here is the other instance. During the war the Polish people was
+undergoing unprecedented hardships. Many of the poorer classes were
+literally perishing of hunger. A Polish commission was sent to an
+English-speaking country to interest the government and people in the
+condition of the sufferers and obtain relief. The envoys had an
+interview with a Secretary of State, who inquired to what port they
+intended to have the foodstuffs conveyed for distribution in the
+interior of Poland. They answered: &quot;We shall have them taken to Dantzig.
+There is no other way.&quot; The statesman reflected a little and then said:
+&quot;You may meet with difficulties. If you have them shipped to Dantzig you
+must of course first obtain Italy's permission. Have you got it?&quot; &quot;No.
+We had not thought of that. In fact, we don't yet see why Italy need be
+approached.&quot; &quot;Because it is Italy who has command of the Mediterranean,
+and if you want the transport taken to Dantzig it is the Italian
+government that you must ask!&quot;<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62" href="#Footnote_62_62" >[62]</a></p>
+
+<p>The delegates picked up a good deal of miscellaneous information about
+the various countries whose future they were regulating, and to their
+credit it should be said that they put questions to their informants
+without a trace of false pride. One of the two chief delegates wending
+homeward from a sitting at which M. Jules Cambon had spoken a good deal
+about those Polish districts which, although they contained a majority
+of Germans, yet belonged of right to Poland, asked the French delegate
+why he had made so many allusions to Frederick the Great. &quot;What had
+Frederick to do with Poland?&quot; he inquired. The answer was that the
+present German majority of the inhabitants was made up of colonists who
+had immigrated into the districts since the time of Frederick the Great
+and the partition of Poland. &quot;Yes, I see,&quot; exclaimed the statesman, &quot;but
+what had Frederick the Great to do with the partition of Poland?&quot; ... In
+the domain of ethnography there were also many pitfalls and accidents.
+During an official _expos&eacute;_ of the Oriental situation before the Supreme
+Council, one of the Great Four, listening to a narrative of Turkish
+misdeeds, heard that the Kurds had tortured and killed a number of
+defenseless women, children, and old men. He at once interrupted the
+speaker with the query: &quot;You now call them Kurds. A few minutes ago you
+said they were Turks. I take it that the Kurds and the Turks are the
+same people?&quot; Loath to embarrass one of the world's arbiters, the
+delegate respectfully replied, &quot;Yes, sir, they are about the same, but
+the worse of the two are the Kurds.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63" href="#Footnote_63_63" >[63]</a></p>
+
+<p>Great Britain's first delegate, with engaging candor sought to disarm
+criticism by frankly confessing in the House of Commons that he had
+never before heard of Teschen, about which such an extraordinary fuss
+was then being made, and by asking: &quot;How many members of the House have
+ever heard of Teschen? Yet,&quot; he added significantly, &quot;Teschen very
+nearly produced an angry conflict between two allied states.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64" href="#Footnote_64_64" >[64]</a></p>
+
+<p>The circumstance that an eminent parliamentarian had never heard of
+problems that agitate continental peoples is excusable. Less so was his
+resolve, despite such a capital disqualification, to undertake the task
+of solving those problems single-handed, although conscious that the
+fate of whole peoples depended on his succeeding. It is no adequate
+justification to say that he could always fall back upon special
+commissions, of which there was no lack at the Conference. Unless he
+possessed a safe criterion by which to assess the value of the
+commissions' conclusions, he must needs himself decide the matter
+arbitrarily. And the delegates, having no such criterion, pronounced
+very arbitrary judgments on momentous issues. One instance of this
+turned upon Poland's claims to certain territories incorporated in
+Germany, which were referred to a special commission under the
+presidency of M. Cambon. Commissioners were sent to the country to study
+the matter on the spot, where they had received every facility for
+acquainting themselves with it. After some weeks the commission reported
+in favor of the Polish claim with unanimity. But Mr. Lloyd George
+rejected their conclusions and insisted on having the report sent back
+to them for reconsideration. Again the commissioners went over the
+familiar ground, but felt obliged to repeat their verdict anew. Once
+more, however, the British Premier demurred, and such was his tenacity
+that, despite Mr. Wilson's opposition, the final decision of the
+Conference reversed that of the commission and non-suited the Poles. By
+what line of argument, people naturally asked, did the first British
+delegate come to that conclusion? That he knew more about the matter
+than the special Inter-Allied commission is hardly to be supposed.
+Indeed, nobody assumed that he was any better informed on that subject
+than about Teschen. The explanation put in circulation by interested
+persons was that, like Socrates, he had his own familiar demon to prompt
+him, who, like all such spirits, chose to flourish, like the violet, in
+the shade. That this source of light was accessible to the Prime
+Minister may, his apologists hold, one day prove a boon to the peoples
+whose fate was thus being spun in darkness and seemingly at haphazard.
+Possibly. But in the meanwhile it was construed as an affront to their
+intelligence and a violation of the promise made to them of &quot;open
+covenants openly arrived at.&quot; The press asked why the information
+requisite for the work had not been acquired in advance as these
+semi-mystical ways of obtaining it commended themselves to nobody.
+Wholly mystical were the methods attributed to one or other of the men
+who were preparing the advent of the new era. For superstition of
+various kinds was supposed to be as well represented at the Paris
+Conference as at the Congress of Vienna. Characteristic of the epoch was
+the gravity with which individuals otherwise well balanced exercised
+their ingenuity in finding out the true relation of the world's peace to
+certain lucky numbers. For several events connected with the Conference
+the thirteenth day of the month was deliberately, and some occultists
+added felicitously, chosen. It was also noticed that an effort was made
+by all the delegates to have the Allies' reply to the German
+counter-proposals presented on the day of destiny, Friday, June 13th.
+When it miscarried a flutter was caused in the dovecotes of the
+illuminated. The failure was construed as an inauspicious omen and it
+caused the spirits of many to droop. The principal clairvoyante of
+Paris, Madame N&mdash;&mdash;, who plumes herself on being the intermediary
+between the Fates that rule and some of their earthly executors, was
+consulted on the subject, one knows not with what result.<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65" href="#Footnote_65_65" >[65]</a> It was
+given out, however, as the solemn utterance of the oracle in vogue that
+Mr. Wilson's enterprise was weighted with original sin; he had made one
+false step before his arrival in Europe, and that had put everything out
+of gear. By enacting fourteen commandments he had countered the magic
+charm of his lucky thirteen. One of the fourteen, it was soothsaid, must
+therefore be omitted&mdash;it might be, say, that of open covenants openly
+arrived at, or the freedom of the seas&mdash;in a word, any one so long as
+the mystic number thirteen remained intact. But should that be
+impossible, seeing that the Fourteen Points had already become
+house-hold words to all nations and peoples, then it behooved the
+President to number the last of his saving points 13a.<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66" href="#Footnote_66_66" >[66]</a></p>
+
+<p>This odd mixture of the real and the fanciful&mdash;a symptom, as the
+initiated believed, of a mood of fine spiritual exaltation&mdash;met with
+little sympathy among the impatient masses whose struggle for bare life
+was growing ever fiercer. Stagnation held the business world, prices
+were rising to prohibitive heights, partly because of the dawdling of
+the world's conclave; hunger was stalking about the ruined villages of
+the northern departments of France, destructive wars were being waged in
+eastern Europe, and thousands of Christians were dying of hunger in
+Bessarabia.<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67" href="#Footnote_67_67" >[67]</a> Epigrammatic strictures and winged words barbed with
+stinging satire indicated the feelings of the many. And the fact remains
+on record that streaks of the mysticism that buoyed up Alexander I at
+the Congress of Vienna, and is supposed to have stimulated Nicholas II
+during the first world-parliament at The Hague, were noticeable from
+time to time in the environment of the Paris Conference. The disclosure
+of these elements of superstition was distinctly harmful and might have
+been hindered easily by the system of secrecy and censorship which
+effectively concealed matters much less mischievous.</p>
+
+<p>The position of the plenipotentiaries was unenviable at best and they
+well deserve the benefit of extenuating circumstances. For not even a
+genius can efficiently tackle problems with the elements of which he
+lacks acquaintanceship, and the mass of facts which they had to deal
+with was sheer unmanageable. It was distressing to watch them during
+those eventful months groping and floundering through a labyrinth of
+obstacles with no Ariadne clue to guide their tortuous course, and
+discovering that their task was more intricate than they had imagined.
+The ironic domination of temper and circumstance over the fitful
+exertions of men struggling with the partially realized difficulties of
+a false position led to many incongruities upon which it would be
+ungracious to dwell. One of them, however, which illustrates the
+situation, seems almost incredible. It is said to have occurred in
+January. According to the current narrative, soon after the arrival of
+President Wilson in Paris, he received from a French publicist named
+M.B. a long and interesting memorandum about the island of Corsica,
+recounting the history, needs, and aspirations of the population as well
+as the various attempts they had made to regain their independence, and
+requesting him to employ his good offices at the Conference to obtain
+for them complete autonomy. To this demand M.B. is said to have received
+a reply<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68" href="#Footnote_68_68" >[68]</a> to the effect that the President &quot;is persuaded that this
+question will form the subject of a thorough examination by the
+competent authorities of the Conference&quot; Corsica, the birthplace of
+Napoleon, and as much an integral part of France as the Isle of Man is
+of England, seeking to slacken the ties that link it to the Republic and
+receiving a promise that the matter would be carefully considered by the
+delegates sounds more like a mystification than a sober statement of
+fact. The story was sent to the newspapers for publication, but the
+censor very wisely struck it out.</p>
+
+<p>These and kindred occurrences enable one better to appreciate the
+motives which prompted the delegates to shroud their conversations and
+tentative decisions in a decorous veil of secrecy.</p>
+
+<p>It is but fair to say that the enterprise to which they set their hands
+was the vastest that ever tempted lofty ambitions since the
+tower-builders of Babel strove to bring heaven within reach of the
+earth. It transcended the capacity of the contemporary world's greatest
+men.<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69" href="#Footnote_69_69" >[69]</a> It was a labor for a wonder-worker in the pristine days of
+heroes. But although to solve even the main problems without residue was
+beyond the reach of the most genial representatives of latter-day
+statecraft, it needed only clearness of conception, steadiness of
+purpose, and the proper adjustment of means to ends, to begin the work
+on the right lines and give it an impulse that might perhaps carry it to
+completion in the fullness of time.</p>
+
+<p>But even these postulates were wanting. The eminent parliamentarians
+failed to rise to the gentle height of average statecraft. They appeared
+in their new and august character of world-reformers with all the roots
+still clinging to them of the rank electoral soil from which they
+sprang. Their words alone were redolent of idealism, their deeds were
+too often marred by pettifogging compromises or childish
+blunders&mdash;constructive phrases and destructive acts. Not only had they
+no settled method of working, they lacked even a common proximate aim.
+For although they all employed the same phraseology when describing the
+objects for which their countries had fought and they themselves were
+ostensibly laboring, no two delegates attached the same ideas to the
+words they used. Yet, instead of candidly avowing this root-defect and
+remedying it, they were content to stretch the euphemistic terms until
+these covered conflicting conceptions and gratified the ears of every
+hearer. Thus, &quot;open covenants openly arrived at&quot; came to mean arbitrary
+ukases issued by a secret conclave, and &quot;the self-determination of
+peoples&quot; connoted implicit obedience to dictatorial decrees. The new
+result was a bewildering phantasmagoria.</p>
+
+<p>And yet it was professedly for the purpose of obviating such
+misunderstandings that Mr. Wilson had crossed the Atlantic. Having
+expressed in plain terms the ideals for which American soldiers had
+fought, and which became the substance of the thoughts and purposes of
+the associated statesmen, &quot;I owe it to them,&quot; he had said, &quot;to see to
+it, in so far as in me lies, that no false or mistaken interpretation is
+put upon them and no possible effort omitted to realize them.&quot; And that
+was the result achieved.</p>
+
+<p>No such juggling with words as went on at the Conference had been
+witnessed since the days of medieval casuistry. New meanings were
+infused into old terms, rendering the help of &quot;exegesis&quot; indispensable.
+Expressions like &quot;territorial equilibrium&quot; and &quot;strategic frontiers&quot;
+were stringently banished, and it is affirmed that President Wilson
+would wince and his expression change at the bare mention of these
+obnoxious symbols of the effete ordering which it was part of his
+mission to do away with forever. And yet the things signified by those
+words were preserved withal under other names. Nor could it well be
+otherwise. One can hardly conceive a durable state system in Europe
+under the new any more than the old dispensation without something that
+corresponds to equilibrium. An architect who should boastingly discard
+the law of gravitation in favor of a different theory would stand little
+chance of being intrusted with the construction of a palace of peace.
+Similarly, a statesman who, while proclaiming that the era of wars is
+not yet over, would deprive of strategic frontiers the pivotal states of
+Europe which are most exposed to sudden attack would deserve to find few
+disciples and fewer clients. Yet that was what Mr. Wilson aimed at and
+what some of his friends affirm he has achieved. His foreign colleagues
+re-echoed his dogmas after having emasculated them. It was instructive
+and unedifying to watch how each of the delegates, when his own
+country's turn came to be dealt with on the new lines, reversed his
+tactics and, sacrificing sound to substance, insisted on safeguards,
+relied on historic rights, invoked economic requirements, and appealed
+to common sense, but all the while loyally abjured &quot;territorial
+equilibrium&quot; and &quot;strategic guarantees.&quot; Hence the fierce struggles
+which MM. Orlando, Dmowski, Bratiano, Venizelos, and Makino had to carry
+on with the chief of that state which is the least interested in
+European affairs in order to obtain all or part of the territories which
+they considered indispensable to the security and well-being of their
+respective countries.</p>
+
+<p>At the outset Mr. Wilson stood for an ideal Europe of a wholly new and
+undefined type, which would have done away with the need for strategic
+frontiers. Its contours were vague, for he had no clear mental picture
+of the concrete Europe out of which it was to be fashioned. He spoke,
+indeed, and would fain have acted, as though the old Continent were like
+a thinly inhabited territory of North America fifty years ago,
+unencumbered by awkward survivals of the past and capable of receiving
+any impress. He seemingly took no account of its history, its peoples,
+or their interests and strivings. History shared the fate of Kolchak's
+government and the Ukraine; it was not recognized by the delegates. What
+he brought to Europe from America was an abstract idea, old and
+European, and at first his foreign colleagues treated it as such. Some
+of them had actually sneered at it, others had damned it with faint
+praise, and now all of them honestly strove to save their own countries'
+vital interests from its disruptive action while helping to apply it to
+their neighbors. Thus Britain, who at that time had no territorial
+claims to put forward, had her sea-doctrine to uphold, and she upheld it
+resolutely. Before he reached Europe the President was notified in plain
+terms that his theory of the freedom of the seas would neither be
+entertained nor discussed. Accordingly, he abandoned it without
+protest. It was then explained away as a journalistic misconception.
+That was the first toll paid by the American reformer in Europe, and it
+spelled failure to his entire scheme, which was one and indivisible. It
+fell to my lot to record the payment of the tribute and the abandonment
+of that first of the fourteen commandments. The mystic thirteen
+remained. But soon afterward another went by the board. Then there were
+twelve. And gradually the number dwindled.</p>
+
+<p>This recognition of hard realities was a bitter disappointment to all
+the friends of the spiritual and social renovation of the world. It was
+a spectacle for cynics. It rendered a frank return to the ancient system
+unavoidable and brought grist to the mill of the equilibrists. And yet
+the conclusion was shriked. But even the tough realities might have been
+made to yield a tolerable peace if they had been faced squarely. If the
+new conception could not be realized at once, the old one should have
+been taken back into favor provisionally until broader foundations could
+be laid, but it must be one thing or the other. From the political angle
+of vision at which the European delegates insisted on placing
+themselves, the Old World way of tackling the various problems was alone
+admissible. Their program was coherent and their reasoning strictly
+logical. The former included strategic frontiers and territorial
+equilibrium. Doubtless this angle of vision was narrow, the survey it
+allowed was inadequate, and the results attainable ran the risk of being
+ultimately thrust aside by the indignant peoples. For the world problem
+was not wholly nor even mainly political. Still, the method was
+intelligible and the ensuing combinations would have hung coherently
+together. They would have satisfied all those&mdash;and they were many&mdash;who
+believed that the second decade of the twentieth century differs in no
+essential respect from the first and that latter-day world problems may
+be solved by judicious territorial redistribution. But even that
+conception was not consistently acted on. Deviations were permitted here
+and insisted upon there, only they were spoken of unctuously as
+sacrifices incumbent on the lesser states to the Fourteen Points. For
+the delegates set great store by their reputation for logic and
+coherency. Whatever other charges against the Conference might be
+tolerated, that of inconsistency was bitterly resented, especially by
+Mr. Wilson. For a long while he contended that he was as true to his
+Fourteen Points as is the needle to the pole. It was not until after his
+return to Washington, in the summer, that he admitted the perturbations
+caused by magnetic currents&mdash;sympathy for France he termed them.</p>
+
+<p>The effort of imagination required to discern consistency in such of the
+Council's decisions as became known from time to time was so far beyond
+the capacity of average outsiders that the ugly phrase &quot;to make the
+world safe for hypocrisy&quot; was early coined, uttered, and propagated.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46" href="#FNanchor_46_46"> [46]</a> Cf. <i>Le Temps</i>, May 23, 1919. It is an adaptation of the inscription over
+the Pantheon, &quot;Aux grands hommes, la Patrie reconnaissante.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47" href="#FNanchor_47_47"> [47]</a> <i>The Daily Mail</i>, April 25, 1919 (Paris edition).</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48" href="#FNanchor_48_48"> [48]</a> In Germany.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49" href="#FNanchor_49_49"> [49]</a> General P&eacute;tain is said to have rejected the suggestion.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50" href="#FNanchor_50_50"> [50]</a> Cf. <i>Bulletin des Droits de l'Homme</i>, 19&egrave;me ann&eacute;e, p.
+461.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51" href="#FNanchor_51_51"> [51]</a> It was either Friday, the 4th, or Saturday, the 5th of
+July.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52" href="#FNanchor_52_52"> [52]</a> At the end of August, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53" href="#FNanchor_53_53"> [53]</a> One delegate from a poor and friendless country had to
+take the maps of a rival state and retouch them in accordance with the
+ethnographical data, which he considered alone correct.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54" href="#FNanchor_54_54"> [54]</a> <i>L'Homme Enchatn&eacute;</i>, December 14, 1914.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55" href="#FNanchor_55_55"> [55]</a> &quot;With its causes and objects we have no concern.&quot; Speech
+delivered by Mr. Wilson before the League to Enforce Peace in Washington
+on May 24, 1916.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56" href="#FNanchor_56_56"> [56]</a> The testimony of a leading French press organ is worth
+reproducing here: &quot;La situation du Pr&eacute;sident Wilson dans nos d&eacute;mocraties
+est magnifique, souveraine et extr&ecirc;mement p&eacute;rilleuse. On ne conna&icirc;t pas
+d'hommes, dans les temps contemporains, ayant eu plus d'autorit&eacute; et de
+puissance; la popularit&eacute; lui a donn&eacute; ce que le droit divin ne conf&eacute;rait
+pas toujours aux monarques h&eacute;r&eacute;ditaires. En revanche et par le fait du
+choc en retour, sa responsabilit&eacute; est sup&eacute;rieure &agrave; celle du prince le
+plus absolu. S'il r&eacute;ussit &agrave; organiser le monde d'apr&egrave;s ses r&ecirc;ves, sa
+gloire dominera les plus hautes gloires; mais il faut dire hardiment que
+s'il &eacute;chouait il plongerait le monde dans un chaos dont le bolchevisme
+russe ne nous offre qu'une faible image; et sa responsabilit&eacute; devant la
+conscience humaine d&eacute;passerait ce que peut supporter un simple mortel.
+Redoutable alternative!&quot;&mdash;Cf. <i>Le Figaro</i>, February 10, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57" href="#FNanchor_57_57"> [57]</a> From Mr. Wilson's address to Congress read on December 2,
+1918. Cf. <i>The Times</i>, December 4, 1918.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58" href="#FNanchor_58_58"> [58]</a> Cf. Secretary Lansing's evidence before the Senate Foreign
+Relations Committee, <i>The Chicago Tribune</i>, August 27, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59" href="#FNanchor_59_59"> [59]</a> <i>La D&eacute;mocratie Nouvelle</i>, May 27, 1919</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60" href="#FNanchor_60_60"> [60]</a> <i>Le Figaro</i>, March 26, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61" href="#FNanchor_61_61"> [61]</a> Both of them occurred before the armistice, but during the
+war.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62" href="#FNanchor_62_62"> [62]</a> For the accuracy of this and the preceding story I vouch
+absolutely. I have the names of persons, places, and authorities, which
+are superfluous here.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63" href="#FNanchor_63_63"> [63]</a> The Kurds are members of the great Indo-European family to
+which the Greeks, Italians, Celts, Teutons, Slavs, Hindus, Persians, and
+Afghans belong, whereas the Turks are a branch of a wholly different
+stock, the Ural-Altai group, of which the Mongols, Turks, Tartars,
+Finns, and Magyars are members.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64" href="#FNanchor_64_64"> [64]</a> April 16, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65" href="#FNanchor_65_65"> [65]</a> Madame N&mdash;&mdash; showed a friend of mine an autograph letter
+which she claims to have received from one of her clients, &quot;a world's
+famous man.&quot; I was several times invited to inspect it at the
+clairvoyante's abode, or at my own, if I preferred.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66" href="#FNanchor_66_66"> [66]</a> Articles on the subject appeared in the French press. To
+the best of my recollection there was one in _Bonsoir_.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67" href="#FNanchor_67_67"> [67]</a> The American Red Cross buried sixteen hundred of them in
+August, 1919. _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 30, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68" href="#FNanchor_68_68"> [68]</a> The reply, of which I possess what was given to me as a
+copy, is dated Paris, January 9, 1919, and is in French.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69" href="#FNanchor_69_69"> [69]</a> Imagine, for instance, the condition of mind into which
+the following day's work must have thrown the American statesman, beset
+as he was with political worries of his own. The extract quoted is taken
+from <i>The Daily Mail</i> of April 18, 1919 (Paris edition).
+</p>
+<blockquote><p>President Wilson had a busy day yesterday, as the following list of
+engagements shows:<br />
+11 A.M. Dr. Wellington Koo, to present the Chinese Delegation to the
+Peace Conference.<br />
+11.10 A.M. Marquis de Vogu&eacute; had a delegation of seven others,
+representing the Congr&egrave;s Fran&ccedil;ais, to present their view as to the
+disposition of the left bank of the Rhine.<br />
+11.30 A.M. Assyrian and Chaldean Delegation, with a message from the
+Assyrian-Chaldean nation.<br />
+11.45 A.M. Dalmatian Delegation, to present to the President the result
+of the plebiscite of that part of Dalmatia occupied by Italians.<br />
+<i>Noon</i>. M. Bucquet, Charg&eacute; d'Affaires of San Marino, to convey the
+action of the Grand Council of San Marino, conferring on the President
+Honorary Citizenship in the Republic of San Marino.<br />
+12.10 P.M. M. Colonder, Swiss Minister of Foreign Affairs.<br />
+12.20 P.M. Miss Rose Schneiderman and Miss Mary Anderson, delegates of
+the National Women's Trade Union League of the United States.<br />
+12.30 P.M. The Patriarch of Constantinople, the head of the Orthodox
+Eastern Church.<br />
+12.45 P.M. Essad Pasha, delegate of Albania, to present the claims of
+Albania.<br />
+1 P.M. M. M.L. Coromilas, Greek Minister at Rome, to pay his respects.<br />
+<i>Luncheon</i>. Mr. Newton D. Baker, Secretary for War.
+4 P.M. Mr. Herbert Hoover.<br />
+4.15 P.M. M. Bratiano, of the Rumanian Delegation.<br />
+4.30 P.M. Dr. Affonso Costa, former Portuguese Minister, Portuguese
+Delegate to the Peace Conference.<br />
+4.45 P.M. Boghos Nubar Pasha, president of the Armenian National
+Delegation, accompanied by M.A. Aharoman and Professor A. Der Hagopian,
+of Robert College.<br />
+5.15 P.M. M. Pasitch, of the Serbian Delegation.<br />
+5.30 P.M. Mr. Frank Walsh, of the Irish-American Delegation.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV" />IV</h3>
+
+<h3>CENSORSHIP AND SECRECY</h3>
+
+
+<p>Never was political veracity in Europe at a lower
+ebb than during the Peace Conference. The blinding
+dust of half-truths cunningly mixed with falsehood
+and deliberately scattered with a lavish hand, obscured
+the vision of the people, who were expected to adopt or
+acquiesce in the judgments of their rulers on the various
+questions that arose. Four and a half years of continuous
+and deliberate lying for victory had disembodied the
+spirit of veracity and good faith throughout the world of
+politics. Facts were treated as plastic and capable of
+being shaped after this fashion or that, according to the
+aim of the speaker or writer. Promises were made, not
+because the things promised were seen to be necessary
+or desirable, but merely in order to dispose the public
+favorably toward a policy or an expedient, or to create
+and maintain a certain frame of mind toward the enemies
+or the Allies. At elections and in parliamentary discourses,
+undertakings were given, some of which were
+known to be impossible of fulfilment. Thus the ministers
+in some of the Allied countries bound themselves to compel
+the Germans not only to pay full compensation for
+damage wantonly done, but also to defray the entire cost
+of the war.</p>
+
+<p>The notion that the enemy would thus make good all
+losses was manifestly preposterous. In a century the
+debt could not be wiped out, even though the Teutonic
+people could be got to work steadily and selflessly for the
+purpose. For their productivity would be unavailing if
+their victorious adversaries were indisposed to admit the
+products to their markets. And not only were the
+governments unwilling, but some of the peoples announced
+their determination to boycott German wares on their
+own initiative. None the less the nations were for
+months buoyed up with the baleful delusion that all their
+war expenses would be refunded by the enemy.<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70" href="#Footnote_70_70" >[70]</a></p>
+
+<p>It was not the governments only, however, who, after
+having for over four years colored and refracted the
+truth, now continued to twist and invent &quot;facts.&quot; The
+newspapers, with some honorable exceptions, buttressed
+them up and even outstripped them. Plausible unveracity
+thus became a patriotic accomplishment and a
+recognized element of politics. Parties and states employed
+it freely. Fiction received the hall-mark of truth
+and fancies were current as facts. Public men who had
+solemnly hazarded statements belied by subsequent
+events denied having ever uttered them. Never before
+was the baleful theory that error is helpful so systematically
+applied as during the war and the armistice. If the
+falsehoods circulated and the true facts suppressed were
+to be collected and published in a volume, one would
+realize the depth to which the standard of intellectual
+and moral integrity was lowered.<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71" href="#Footnote_71_71" >[71]</a></p>
+
+<p>The censorship was retained by the Great Powers during
+the Conference as a sort of soft cushion on which the self-constituted
+dispensers of Fate comfortably reposed. In
+Paris, where it was particularly severe and unreasoning,
+it protected the secret conclave from the harsh strictures
+of the outside world, concealing from the public, not only
+the incongruities of the Conference, but also many of the
+warnings of contemporary history. In the opinion of
+unbiased Frenchmen no such rigorous, systematic, and
+short-sighted repression of press liberty had been known
+since the Third Empire as was kept up under the rule of
+the great tribune whose public career had been one continuous
+campaign against every form of coercion. This
+twofold policy of secrecy on the part of the delegates and
+censorship on the part of the authorities proved incongruous
+as well as dangerous, for, upheld by the eminent
+statesmen who had laid down as part of the new gospel
+the principle of &quot;open covenants openly arrived at,&quot;
+it furnished the world with a fairly correct standard by
+which to interpret the entire phraseology of the latter-day
+reformers. Events showed that only by applying that
+criterion could the worth of their statements of fact and
+their promises of amelioration be gaged. And it soon
+became clear that most of their utterances like that about
+open covenants were to be construed according to the
+maxim of <i>lucus a non lucendo</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It was characteristic of the system that two American
+citizens were employed to read the cablegrams arriving
+from the United States to French newspapers. The
+object was the suppression of such messages as tended to
+throw doubt on the useful belief that the people of the
+great American Republic were solid behind their President,
+ready to approve his decisions and acts, and that his
+cherished Covenant, sure of ratification, would serve as a
+safe guarantee to all the states which the application
+of his various principles might leave strategically exposed.
+In this way many interesting items of intelligence from
+the United States were kept out of the newspapers, while
+others were mutilated and almost all were delayed. Protests
+were unavailing. Nor was it until several months
+were gone by that the French public became aware of the
+existence of a strong current of American opinion which
+favored a critical attitude toward Mr. Wilson's policy
+and justified misgivings as to the finality of his decisions.
+It was a sorry expedient and an unsuccessful one.</p>
+
+<p>On another occasion strenuous efforts are reported to
+have been made through the intermediary of President
+Wilson to delay the publication in the United States of a
+cablegram to a journal there until the Prime Minister of
+Britain should deliver a speech in the House of Commons.
+An accident balked these exertions and the message
+appeared.</p>
+
+<p>Publicity was none the less strongly advocated by the
+plenipotentiaries in their speeches and writings. These
+were as sign-posts pointing to roads along which they
+themselves were incapable of moving. By their own
+accounts they were inveterate enemies of secrecy and
+censorship. The President of the United States had
+publicly said that he &quot;could not conceive of anything
+more hurtful than the creation of a system of censorship
+that would deprive the people of a free republic such as
+ours of their undeniable right to criticize public officials.&quot;
+M. Clemenceau, who suffered more than most publicists
+from systematic repression, had changed the name of his
+newspaper from the <i>L'Homme Libre</i> to <i>L'Homme Encha&icirc;n&eacute;</i>,
+and had passed a severe judgment on &quot;those
+friends of liberty&quot; (the government) who tempered freedom
+with preventive repression measured out according
+to the mood uppermost at the moment.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72" href="#Footnote_72_72" >[72]</a> But as
+soon as he himself became head of the government
+he changed his tactics and called his journal <i>L'Homme
+Libre</i> again. In the Chamber he announced that &quot;publicity
+for the 'debates' of the Conference was generally
+favored,&quot; but in practice he rendered the system of gagging
+the press a byword in Europe. Drawing his own
+line of demarcation between the permissible and the
+illicit, he informed the Chamber that so long as the Conference
+was engaged on its arduous work &quot;it must not
+be said that the head of one government had put forward
+a proposal which was opposed by the head of another
+government.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73" href="#Footnote_73_73" >[73]</a> As though the disagreements, the bickerings,
+and the serious quarrels of the heads of the governments
+could long be concealed from the peoples whose
+spokesmen they were!</p>
+
+<p>That bargainings went on at the Conference which a
+plain-dealing world ought to be apprised of is the conclusion
+which every unbiased outsider will draw from the
+singular expedients resorted to for the purpose of concealing
+them. Before the Foreign Relations Committee
+in Washington, State-Secretary Lansing confessed that
+when, after the treaty had been signed, the French Senate
+called for the minutes of the proceedings on the Commission
+of the League of Nations, President Wilson telegraphed
+from Washington to the Peace Commission requesting
+it to withhold them. He further admitted that
+the only written report of the discussions in existence was
+left in Paris, outside the jurisdiction of the United States
+Senate. When questioned as to whether, in view of this
+system of concealment, the President's promise of &quot;open
+covenants openly arrived at&quot; could be said to have been
+honestly redeemed, Mr. Lansing answered, &quot;I consider
+that was carried out.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74" href="#Footnote_74_74" >[74]</a> It seems highly probable that in
+the same and only in the same sense will the Treaty and
+the Covenant be carried out in the spirit or the letter.</p>
+
+<p>During the fateful days of the Conference preventive
+censorship was practised with a degree of rigor equaled
+only by its senselessness. As late as the month of June,
+the columns of the newspapers were checkered with blank
+spaces. &quot;Scarcely a newspaper in Paris appears uncensored
+at present,&quot; one press organ wrote. &quot;Some papers
+protest, but protests are in vain.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75" href="#Footnote_75_75" >[75]</a></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Practically not a word as to the nature of the Peace
+terms that France regards as most vital to her existence
+appears in the French papers this morning,&quot; complained a
+journal at the time when even the Germans were fully informed
+of what was being enacted. On one occasion <i>Bonsoir</i>
+was seized for expressing the view that the Treaty embodied
+an Anglo-Saxon peace;<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76" href="#Footnote_76_76" >[76]</a> on another for reproducing an interview
+with Marshal Foch that had already appeared in a
+widely circulated Paris newspaper.<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77" href="#Footnote_77_77" >[77]</a> By way of justifying
+another of these seizures the French censor alleged that an
+article in the paper was deemed uncomplimentary to Mr. Lloyd
+George. The editor replied in a letter to the British
+Premier affirming that there was nothing in the article
+but what Mr. Lloyd George could and should be proud of.
+In fact, it only commended him &quot;for having served the
+interests of his country most admirably and having had
+precedence given to them over all others.&quot; The letter
+concluded: &quot;We are apprehensive that in the whole business
+there is but one thing truly uncomplimentary, and
+that is that the French censorship, for the purpose of
+strangling the French press, should employ your name, the
+name of him who abolished censorship many weeks ago.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78" href="#Footnote_78_78" >[78]</a></p>
+
+<p>Even when British journalists were dealing with matters
+as unlikely to cause trouble as a description of the historic
+proceedings at Versailles at which the Germans received
+the Peace Treaty, the censor held back their messages,
+from five o'clock in the afternoon till three the next morning.<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79" href="#Footnote_79_79" >[79]</a>
+Strange though it may seem, it was at first decided
+that no newspaper-men should be allowed to witness the
+formal handing of the Treaty to the enemy delegates!
+For it was deemed advisable in the interests of the world
+that even that ceremonial should be secret.<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80" href="#Footnote_80_80" >[80]</a> These singular
+methods were impressively illustrated and summarized
+in a cartoon representing Mr. Wilson as &quot;The new wrestling
+champion,&quot; throwing down his adversary, the press,
+whose garb, composed of journals, was being scattered in
+scraps of paper to the floor, and under the picture was the
+legend: &quot;It is forbidden to publish what Marshal Foch
+says. It is forbidden to publish what Mr. George thinks.
+It is forbidden to publish the Treaty of Peace with Germany.
+It is forbidden to publish what happened at ...
+and to make sure that nothing else will be published, the
+censor systematically delays the transmission of every
+telegram.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81" href="#Footnote_81_81" >[81]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the Chamber the government was adjured to suppress
+the institution of censorship once the Treaty was
+signed by the Germans, and Ministers were reminded of
+the diatribes which they had pronounced against that
+institution in the years of their ambitions and strivings.
+In vain Deputies described and deplored the process of
+demoralization that was being furthered by the methods
+of the government. &quot;In the provinces as well as in the
+capital the journals that displease are seized, eavesdroppers
+listen to telephonic conversations, the secrets
+of private letters are violated. Arrangements are made
+that certain telegrams shall arrive too late, and spies are
+delegated to the most private meetings. At a recent
+gathering of members of the National Press, two spies
+were surprised, and another was discovered at the Federation
+of the Radical Committees of the Oise.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82" href="#Footnote_82_82" >[82]</a> But
+neither the signature of the Treaty nor its ratification by
+Germany occasioned the slightest modification in the system
+of restrictions. Paris continued in a state of siege
+and the censors were the busiest bureaucrats in the capital.</p>
+
+<p>One undesirable result of this r&eacute;gime of keeping the
+public in the dark and indoctrinating it in the views always
+narrow, and sometimes mischievous, which the authorities
+desired it to hold, was that the absurdities which were
+allowed to appear with the hall-mark of censorship were
+often believed to emanate directly from the government.
+Britons and Americans versed in the books of the New
+Testament were shocked or amused when told that the
+censor had allowed the following passage to appear in an
+eloquent speech delivered by the ex-Premier, M. Painlev&eacute;:
+&quot;As Hall Caine, the great American poet, has put it, 'O
+death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?'&quot;<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83" href="#Footnote_83_83" >[83]</a></p>
+
+<p>Every conceivable precaution was taken against the
+leakage of information respecting what was going on in
+the Council of Ten. Notwithstanding this, the French
+papers contrived now and again, during the first couple
+of months, to publish scraps of news calculated to convey
+to the public a faint notion of the proceedings, until one
+day a Nationalist organ boldly announced that the British
+Premier had disagreed with the expert commission and
+with his own colleagues on the subject of Dantzig and
+refused to give way. This paragraph irritated the British
+statesman, who made a scene at the next meeting of the
+Council. &quot;There is,&quot; he is reported to have exclaimed,
+&quot;some one among us here who is unmindful of his obligations,&quot;
+and while uttering these and other much stronger
+words he eyed severely a certain mild individual who is
+said to have trembled all over during the philippic. He
+also launched out into a violent diatribe against various
+French journals which had criticized his views on Poland
+and his method of carrying them in council, and he went
+so far as to threaten to have the Conference transferred
+to a neutral country. In conclusion he demanded an
+investigation into the origin of the leakage of information
+and the adoption of severe disciplinary measures against
+the journalists who published the disclosures.<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84" href="#Footnote_84_84" >[84]</a> Thenceforward
+the Council of Ten was suspended and its place
+taken by a smaller and more secret conclave of Five,
+Four, or Three, according as the state of the plenipotentiaries'
+health, the requirements of their home politics, or
+their relations among themselves caused one or two to
+quit Paris temporarily.</p>
+
+<p>This measure insured relative secrecy, fostered rumors
+and gossip, and rendered criticism, whether helpful or
+captious, impossible. It also drove into outer darkness
+those Allied states whose interests were described as
+limited, as though the interests of Italy, whose delegate
+was nominally one of the privileged five, were not being
+treated as more limited still. But the point of this last
+criticism would be blunted if, as some French and Italian
+observers alleged, the deliberate aim of the &quot;representatives
+of the twelve million soldiers&quot; was indeed to enable
+peace to be concluded and the world resettled congruously
+with the conceptions and in harmony with the interests
+of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. But the supposition is
+gratuitous. There was no such deliberate plan. After
+the establishment of the Council of Five, Mr. Lloyd
+George and Mr. Wilson made short work of the reports
+of the expert commissions whenever these put forward
+reasoned views differing from their own. In a word, they
+became the world's supreme and secret arbiters without
+ceasing to be the official champions of the freedom of the
+lesser states and of &quot;open covenants openly arrived at.&quot;
+They constituted, so to say, the living synthesis of
+contradictories.</p>
+
+<p>The Council of Five then was a superlatively secret
+body. No secretaries were admitted to its gatherings and
+no official minutes of its proceedings were recorded.
+Communications were never issued to the press. It resembled
+a gang of benevolent conspirators, whose debates
+and resolutions were swallowed up by darkness and
+mystery. Even the most modest meeting of a provincial
+taxpayers' association keeps minutes of its discussions.
+The world parliament kept none. Eschewing traditional
+usages, as became na&iuml;ve shapers of the new world, and
+ignoring history, the Five, Four, or Three shut themselves
+up in a room, talked informally and disconnectedly without
+a common principle, program, or method, and separated
+again without having reached a conclusion. It is
+said that when one put forth an idea, another would
+comment upon it, a third might demur, and that sometimes
+an appeal would be made to geography, history, or
+ethnography, and as the data were not immediately
+accessible either competent specialists were sent for or the
+conversation took another turn. They very naturally
+refused to allow these desultory proceedings to be put on
+record, the only concession which they granted to the
+curiosity of future generations being the fixation of their
+own physical features by photography and painting.
+When the sitting was over, therefore, no one could be
+held to aught that he had said; there was nothing to bind
+any of the individual delegates to the views he had expressed,
+nor was there anything to mark the line to which
+the Council as a whole had advanced. Each one was free
+to dictate to his secretary his recollections of what had
+gone on, but as these <i>pr&eacute;cis</i> were given from memory they
+necessarily differed one from the other on various important
+points. On the following morning, or a few days
+later, the world's workers would meet again, and either
+begin at the beginning, traveling over the same familiar
+field, or else break fresh ground. In this way in one day
+they are said to have skimmed the problems of Spitzbergen,
+Morocco, Dantzig, and the feeding of the enemy populations,
+leaving each problem where they had found it.
+The moment the discussion of a contentious question approached
+a climax, the specter of disagreement deterred
+them from pursuing it to a conclusion, and they passed
+on quickly to some other question. And when, after
+months had been spent in these Penelopean labors, definite
+decisions respecting the peace had to be taken lest the
+impatient people should rise up and wrest matters into
+their own hands, the delegates referred the various problems
+which they had been unable to solve to the wisdom
+and tact of the future League of Nations.</p>
+
+<p>When misunderstandings arose as to what had been said
+or done it was the official translator, M. Paul Mantoux&mdash;one
+of the most brilliant representatives of Jewry at the
+Conference&mdash;who was wont to decide, his memory being
+reputed superlatively tenacious. In this way he attained
+the distinction of which his friends are justly proud,
+of being a living record&mdash;indeed, the sole available record&mdash;of
+what went on at the historic council. He was the recipient
+and is now the only repository of all the secrets of
+which the plenipotentiaries were so jealous, lest, being a
+kind of knowledge which is in verity power, it should be
+used one day for some dubious purpose. But M. Mantoux
+enjoyed the esteem and confidence not only of
+Mr. Wilson, but also of the British Prime Minister, who,
+it was generally believed, drew from his entertaining
+narratives and shrewd appreciations whatever information
+he possessed about French politics and politicians.
+It was currently affirmed that, being a man of method
+and foresight, M. Mantoux committed everything to
+writing for his own behoof. Doubts, however, were entertained
+and publicly expressed as to whether affairs of
+this magnitude, involving the destinies of the world,
+should have been handled in such secret and unbusiness-like
+fashion. But on the supposition that the general
+outcome, if not the preconceived aim, of the policy of the
+Anglo-Saxon plenipotentiaries was to confer the beneficent
+hegemony of the world upon its peoples, there could, it
+was argued, be no real danger in the procedure followed.
+For, united, those nations have nothing to fear.</p>
+
+<p>Although the translations were done rapidly, elegantly,
+and lucidly, allegations were made that they lost somewhat
+by undue compression and even by the process
+of toning down, of which the praiseworthy object was to
+spare delicate susceptibilities. For a limited number
+of delicate susceptibilities were treated considerately by
+the Conference. A defective rendering made a curious
+impression on the hearers once, when a delegate said:
+&quot;My country, unfortunately, is situated in the midst of
+states which are anything but peace-loving&mdash;in fact, the
+chief danger to the peace of Europe emanates from them.&quot;
+M. Mantoux's translation ran, &quot;The country represented
+by M. X. unhappily presents the greatest danger
+to the peace of Europe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On several occasions passages of the discourses of the
+plenipotentiaries underwent a certain transformation
+in the well-informed brain of M. Mantoux before being
+done into another language. They were plunged, so to
+say, in the stream of history before their exposure to the
+light of day. This was especially the case with the
+remarks of the English-speaking delegates, some of whom
+were wont to make extensive use of the license taken by
+their great national poet in matters of geography and
+history. One of them, for example, when alluding to the
+ex-Emperor Franz Josef and his successor, said: &quot;It
+would be unjust to visit the sins of the father on the head
+of his innocent son. Charles I should not be made to
+suffer for Franz Josef.&quot; M. Mantoux rendered the sentence,
+&quot;It would be unjust to visit the sins of the uncle
+on the innocent nephew,&quot; and M. Clemenceau, with a
+merry twinkle in his eye, remarked to the ready interpreter,
+&quot;You will lose your job if you go on making these
+wrong translations.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But those details are interesting, if at all, only as means
+of eking out a mere sketch which can never become a
+complete and faithful picture. It was the desire of the
+eminent lawgivers that the source of the most beneficent
+reforms chronicled in history should be as well hidden as
+those of the greatest boon bestowed by Providence upon
+man. And their motives appear to have been sound
+enough.</p>
+
+<p>The pains thus taken to create a haze between themselves
+and the peoples whose implicit confidence they were
+continuously craving constitute one of the most striking
+ethico-psychological phenomena of the Conference. They
+demanded unreasoning faith as well as blind obedience.
+Any statement, however startling, was expected to carry
+conviction once it bore the official hall-mark. Take, for
+example, the demand made by the Supreme Four to
+Bela Kuhn to desist from his offensive against the Slovaks.
+The press expressed surprise and disappointment that he,
+a Bolshevist, should have been invited even hypothetically
+by the &quot;deadly enemies of Bolshevism&quot; to delegate
+representatives to the Paris Conference from which the
+leaders of the Russian constructive elements were excluded.
+Thereupon the Supreme Four, which had taken
+the step in secret, had it denied categorically that such
+an invitation had been issued. The press was put up to
+state that, far from making such an undignified advance,
+the Council had asserted its authority and peremptorily
+summoned the misdemeanant Kuhn to withdraw his
+troops immediately from Slovakia under heavy pains and
+penalties.</p>
+
+<p>Subsequently, however, the official correspondence was
+published, when it was seen that the implicit invitation
+had really been issued and that the denial ran directly
+counter to fact. By this exposure the Council of Four,
+which still sued for the full confidence of their peoples,
+was somewhat embarrassed. This embarrassment was not
+allayed when what purported to be a correct explanation
+of their action was given out and privately circulated
+by a group which claimed to be initiated. It was summarized
+as follows: &quot;The Israelite, Bela Kuhn, who is
+leading Hungary to destruction, has been heartened by
+the Supreme Council's indulgent message. People are at
+a loss to understand why, if the Conference believes,
+as it has asserted, that Bolshevism is the greatest scourge
+of latter-day humanity, it ordered the Rumanian troops,
+when nearing Budapest for the purpose of overthrowing
+it in that stronghold, first to halt, and then to withdraw.<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85" href="#Footnote_85_85" >[85]</a>
+The clue to the mystery has at last been found in a secret
+arrangement between Kuhn and a certain financial group
+concerning the Banat. About this more will be said later.
+In one of my own cablegrams to the United States I wrote:
+&quot;People are everywhere murmuring and whispering that
+beneath the surface of things powerful undercurrents
+are flowing which invisibly sway the policy of the
+secret council, and the public believes that this accounts
+for the sinister vacillation and delay of which it
+complains.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86" href="#Footnote_86_86" >[86]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the fragmentary utterances of the governments and
+their press organs nobody placed the slightest confidence.
+Their testimony was discredited in advance, on grounds
+which they were unable to weaken. The following
+example is at once amusing and instructive. The French
+Parliamentary Committee of the Budget, having asked
+the government for communication of the section of the
+Peace Treaty dealing with finances, were told that their
+demand could not be entertained, every clause of the
+Treaty being a state secret. The Committee on Foreign
+Affairs made a like request, with the same results. The
+entire Chamber next expressed a similar wish, which
+elicited a firm refusal. The French Premier, it should be
+added, alleged a reason which was at least specious.
+&quot;I should much like,&quot; he said, &quot;to communicate to you
+the text you ask for, but I may not do so until it has been
+signed by the President of the Republic. For such is the
+law as embodied in Article 8 of the Constitution.&quot; Now
+nobody believed that this was the true ground for his
+refusal. His explanation, however, was construed as a
+courteous conventionality, and as such was accepted.
+But once alleged, the fiction should have been respected,
+at any rate by its authors. It was not. A few weeks
+later the Premier ordered the publication of the text of
+the Treaty, although, in the meantime, it had not been
+signed by M. Poincar&eacute;. &quot;The excuse founded upon
+Article 8 was, therefore, a mere humbug,&quot; flippantly
+wrote an influential journal.<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87" href="#Footnote_87_87" >[87]</a></p>
+
+<p>An amusing joke, which tickled all Paris was perpetrated
+shortly afterward. The editor of the <i>Bonsoir</i>
+imported six hundred copies of the forbidden Treaty
+from Switzerland, and sent them as a present to the
+Deputies of the Chamber, whereupon the parliamentary
+authorities posted up a notice informing all Deputies who
+desired a copy to call at the questor's office, where they
+would receive it gratuitously as a present from the <i>Bonsoir.</i>
+Accordingly the Deputies, including the Speaker, Deschanel,
+thronged to the questor's office. Even solemn-faced
+Ministers received a copy of the thick volume which I
+possessed ever since the day it was issued.</p>
+
+<p>Another glaring instance of the lack of straightforwardness
+which vitiated the dealings of the Conference with the
+public turned upon the Bullitt mission to Russia. Mr.
+Wilson, who in the depths of his heart seems to have
+cherished a vague fondness for the Bolshevists there,
+which he sometimes manifested in utterances that startled
+the foreigners to whom they were addressed, despatched
+through Colonel House some fellow-countrymen of his to
+Moscow to ask for peace proposals which, according to
+the Moscow government, were drafted by himself and
+Messrs. House and Lansing. Mr. Bullitt, however, who
+must know, affirms that the draft was written by Mr.
+Lloyd George's secretary, Mr. Philip Kerr, and himself and
+presented to Lenin by Messrs. Bullitt, Steffins, and Petit.
+If the terms of this document should prove acceptable the
+American envoys were empowered to promise that an
+official invitation to a new peace conference would be sent
+to them as well as to their opponents by April 15th. The
+conditions&mdash;eleven in number&mdash;with a few slight modifications
+in which the Americans acquiesced&mdash;were accepted by
+the dictator, who was bound, however, not to permit their
+publication. The facts remained secret until Mr. Bullitt,
+thrown over by Mr. Wilson, who recoiled from taking the
+final and decisive step, resigned, and in a letter reproduced
+by the press set forth the reasons for his decision.<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88" href="#Footnote_88_88" >[88]</a></p>
+
+<p>Now, vague reports that there was such a mission had
+found its way into the Paris newspapers at a relatively
+early date. But an authoritative denial was published
+without delay. The statement, the public was assured,
+was without foundation. And the public believed the
+assurance, for it was confirmed authoritatively in England.
+Sir Samuel Hoare, in the House of Commons,
+asked for information about a report that &quot;two Americans
+have recently returned from Russia bringing offers of
+peace from Lenin,&quot; and received from Mr. Bonar Law
+this noteworthy reply: &quot;I have said already that there is
+not the shadow of foundation for this information, otherwise
+I would have known it. Moreover, I have communicated
+with Mr. Lloyd George in Paris, who also
+declares that he knows nothing about the matter.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89" href="#Footnote_89_89" >[89]</a>
+<i>E pur si muove</i>. Mr. Lloyd George knew nothing about
+President Wilson's determination to have the Covenant
+inserted in the Peace Treaty, even after the announcement
+was published to the world by the Havas Agency,
+and the confirmation given to pressmen by Lord Robert
+Cecil. The system of reticence and concealment, coupled
+with the indifference of this or that delegation to questions
+in which it happened to take no special interest, led to
+these unseemly air-tight compartments.</p>
+
+<p>From this rank soil of secrecy, repression, and unveracity
+sprang noxious weeds. False reports and mendacious
+insinuations were launched, spread, and credited,
+impairing such prestige as the Conference still enjoyed,
+while the fragmentary announcements ventured on now
+and again by the delegates, in sheer self-defense, were
+summarily dismissed as &quot;eye-wash&quot; for the public.</p>
+
+<p>For a time the disharmony between words and deeds
+passed unnoticed by the bulk of the masses, who were
+edified by the one and unacquainted with the other.
+But gradually the lack of consistency in policy and of
+manly straightforwardness and moral wholeness in method
+became apparent to all and produced untoward consequences.
+Mr. Wilson, whose authority and influence were
+supposed to be paramount, came in for the lion's share of
+criticism, except in the Polish policy of the Conference,
+which was traced to Mr. Lloyd George and his unofficial
+prompters. The American press was the most censorious
+of all. One American journal appearing in Paris gave
+utterance to the following comments on the President's
+r&ocirc;le:<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90" href="#Footnote_90_90" >[90]</a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>President Wilson is conscious of his power of persuasion. That
+power enables him to say one thing, do another, describe the act as
+conforming to the idea, and, with act and idea in exact contradiction
+to each other, convince the people, not only that he has been consistent
+throughout, but that his act cannot be altered without peril to the
+nation and danger to the world.</p>
+
+<p>We do not know which Mr. Wilson to follow&mdash;the Mr. Wilson who
+says he will not do a thing or the Mr. Wilson who does that precise
+thing.</p>
+
+<p>A great many Americans have one fixed idea. That idea is that the
+President is the only magnanimous, clear-visioned, broad-minded
+statesman in the United States, or the entire world, for that matter.</p>
+
+<p>When he uses his powers of persuasion Americans become as the
+children of Hamelin Town. Inasmuch as Mr. Wilson of the word
+and Mr. Wilson of the deed seem at times to be two distinct identities,
+some of his most enthusiastic supporters for the League of Nations,
+being unfortunately gifted with memory and perception, are fairly
+standing on their heads in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>And yet Mr. Wilson himself was a victim of the policy
+of reticence and concealment to which the Great Powers
+were incurably addicted. At the time when they were
+moving heaven and earth to induce him to break with
+Germany and enter the war, they withheld from him the
+existence of their secret treaties. Possibly it may not be
+thought fair to apply the test of ethical fastidiousness to
+their method of bringing the United States to their side
+and to their unwillingness to run the risk of alienating the
+President. But it appears that until the close of hostility
+the secret was kept inviolate, nor was it until Mr.
+Wilson reached the shores of Europe for the purpose of
+executing his project that he was faced with the huge
+obstacles to his scheme arising out of those far-reaching
+commitments. With this depressing revelation and the
+British <i>non possumus</i> to his demand for the freedom of
+the seas, Mr. Wilson's practical difficulties began. It
+was probably on that occasion that he resolved, seeing
+that he could not obtain everything he wanted, to content
+himself with the best he could get. And that was not a
+society of peoples, but a rough approximation to the
+hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon nations.</p>
+
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70" href="#FNanchor_70_70"> [70]</a> The French Minister of Finances made this the cornerstone of his
+policy and declared that the indemnity to be paid by the vanquished Teutons
+would enable him to set the finances of France on a permanently sound
+basis. In view of this expectation new taxation was eschewed.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71" href="#FNanchor_71_71"> [71]</a> A selection of the untruths published in the French press during the
+war has been reproduced by the Paris journal, <i>Bonsoir</i>. It contains abundant
+pabulum for the cynic and valuable data for the psychologist. The
+example might be followed in Great Britain. The title is: &quot;Anthologie
+du Bourrage de Cr&acirc;ne.&quot; It began in the month of July, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72" href="#FNanchor_72_72"> [72]</a> Cf. <i>The New York Herald</i> (Paris edition), June 2, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73" href="#FNanchor_73_73"> [73]</a> Cf. <i>The Daily Mail</i> (Paris edition), January 17, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74" href="#FNanchor_74_74"> [74]</a> Cf. <i>The Chicago Tribune</i>, August 27, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75" href="#FNanchor_75_75"> [75]</a> Cf. <i>The New York Herald</i> (Paris edition), June 10, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76" href="#FNanchor_76_76"> [76]</a> Cf. <i>Bonsoir</i>, June 20, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77" href="#FNanchor_77_77"> [77]</a> On April 27th.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78" href="#FNanchor_78_78"> [78]</a> <i>Bonsoir</i>, June 21, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79" href="#FNanchor_79_79"> [79]</a> <i>The New York Herald</i>, May 15. 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80" href="#FNanchor_80_80"> [80]</a> <i>The New York Herald</i> (Paris edition), May 3,1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81" href="#FNanchor_81_81"> [81]</a> <i>The New York Herald</i>, June 6, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82" href="#FNanchor_82_82"> [82]</a> Cf. <i>Le Matin</i>, July 9, 1919. The chief speakers alluded to were MM.
+Renaudel, Deshayes, Lafont, Paul Meunier, Vandame.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83" href="#FNanchor_83_83"> [83]</a> <i>The New York Herald</i> (Paris edition), April 29, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84" href="#FNanchor_84_84"> [84]</a> Quoted in the Paris <i>Temps</i> of March 28,1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85" href="#FNanchor_85_85"> [85]</a> This explanation deals exclusively with the first advance of the Rumanian
+army into Hungary.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86" href="#FNanchor_86_86"> [86]</a> Cabled to <i>The Public Ledger</i> of Philadelphia, April 20,1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87" href="#FNanchor_87_87"> [87]</a> <i>Bonsoir</i>, June 21, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88" href="#FNanchor_88_88"> [88]</a> Cf. <i>The Daily News</i>, July 5,1919. <i>L'Humanit&eacute;</i>, July 8, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89" href="#FNanchor_89_89"> [89]</a> Cf. <i>The New York Herald</i> (Paris edition), April 4, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90" href="#FNanchor_90_90"> [90]</a> <i>The Chicago Tribune</i> (Paris edition), July 31, 1919.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V" />V</h3>
+
+<h3>AIMS AND METHODS</h3>
+
+
+<p>The policy of the Anglo-Saxon plenipotentiaries was
+never put into words. For that reason it has to
+be judged by their acts, despite the circumstance that
+these were determined by motives which varied greatly at
+different times, and so far as one can conjecture were
+not often practical corollaries of fundamental principles.
+From these acts one may draw a few conclusions which
+will enable us to reconstruct such policy as there was.
+One is that none of the sacrifices imposed upon the members
+of the League of Nations was obligatory on the
+Anglo-Saxon peoples. These were beyond the reach of
+all the new canons which might clash with their interests
+or run counter to their aspirations. They were the givers
+and administrators of the saving law rather than its observers.
+Consequently they were free to hold all that was
+theirs, however doubtful their title; nay, they were besought
+to accept a good deal more under the mandatory
+system, which was molded on their own methods of
+governance. It was especially taken for granted that the
+architects would be called to contribute naught to the
+new structure but their ideas, and that they need renounce
+none of their possessions, however shady its origin, however
+galling to the population its retention. It was in
+deference to this implicit doctrine that President Wilson
+withdrew without protest or discussion his demand for
+the freedom of the seas, on which he had been wont to lay
+such stress.</p>
+
+<p>Another way of putting the matter is this. The principal
+aim of the Conference was to create conditions
+favorable to the progress of civilization on new lines.
+And the seed-bearers of true, as distinguished from spurious,
+civilization and culture being the Anglo-Saxons, it
+is the realization of their broad conceptions, the furtherance
+of their beneficent strivings, that are most conducive
+to that ulterior aim. The men of this race in the widest
+sense of the term are, therefore, so to say, independent
+ends in themselves, whereas the other peoples are to be
+utilized as means. Hence the difference of treatment
+meted out to the two categories. In the latter were implicitly
+included Italy and Russia. Unquestionably the
+influence of Anglo-Saxondom is eminently beneficial. It
+tends to bring the rights and the dignity as well as the
+duties of humanity into broad day. The farther it extends
+by natural growth, therefore, the better for the
+human race. The Anglo-Saxon mode of administering
+colonies, for instance, is exemplary, and for this reason
+was deemed worthy to receive the hall-mark of the Conference
+as one of the institutions of the future League.
+But even benefits may be transformed into evils if imposed
+by force.</p>
+
+<p>That, in brief, would seem to be the clue&mdash;one can
+hardly speak of any systematic conception&mdash;to the unordered
+improvisations and incongruous decisions of the
+Conference.</p>
+
+<p>I am not now concerned to discuss whether this unformulated
+maxim, which had strong roots that may not
+always have reached the realm of consciousness, calls for
+approval as an instrument of ethico-political progress or
+connotes an impoverishment of the aims originally propounded
+by Mr. Wilson. Excellent reasons may be
+assigned why the two English-speaking statesmen proceeded
+without deliberation on these lines and no other.
+The matter might have been raised to a higher plane, but
+for that the delegates were not prepared. All that one
+need retain at present is the orientation of the Supreme
+Council, inasmuch as it imparts a sort of relative unity to
+seemingly heterogeneous acts. Thus, although the conditions
+of the Peace Treaty in many respects ran directly
+counter to the provisions of the Covenant, none the less
+the ultimate tendency of both was to converge in a distant
+point, which, when clearly discerned, will turn out to
+be the moral guidance of the world by Anglo-Saxondom
+as represented at any rate in the incipient stage by both
+its branches. Thus the discussions among the members
+of the Conference were in last analysis not contests about
+mere abstractions. Beneath the high-sounding principles
+and far-resonant reforms which were propounded but not
+realized lurked concrete racial strivings which a patriotic
+temper and robust faith might easily identify with the
+highest interests of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>When the future historian defines, as he probably will,
+the main result of the Conference's labors as a tendency
+to place the spiritual and political direction of the world
+in the hands of the Anglo-Saxon race, it is essential to a
+correct view of things that he should not regard this trend
+as the outcome of a deliberate concerted policy. It was
+anything but this. Nobody who conversed with the
+statesmen before and during the Conference could detect
+any sure tokens of such ultimate aims, nor, indeed, of a
+thorough understanding of the lesser problems to be settled.
+Circumstance led, and the statesmen followed.
+The historian may term the process drift, and the humanitarian
+regret that such momentous issues should ever have
+been submitted to a body of uninformed politicians out
+of touch with the people for whose behoof they claimed
+to be legislating. To liquidate the war should have been
+the first, as it was the most urgent, task. But it was complicated,
+adjourned, and finally botched by interweaving
+it with a mutilated scheme for the complete readjustment
+of the politico-social forces of the planet. The result was
+a tangled skein of problems, most of them still unsolved,
+and some insoluble by governments alone. Out of the
+confusion of clashing forces towered aloft the two dominant
+Powers who command the economic resources of the
+world, and whose democratic institutions and internal
+ordering are unquestionably more conducive to the large
+humanitarian end than those of any other, and gradually
+their overlordship of the world began to assert itself.
+But this tendency was not the outcome of deliberate
+endeavor. Each representative of those vast states was
+solicitous in the first place about the future of his own
+country, and then about the regeneration of the human
+race. One would like to be able to add that all were
+wholly inaccessible to the promptings of party interests
+and personal ambitions.</p>
+
+<p>Planlessness naturally characterized the exertions of
+the Anglo-Saxon delegates from start to finish. It is a
+racial trait. Their hosts, who were experts in the traditions
+of diplomacy, had before the opening of the Conference
+prepared a plan for their behoof, which at the
+lowest estimate would have connoted a vast improvement
+on their own desultory way of proceeding. The French
+proposed to distribute all the preparatory work among
+eighteen commissions, leaving to the chief plenipotentiaries
+the requisite time to arrange preliminaries and become
+acquainted with the essential elements of the problems.
+But Messrs. Wilson and Lloyd George are said to have
+preferred their informal conversations, involving the loss
+of three and a half months, during which no results were
+reached in Paris, while turmoil, bloodshed, and hunger
+fed the smoldering fires of discontent throughout the
+World.</p>
+
+<p>The British Premier, like his French colleague, was
+solicitous chiefly about making peace with the enemy
+and redeeming as far as possible his election pledges to his
+supporters. To that end everything else would appear to
+have been subordinated. To the ambitious project of a
+world reform he and M. Clemenceau gave what was
+currently construed as a nominal assent, but for a long
+time they had no inkling of Mr. Wilson's intention to
+interweave the peace conditions with the Covenant. So
+far, indeed, were they both from entertaining the notion
+that the two Premiers expressly denied&mdash;and allowed
+their denial to be circulated in the press&mdash;that the two
+documents were or could be made mutually interdependent.
+M. Pichon assured a group of journalists that no
+such intention was harbored.<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91" href="#Footnote_91_91" >[91]</a> Mr. Lloyd George is
+understood to have gone farther and to have asked what
+degree of relevancy a Covenant for the members of the
+League could be supposed to possess to a treaty concluded
+with a nation which for the time being was denied admission
+to that sodality. And as we saw, he was incurious
+enough not to read the narrative of what had been done
+by his own American colleagues even after the Havas
+Agency announced it.</p>
+
+<p>To President Wilson, on the other hand, the League
+was the <i>magnum opus</i> of his life. It was to be the crown
+of his political career, to mark the attainment of an end
+toward which all that was best in the human race had for
+centuries been consciously or unconsciously wending
+without moving perceptibly nearer. Instinctively he
+must have felt that the Laodicean support given to him
+by his colleagues would not carry him much farther and
+that their fervor would speedily evaporate once the Conference
+broke up and their own special aims were definitely
+achieved or missed. With the shrewdness of an experienced
+politician he grasped the fact that if he was ever
+to present his Covenant to the world clothed with the
+authority of the mightiest states, now was his opportunity.
+After the Conference it would be too late. And the only
+contrivance by which he could surely reckon on success
+was to insert the Covenant in the Peace Treaty and set
+before his colleagues an irresistible incentive for elaborating
+both at the same time.</p>
+
+<p>He had an additional motive for these tactics in the
+attitude of a section of his own countrymen. Before
+starting for Paris he had, as we saw, made an appeal to
+the electorate to return to the legislature only candidates
+of his own party to the exclusion of Republicans, and the
+result fell out contrary to his expectations. Thereupon
+the oppositional elements increased in numbers and displayed
+a marked combative disposition. Even moderate
+Republicans complained in terms akin to those employed
+by ex-President Taft of Mr. Wilson's &quot;partizan exclusion
+of Republicans in dealing with the highly important
+matter of settling the results of the war. He solicited a
+commission in which the Republicans had no representation
+and in which there were no prominent Americans
+of any real experience and leadership of public opinion.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92" href="#Footnote_92_92" >[92]</a></p>
+
+<p>The leaders of this opposition sharply watched the
+policy of the President at the Conference and made no
+secret of their resolve to utilize any serious slip as a
+handle for revising or rejecting the outcome of his labors.
+Seeing his cherished cause thus trembling in the scale,
+Mr. Wilson hit upon the expedient of linking the Covenant
+with the Peace Treaty and making of the two an inseparable
+whole. He announced this determination in a
+forcible speech<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93" href="#Footnote_93_93" >[93]</a> to his own countrymen, in which he said,
+&quot;When the Treaty comes back, gentlemen on this side
+will find the Covenant not only in it, but so many threads
+of the Treaty tied to the Covenant that you cannot dissect
+the Covenant from the Treaty without destroying the
+whole vital structure.&quot; This scheme was denounced by
+Mr. Wilson's opponents as a trick, but the historian will
+remember it as a maneuver, which, however blameless or
+meritorious its motive, was fraught with lamentable
+consequences for all the peoples for whose interests the
+President was sincerely solicitous. To take but one
+example. The misgivings generated by the Covenant
+delayed the ratification of the Peace Treaty by the United
+States Senate, in consequence of which the Turkish
+problem had to be postponed until the Washington
+government was authorized to accept or compelled to
+refuse a mandate for the Sultan's dominions, and in the
+meanwhile mass massacres of Greeks and Armenians
+were organized anew.</p>
+
+<p>A large section of the press and the majority of the
+delegates strongly condemned the interpolation of the
+Covenant. What they demanded was first the conclusion
+of a solid peace and then the establishment of suitable
+international safeguards. For to be safeguarded, peace
+must first exist. &quot;A suit of armor without the warrior
+inside is but a useless ornament,&quot; wrote one of the
+American journals.<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94" href="#Footnote_94_94" >[94]</a></p>
+
+<p>But the course advocated by Mr. Wilson was open to
+another direct and telling objection. Peace between the
+belligerent adversaries was, in the circumstances, conceivable
+only on the old lines of strategic frontiers and
+military guaranties. The Supreme Council implied as
+much in its official reply to the criticisms offered by the
+Austrians to the conditions imposed on them, making the
+admission that Italy's new northern frontiers were determined
+by considerations of strategy. The plan for the
+governance of the world by a league of pacific peoples, on
+the other hand, postulated the abolition of war preparations,
+including strategic frontiers. Consequently the
+more satisfactory the Treaty the more unfavorable would
+be the outlook for the moral reconstitution of the family
+of nations, and <i>vice versa</i>. And to interlace the two
+would be to necessitate a compromise which would necessarily
+mar both.</p>
+
+<p>In effect the split among the delegates respecting their
+aims and interests led to a tacit understanding among the
+leaders on the basis of give-and-take, the French and
+British acquiescing in Mr. Wilson's measures for working
+out his Covenant&mdash;the draft of which was contributed by
+the British&mdash;and the President, giving way to them on
+matters said to affect their countries' vital interests.
+How smoothly this method worked when great issues were
+not at stake may be inferred from the perfunctory way
+in which it was decided that the Kaiser's trial should take
+place in London. A few days before the Treaty was
+signed there was a pause in the proceedings of the Supreme
+Council during which the secretary was searching for a
+mislaid document. Mr. Lloyd George, looking up casually
+and without addressing any one in particular, remarked,
+&quot;I suppose none of you has any objection to
+the Kaiser being tried in London?&quot; M. Clemenceau
+shrugged his shoulders, Mr. Wilson raised his hand, and
+the matter was assumed to be settled. Nothing more
+was said or written on the subject. But when the news
+was announced, after the President's departure from
+France, it took the other American delegates by surprise
+and they disclaimed all knowledge of any such decision.
+On inquiry, however, they learned that the venue had
+in truth been fixed in this offhand way.<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95" href="#Footnote_95_95" >[95]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wilson found it a hard task at first to obtain acceptance
+for his ill-defined tenets by France, who declined
+to accept the protection of his League of Nations in
+lieu of strategic frontiers and military guaranties. Insurmountable
+obstacles barred his way. The French government
+and people, while moved by decent respect for
+their American benefactors<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96" href="#Footnote_96_96" >[96]</a> to assent to the establishment
+of a league, flatly refused to trust themselves to its protection
+against Teuton aggression. But they were quite prepared
+to second Mr. Wilson's endeavors to oblige some
+of the other states to content themselves with the guaranties
+it offered, only, however, on condition that their
+own country was first safeguarded in the traditional way.
+Territorial equilibrium and military protection were the
+imperative provisos on which they insisted. And as
+France was specially favored by Mr. Wilson on sentimental
+grounds which outweighed his doctrine, and as she was
+also considered indispensable to the Anglo-Saxon peoples
+as their continental executive, she had no difficulty in
+securing their support. On this point, too, therefore, the
+President found himself constrained to give way. And
+only did he abandon his humanitarian intentions and
+his strongest arguments to be lightly brushed aside,
+he actually recoiled so far into the camp of his opponents
+that he gave his approval to an indefensible clause
+in the Treaty which would have handed over to France
+the German population of the Saar as the equivalent of a
+certain sum in gold. Coming from the world-reformer
+who, a short time before, had hurled the thunderbolts
+of his oratory against those who would barter human
+beings as chattels, this amazing compromise connoted a
+strange falling off. Incidentally it was destructive of all
+faith in the spirit that had actuated his world-crusade.
+It also went far to convince unbiased observers that the
+only framework of ideas with decisive reference to which
+Mr. Wilson considered every project and every objection
+as it arose, was that which centered round his own goal&mdash;the
+establishment, if not of a league of nations cemented
+by brotherhood and fellowship, at least of the nearest
+approach to that which he could secure, even though it
+fell far short of the original design. These were the first-fruits
+of the interweaving of the Covenant with the
+Treaty.</p>
+
+<p>In view of this readiness to split differences and sacrifice
+principles to expediency it became impossible even to the
+least observant of Mr. Wilson's adherents in the Old
+World to cling any longer to the belief that his cosmic
+policy was inspired by firm intellectual attachment to the
+sublime ideas of which he had made himself the eloquent
+exponent and had been expected to make himself the
+uncompromising champion. In every such surrender to
+the Great Powers, as in every stern enforcement of his
+principles on the lesser states, the same practical spirit of
+the professional politician visibly asserted itself. One
+can hardly acquit him of having lacked the moral courage
+to disregard the veto of interested statesmen and governments
+and to appeal directly to the peoples when the consequence
+of this attitude would have been the sacrifice of
+the makeshift of a Covenant which he was ultimately
+content to accept as a substitute for the complete reinstatement
+of nations in their rights and dignity.</p>
+
+<p>The general tendency of the labors of the Conference
+then was shaped by those two practical maxims, the immunity
+of the Anglo-Saxon peoples and of their French
+ally from the restrictions to be imposed by the new
+politico-social ordering in so far as these ran counter to
+their national interests, and the determination of the
+American President to get and accept such a league of
+nations as was feasible under extremely inauspicious conditions
+and to content himself with that.</p>
+
+<p>To this estimate exception may be taken on the ground
+that it underrates an effort which, however insufficient,
+was well meant and did at any rate point the way to a
+just resettlement of secular problems which the war had
+made pressing and that it fails to take account of the
+formidable obstacles encountered. The answer is, that
+like efforts had proceeded more than once before from
+rulers of men whose will, seeing that they were credited
+with possessing the requisite power, was assumed to be
+adequate to the accomplishment of their aim, and that
+they had led to nothing. The two Tsars, Alexander I
+at the Congress of Vienna, and Nicholas II at the first
+Conference of The Hague, are instructive instances.
+They also, like Mr. Wilson, it is assumed, would fain
+have inaugurated a golden age of international right and
+moral fellowship if verbal exhortations and arguments
+could have done it. The only kind of fresh attempt,
+which after the failure of those two experiments could
+fairly lay claim to universal sympathy, was one which
+should withdraw the proposed politico-social rearrangement
+from the domain alike of rhetoric and of empiricism
+and substitute a thorough systematic reform covering all
+the aspects of international intercourse, including all the
+civilized peoples on the globe, harmonizing the vital
+interests of these and setting up adequate machinery
+to deal with the needs of this enlarged and unified state
+system. And it would be fruitless to seek for this in
+Mr. Wilson's handiwork. Indeed, it is hardly too much
+to affirm that empiricism and opportunism were among
+the principal characteristics of his policy in Paris, and
+that the outcome was what it must be.</p>
+
+<p>Disputes and delays being inevitable, the Conference
+began its work at leisure and was forced to terminate it
+in hot haste. Having spent months chaffering, making
+compromises, and unmaking them again while the peoples
+of the world were kept in painful suspense, all of them
+condemned to incur ruinous expenditure and some to
+wage sanguinary wars, the springs of industrial and commercial
+activity being kept sealed, the delegates, menaced
+by outbreaks, revolts, and mutinies, began, after months
+had been wasted, to speed up and get through their work
+without adequate deliberation. They imagined that they
+could make up for the errors of hesitancy and ignorance
+by moments of lightning-like improvisation. Improvisation
+and haphazard conclusions were among their chronic
+failings. Even in the early days of the Conference they
+had promulgated decisions, the import and bearings of
+which they missed, and when possible they canceled them
+again. Sometimes, however, the error committed was
+irreparable. The fate reserved for Austria was a case in
+point. By some curious process of reasoning it was
+found to be not incompatible with the Wilsonian doctrine
+that German-Austria should be forbidden to throw in her
+lot with the German Republic, this prohibition being in
+the interest of France, who could not brook a powerful
+united Teuton state. The wishes of the Austrian-Germans
+and the principle of self-determination accordingly
+went for nothing. The representations of Italy, who
+pleaded for that principle, were likewise brushed aside.</p>
+
+<p>But what the delegates appear to have overlooked was
+the decisive circumstance that they had already &quot;on
+strategic grounds&quot; assigned the Brenner line to Italy and
+together with it two hundred and twenty thousand Tyrolese
+of German race living in a compact mass&mdash;although
+a much smaller alien element was deemed a bar to annexation
+in the case of Poland. And what was more to
+the point, this allotment deprived Tyrol of an independent
+economic existence, cutting it off from the southern
+valley and making it tributary to Bavaria. Mr. Wilson,
+the public was credibly informed, &quot;took this grave decision
+without having gone deeply into the matter, and
+he repents it bitterly. None the less, he can no longer go
+back.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97" href="#Footnote_97_97" >[97]</a></p>
+
+<p>Just as Tyrol's loss of Botzen and Meran made it dependent
+on Bavaria, so the severance of Vienna from
+southern Moravia&mdash;- the source of its cereal supplies, situated
+at a distance of only thirty-six miles&mdash;transformed
+the Austrian capital into a head without a body. But
+on the eminent anatomists who were to perform a variety
+of unprecedented operations on other states, this spectacle
+had no deterrent effect.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever a topic came up for discussion which could
+not be solved offhand, it was referred to a commission,
+and in many cases the commission was assisted by a mission
+which proceeded to the country concerned and within
+a few weeks returned with data which were assumed to
+supply materials enough for a decision, even though most
+of its members were unacquainted with the language of
+the people whose condition they had been studying. How
+quick of apprehension these envoys were supposed to be
+may be inferred from the task with which the American
+mission under General Harbord was charged, and the
+space of time accorded him for achieving it. The members
+of this mission started from Brest in the last decade
+of August for the Caucasus, making a stay at Constantinople
+on the way, and were due back in Paris early in
+October. During the few intervening weeks &quot;the mission,&quot;
+General Harbord said, &quot;will go into every phase of
+the situation, political, racial, economic, financial, and
+commercial. I shall also investigate highways, harbors,
+agricultural and mining conditions, the question of raising
+an Armenian army, policing problems, and the raw materials
+of Armenia.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98" href="#Footnote_98_98" >[98]</a> Only specialists who have some practical
+acquaintanceship with the Caucasus, its conditions,
+peoples, languages, and problems, can appreciate the
+herculean effort needed to tackle intelligently any one of
+the many subjects all of which this improvised commission
+under a military general undertook to master in four
+weeks. Never was a chaotic world set right and reformed
+at such a bewildering pace.</p>
+
+<p>Bad blood was caused by the distribution of places on
+the various commissions. The delegates of the lesser
+nations, deeming themselves badly treated, protested
+vehemently, and for a time passion ran high. Squabbles
+of this nature, intensified by fierce discussions within the
+Council, tidings of which reached the ears of the public
+outside, disheartened those who were anxious for the
+speedy restoration of normal conditions in a world that
+was fast decomposing. But the optimism of the three
+principal plenipotentiaries was beyond the reach of the
+most depressing stumbles and reverses. Their buoyant
+temper may be gaged from Mr. Balfour's words, reported
+in the press: &quot;It is true that there is a good deal of discussion
+going on, but there is no real discord about ideas
+or facts. We are agreed on the principal questions and
+there only remains to find the words that embody the
+agreements.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99" href="#Footnote_99_99" >[99]</a> These tidings were welcomed at the time,
+because whatever defects were ascribed to the distinguished
+statesmen of the Conference by faultfinders, a
+lack of words was assuredly not among them. This cheery
+outlook on the future reminded me of the better grounded
+composure of Pope Pius IX during the stormy proceedings
+at the Vatican Council. A layman, having expressed
+his disquietude at the unruly behavior of the prelates,
+the Pontiff replied that it had ever been thus at ecclesiastical
+councils. &quot;At the outset,&quot; he went on to explain,
+&quot;the members behave as men, wrangle and quarrel,
+and nothing that they say or do is worth much. That is
+the first act. The second is ushered in by the devil, who
+intensifies the disorder and muddles things bewilderingly.
+But happily there is always a third act in which the Holy
+Ghost descends and arranges everything for the best.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The first two phases of the Conference's proceedings
+bore a strong resemblance to the Pope's description, but
+as, unlike ecclesiastical councils, it had no claim to infallibility,
+and therefore no third act, the consequences to
+the world were deplorable. The Supreme Council never
+knew how to deal with an emergency and every week
+unexpected incidents in the world outside were calling for
+prompt action. Frequently it contradicted itself within
+the span of a few days, and sometimes at one and the same
+time its principal representatives found themselves in
+complete opposition to one another. To give but one
+example: In April M. Clemenceau was asked whether
+he approved the project of relieving famine-stricken Russia.
+His answer was affirmative, and he signed the document
+authorizing it. His colleagues, Messrs. Wilson,
+Lloyd George, and Orlando, followed suit, and the matter
+seemed to be settled definitely. But at the same time
+Mr. Hoover, who had been the ardent advocate of the
+plan, officially received a letter from the French Minister
+of Foreign Affairs signifying the refusal of the French
+government to acquiesce in it.<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100" href="#Footnote_100_100" >[100]</a> On another occasion<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101" href="#Footnote_101_101" >[101]</a> the
+Supreme Council thought fit to despatch a mission to Asia
+Minor in order to ascertain the views of the populations
+of Syria and Mesopotamia on the r&eacute;gime best suited to
+them. France, whose secular relations with Syria, where
+she maintains admirable educational establishments, are
+said to have endeared her to the population, objected to
+this expedient as superfluous and mischievous. Superfluous
+because the Francophil sentiments of the people
+are supposed to be beyond all doubt, and mischievous
+because plebiscites or substitutes for plebiscites could
+have only a bolshevizing effect on Orientals. Seemingly
+yielding to these considerations, the Supreme Council
+abandoned the scheme and the members of the mission
+made other plans.<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102" href="#Footnote_102_102" >[102]</a> After several weeks' further reflection,
+however, the original idea was carried out, and the mission
+visited the East.</p>
+
+<p>The reader may be glad of a momentary glimpse of the
+interior of the historic assembly afforded by those who
+were privileged to play a part in it before it was transformed
+into a secret conclave of five, four, or three.
+Within the doors of the chambers whence fateful decrees
+were issued to the four corners of the earth the delegates
+were seated, mostly according to their native languages,
+within earshot of the special pleaders. M. Clemenceau,
+at the head of the table, has before him a delegate charged
+with conducting the case, say, of Greece, Poland, Serbia,
+or Czechslovakia. The delegate, standing in front of the
+stern but mobile Premier, and encircled by other more or
+less attentive plenipotentiaries, looks like a nervous schoolboy
+appearing before exacting examiners, struggling with
+difficult questions and eager to answer them satisfactorily.
+Suppose the first language spoken is French. As many
+of the plenipotentiaries do not understand it, they cannot
+be blamed for relaxing attention while it is being employed,
+and keeping up a desultory conversation among themselves
+in idiomatic English, which forms a running bass
+accompaniment to the voice, often finely modulated, of
+the orator. Owing to this embarrassing language difficulty,
+as soon as a delegate pauses to take his breath, his
+arguments and appeals are done by M. Mantoux into
+English, and then it is the turn of the French plenipotentiaries
+to indulge in a quiet chat until some question is
+put in English, which has forthwith to be rendered into
+French, after which the French reply is translated into
+English, and so on unendingly, each group resuming its
+interrupted conversations alternately.</p>
+
+<p>One delegate who passed several hours undergoing this
+ordeal said that he felt wholly out of sympathy with the
+atmosphere at the Conference Hall, adding: &quot;While arguing
+or appealing to my country's arbiters I felt I was
+addressing only a minority of the distinguished judges,
+while the thoughts of the others were far away. And
+when the interpreter was rendering, quickly, mechanically,
+and summarily, my ideas without any of the explosive
+passion that shot them from my heart, I felt discouraged.
+But suddenly it dawned on me that no judgment would
+be uttered on the strength of anything that I had said or
+left unsaid. I remembered that everything would be
+referred to a commission, and from that to a sub-commission,
+then back again to the distinguished plenipotentiaries,&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Another delegate remarked: &quot;Many years have elapsed
+since I passed my last examination, but it came back to
+me in all its vividness when I walked up to Premier
+Clemenceau and looked into his restless, flashing eyes.
+I said to myself: When last I was examined I was painfully
+conscious that my professors knew a lot more about
+the subject than I did, but now I am painfully aware
+that they know hardly anything at all and I am fervently
+desirous of teaching them. The task is arduous. It
+might, however, save time and labor if the delegates would
+receive our typewritten dissertations, read them quietly
+in their respective hotels, and endeavor to form a judgment
+on the data they supply. Failing that, I should like at
+least to provide them with a criterion of truth, for after
+me will come an opponent who will flatly contradict me,
+and how can they sift truth from error when the winnow
+is wanting? It is hard to feel that one is in the presence
+of great satraps of destiny, but I made an act of faith
+in the possibilities of genial quantities lurking behind
+those everyday faces and of a sort of magic power of calling
+into being new relations of peace and fellowship between
+individual classes and peoples. It was an act of faith.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>If the members of the Supreme Council lacked the
+graces with which to draw their humbler colleagues and
+were incapable of according hospitality to any of the
+more or less revolutionary ideas floating in the air, they
+were also utterly powerless to enforce their behests in
+eastern Europe against serious opposition. Thus, although
+they kept considerable Inter-Allied forces in Germany,
+they failed to impose their decrees there, notwithstanding
+the circumstance that Germany was disorganized,
+nearly disarmed, and distracted by internal feuds.
+The Conference gave way when Germany refused to let
+the Polish troops disembark at Dantzig, although it had
+proclaimed its resolve to insist on their using that port.
+It allowed Odessa to be evacuated and its inhabitants
+to be decimated by the bloodthirsty Bolsheviki. It
+ordered the Ukrainians and the Poles to cease hostilities,<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103" href="#Footnote_103_103" >[103]</a>
+but hostilities went on for months afterward. An
+American general was despatched to the warring peoples
+to put an end to the fighting, but he returned despondent,
+leaving things as he had found them. General
+Smuts was sent to Budapest to strike up an agreement
+with Kuhn and the Magyar Bolshevists, but he, too,
+came back after a fruitless conversation. The Supreme
+Council's writ ran in none of those places.</p>
+
+<p>About March 19th the Inter-Allied commission gave Erzberger
+twenty-four hours in which to ratify the convention
+between Germany and Poland and to carry out the conditions
+of the armistice. But Erzberger declined to
+ratify it and the Allies were unable or unwilling to impose
+their will on him. From this state of things the Rumanian
+delegates drew the obvious corollary. Exasperated by
+the treatment they received, they quitted the Conference,
+pursued their own policy, occupied Budapest, presented
+their own peace conditions to Hungary, and relegated,
+with courteous phrases and a polite bow to the Council,
+the directions elaborated for their guidance to the region
+of pious counsels.</p>
+
+<p>In these ways the well-meant and well-advertised
+endeavors to substitute a moral relationship of nations
+for the state of latent warfare known as the balance of
+power were steadily wasted. On the one side the subtle
+skill of Old World diplomacy was toiling hard and successfully
+to revive under specious names its lost and
+failing causes, while on the other hand the New World
+policy, na&iuml;vely ignoring historical forces and secular
+prejudices, was boldly reaching out toward rough and
+ready modes of arranging things and taking no account
+of concrete circumstances. Generous idealists were thus
+pitted against old diplomatic stagers and both secretly
+strove to conclude hastily driven bargains outside the
+Council chamber with their opponents. As early as the
+first days of January I was present at some informal
+meetings where such transactions were being talked over,
+and I afterward gave it as my impression that &quot;if things
+go forward as they are moving to-day the outcome will
+fall far short of reasonable expectations. The first striking
+difference between the transatlantic idealists and the
+Old World politicians lies in their different ways of
+appreciating expeditiousness, on the one hand, and the
+bases of the European state-system, on the other hand.
+A statesman when dealing with urgent, especially revolutionary,
+emergencies should never take his eyes from
+the clock. The politicians in Paris hardly ever take
+account of time or opportunity. The overseas reformers
+contend that the territorial and political balance of forces
+has utterly broken down and must be definitely scrapped
+in favor of a league of nations, and the diplomatists hold
+that the principle of equilibrium, far from having spent
+its force, still affords the only groundwork of international
+stability and requires to be further intensified.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104" href="#Footnote_104_104" >[104]</a></p>
+
+<p>Living in the very center of the busy world of destiny-weavers,
+who were generously, if unavailingly, devoting
+time and labor to the fabrication of machinery for the
+good government of the entire human race out of scanty
+and not wholly suitable materials, a historian in presence
+of the manifold conflicting forces at work would have
+found it difficult to survey them all and set the daily
+incidents and particular questions in correct perspective.
+The earnestness and good-will of the plenipotentiaries
+were highly praiseworthy and they themselves, as we saw,
+were most hopeful. Nearly all the delegates were characterized
+by the spirit of compromise, so valuable in
+vulgar politics, but so perilous in embodying ideals.
+Anxious to reach unanimous decisions even when unanimity
+was lacking, the principal statesmen boldly had
+recourse to ingenious formulas and provisional agreements,
+which each party might construe in its own way, and paid
+scant attention to what was going on outside. I wrote
+at the time:<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105" href="#Footnote_105_105" >[105]</a></p>
+
+<p>&quot;But parallel with the Conference and the daily lectures
+which its members are receiving on geography, ethnography,
+and history there are other councils at work, some
+publicly, others privately, which represent the vast masses
+who are in a greater hurry than the political world to
+have their urgent wants supplied. For they are the
+millions of Europe's inhabitants who care little about
+strategic frontiers and much about life's necessaries which
+they find it increasingly difficult to obtain. Only a visitor
+from a remote planet could fully realize the significance of
+the bewildering phenomena that meet one's gaze here
+every day without exciting wonder.... The sprightly
+people who form the rind of the politico-social world ... are
+wont to launch winged words and coin witty epigrams
+when characterizing what they irreverently term the efforts
+of the Peace Conference to square the circle; they contrast
+the noble intentions of the delegates with the grim
+realities of the workaday world, which appear to mock
+their praiseworthy exertions. They say that there never
+were so many wars as during the deliberations of these
+famous men of peace. Hard fighting is going on in Siberia;
+victories and defeats have just been reported from the
+Caucasus; battles between Bolshevists and peace-lovers
+are raging in Esthonia; blood is flowing in streams in the
+Ukraine; Poles and Czechs have only now signed an agreement
+to sheath swords until the Conference announces its
+verdict; the Poles and the Germans, the Poles and the
+Ukrainians, the Poles and the Bolshevists, are still decimating
+each other's forces on territorial fragments of what
+was once Russia, Germany, or Austria.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sinister rumors were spread from time to time in Paris,
+London, and elsewhere, which, wherever they were credited,
+tended to shake public confidence not only in the dealings
+of the Supreme Council with the smaller countries, but
+also in the nature of the occult influences that were believed
+to be occasionally causing its decisions to swerve
+from the orthodox direction. And these reports were
+believed by many even in Conference circles. Time and
+again I was visited by delegates complaining that this or
+that decision was or would be taken in response to the
+promptings not of land-grabbing governments, but of
+wealthy capitalists or enterprising captains of industry.
+&quot;Why do you suppose that there is so much talk now of an
+independent little state centering around Klagenfurt?&quot;
+one of them asked me. &quot;I will tell you: for the sake of
+some avaricious capitalists. Already arrangements are
+being pushed forward for the establishment of a bank of
+which most of the shares are to belong to X.&quot; Another
+said: &quot;Dantzig is needed for politico-commercial reasons.
+Therefore it will not be made part of Poland.<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id="FNanchor_106_106" href="#Footnote_106_106" >[106]</a> Already
+conversations have begun with a view to giving the ownership
+of the wharves and various lucrative concessions to
+English-speaking pioneers of industry. If the city were
+Polish no such liens could be held on it because the state
+would provide everything needful and exploit its resources.&quot;
+The part played in the Banat Republic by
+motives of a money-making character is described elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>A friend and adviser of President Wilson publicly
+affirmed that the Fiume problem was twice on the point
+of being settled satisfactorily for all parties, when the
+representatives of commercial interests cleverly interposed
+their influence and prevented the scheme from going
+through in the Conference. I met some individuals who
+had been sent on a secret mission to have certain subjects
+taken into consideration by the Supreme Council, and
+a man was introduced to me whose aim was to obtain
+through the Conference a modification of financial legislation
+respecting the repayment of debts in a certain
+republic of South America. This optimist, however, returned
+as he had come and had nothing to show for his
+plans. The following significant passage appeared in a
+leading article in the principal American journal published
+in Paris<a name="FNanchor_107_107" id="FNanchor_107_107" href="#Footnote_107_107" >[107]</a> on the subject of the Prinkipo project
+and the postponement of its execution:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;From other sources it was learned that the doubts and
+delays in the matter are not due so much to the declination
+[<i>sic</i>] of several of the Russian groups to participate
+in a conference with the Bolshevists, but to the pulling
+against one another of the several interests represented by
+the Allies. Among the Americans a certain very influential
+group backed by powerful financial interests
+which hold enormously rich oil, mining, railway, and
+timber concessions, obtained under the old r&eacute;gime, and
+which purposes obtaining further concessions, is strongly
+in favor of recognizing the Bolshevists as a <i>de facto</i>
+government. In consideration of the <i>visa</i> of these old
+concessions by Lenin and Trotzky and the grant of new
+rights for the exploitation of rich mineral territory, they
+would be willing to finance the Bolshevists to the tune of
+forty or fifty million dollars. And the Bolshevists are
+surely in need of money. President Wilson and his supporters,
+it is declared, are decidedly averse from this
+pretty scheme.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That President Wilson would naturally set his face
+against any such deliberate compromise between Mammon
+and lofty ideals it was superfluous to affirm. He
+stood for a vast and beneficent reform and by exhorting
+the world to embody it in institutions awakened in some
+people&mdash;in the masses were already stirring&mdash;thoughts
+and feelings that might long have remained dormant.
+But beyond this he did not go. His tendencies, or, say,
+rather velleities&mdash;for they proved to be hardly more&mdash;were
+excellent, but he contrived no mechanism by which
+to convert them into institutions, and when pressed by
+gainsayers abandoned them.</p>
+
+<p>An economist of mark in France whose democratic
+principles are well known<a name="FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108" href="#Footnote_108_108" >[108]</a> communicated to the French
+public the gist of certain curious documents in his possession.
+They let in an unpleasant light on some of the
+whippers-up of lucre at the expense of principle, who
+flocked around the dwelling-places of the great continent-carvers
+and lawgivers in Paris. His article bears this
+repellent heading: &quot;Is it true that English and American
+financiers negotiated during the war in order to secure
+lucrative concessions from the Bolsheviki? Is it true
+that these concessions were granted to them on February
+4, 1919? Is it true that the Allied governments played
+into their hands?&quot;<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id="FNanchor_109_109" href="#Footnote_109_109" >[109]</a></p>
+
+<p>The facts alleged as warrants for these questions are
+briefly as follows: On February 4, 1919, the Soviet of the
+People's Commissaries in Moscow voted the bestowal of a
+concession for a railway linking Ob-Kotlass-Saroka and
+Kotlass-Svanka, in a resolution which states &quot;(1) that
+the project is feasible; (2) that the transfer of the concession
+to representatives of foreign capital may be
+effected if production will be augmented thereby; (3) that
+the execution of this scheme is indispensable; and (4) that
+in order to accelerate this solution of the question the
+persons desirous of obtaining the concession shall be
+obliged to <i>produce proofs of their contact with Allied</i> and
+neutral enterprises, and of their capacity to financing the
+work and supply the materials requisite for the construction
+of the said line.&quot; On the other hand, it appears from
+an <i>official</i> document bearing the date of June 26, 1918,
+that a demand for the concession of this line was lodged
+by two individuals&mdash;the painter A.A. Borissoff (who
+many years ago received from me a letter of introduction
+to President Roosevelt asking him to patronize this
+gentleman's exhibition of paintings in the United States),
+and Herr Edvard Hannevig. Desirous of ascertaining
+whether these petitioners possessed the qualifications
+demanded, the Bolshevist authorities made inquiries
+and received from the Royal Norwegian Consulate at
+Moscow a certificate<a name="FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110" href="#Footnote_110_110" >[110]</a> setting forth that &quot;citizen Hannevig
+was a co-associate of the large banks Hannevig situated
+in London and in America.&quot; Consequently negotiations
+might go forward. The document adds: &quot;In
+October Borissoff and Hannevig renewed their request,
+whereupon the journals <i>Pravda</i>, <i>Izevestia</i>, and <i>Ekonomitsheskaya
+Shizn</i> discussed the subject with animation. At
+a sitting held on October 12th the project was approved
+with certain modifications, and on February 1, 1919, the
+Supreme Soviet of National Economy approved it anew.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The magnitude of the concession may be inferred from
+the circumstance that one of its clauses conceded &quot;<i>the
+exploitation of eight millions of forest land</i> which even
+to-day, <i>despite existing conditions, can bring in a revenue
+of three hundred million rubles a year</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What it comes to, therefore, assuming that these
+official documents are as they seem, based on facts, is
+that from June 26th, that is to say during the war, the
+Bolshevist government was petitioned to accord an important
+railway concession and also the exploitation of a
+forest capable of yielding three hundred million rubles
+a year to a Russian citizen who alleged that he was acting
+on behalf of English and American capitalists, and that
+Edvard Hannevig, having proved that he was really the
+mandatory of these great allied financiers, the concession
+was first approved by two successive commissions<a name="FNanchor_111_111" id="FNanchor_111_111" href="#Footnote_111_111" >[111]</a> and
+then definitely conferred by the Soviet of the People's
+Commissaries.<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id="FNanchor_112_112" href="#Footnote_112_112" >[112]</a></p>
+
+<p>The eminent author of the article proceeds to ask
+whether this can indeed be true; whether English and
+American capitalists petitioned the Bolsheviki for vast
+concessions during the war; whether they obtained them
+while the Conference was at its work and soldiers of their
+respective countries were fighting in Russia against the
+Bolsheviki who were bestowing them. &quot;Is it true,&quot; he
+makes bold to ask further, &quot;that that is the explanation of
+the incredible friendliness displayed by the Allied governments
+toward the Bolshevist bandits with whom they
+were willing to strike up a compromise, whom they were
+minded to recognize by organizing a conference on the
+Princes' Island?... Many times already rank-smelling
+whiffs of air have blown upon us; they suggested the
+belief that behind the Peace Conference there lurked not
+merely what people feared, but something still worse or
+an immense political Panama. If this is not true, gentlemen,
+deny it. Otherwise one day you will surely have
+an explosion.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id="FNanchor_113_113" href="#Footnote_113_113" >[113]</a></p>
+
+<p>Whether these grave innuendoes, together with the
+statement made by Mr. George Herron,<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id="FNanchor_114_114" href="#Footnote_114_114" >[114]</a> the incident of
+the Banat Republic and the ultimatum respecting the
+oil-fields unofficially presented to the Rumanians suffice
+to establish a <i>prima facie</i> case may safely be left to the
+judgment of the public. The conscientious and impartial
+historian, however firm his faith in the probity of the
+men representing the powers, both of unlimited and
+limited interests, cannot pass them over in silence.</p>
+
+<p>One of the shrewdest delegates in Paris, a man who
+allowed himself to be breathed upon freely by the old
+spirit of nationalism, but was capable withal of appreciating
+the passionate enthusiasm of others for a more
+altruistic dispensation, addressed me one evening as
+follows: &quot;Say what you will, the Secret Council is a
+Council of Two, and the Covenant a charter conferred
+upon the English-speaking peoples for the government
+of the world. The design&mdash;if it be a design&mdash;may be
+excellent, but it is not relished by the other peoples. It
+is a less odious hegemony than that of imperialist Germany
+would have been, but it is a hegemony and odious.
+Surely in a quest of this kind after the most effectual
+means of overcoming the difficulties and obviating the
+dangers of international intercourse, more even than in
+the choice of a political r&eacute;gime, the principle of self-determination
+should be allowed free play. Was that
+not to have been one of the choicest fruits of victory?
+But no; force is being set in motion, professedly for the
+good of all, but only as their good is understood by the
+'all-powerful Two.' And to all the others it is force and
+nothing more. Is it to be wondered at that there are so
+many discontented people or that some of them are
+already casting about for an alternative to the Anglo-Saxon
+hegemony misnamed the Society of Nations?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It cannot be gainsaid that the two predominant partners
+behaved throughout as benevolent despots, to whom
+despotism came more easily than benevolence. As we
+saw, they kept their colleagues of the lesser states as much
+in the dark as the general public and claimed from them
+also implicit obedience to all their behests. They went
+farther and demanded unreasoning acquiescence in decisions
+to be taken in the future, and a promise of prompt
+acceptance of their injunctions&mdash;a pretension such as was
+never before put forward outside the Catholic Church,
+which, at any rate, claims infallibility. Asked why he
+had not put up a better fight for one of the states of
+eastern Europe, a sharp-tongued delegate irreverently
+made answer, &quot;What more could you expect than I did,
+seeing that I was opposed by one colleague who looks
+upon himself as Napoleon and by another who believes
+himself to be the Messiah.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Among the many epigrammatic sayings current in Paris
+about the Conference, the most original was ascribed to
+the Emir Faissal, the son of the King of the Hedjaz.
+Asked what he thought of the world's areopagus, he is said
+to have answered: &quot;It reminds me somewhat of one of
+the sights of my own country. My country, as you
+know, is the desert. Caravans pass through it that may
+be likened to the armies of delegates and experts at the
+Conference&mdash;caravans of great camels solemnly trudging
+along one after the other, each bearing its own load. They
+all move not whither they will, but whither they are led.
+For they have no choice. But between the two there is
+this difference: that whereas the big caravan in the
+desert has but one leader&mdash;a little ass&mdash;the Conference in
+Paris is led by two delegates who are the great Ones of
+the earth.&quot; In effect, the leaders were two, and no one
+can say which of them had the upper hand. Now it
+seemed to be the British Premier, now the American
+President. The former scored the first victory, on the
+freedom of the seas, before the Conference opened. The
+latter won the next, when Mr. Wilson firmly insisted on
+inserting the Covenant in the Treaty and finally overrode
+the objections of Mr. Lloyd George and M. Clemenceau,
+who scouted the idea for a while as calculated to
+impair the value of both charters. There was also a
+moment when the two were reported to have had a serious
+disagreement and Mr. Lloyd George, having suddenly
+quitted Paris for rustic seclusion, was likened to Achilles
+sulking in his tent. But one of the two always gave way
+at the last moment, just as both had given way to M.
+Clemenceau at the outset. When the difference between
+Japan and China cropped up, for example, the other delegates
+made Mr. Wilson their spokesman. Despite M.
+Clemenceau's resolve that the public should not &quot;be
+apprized that the head of one government had ever put
+forward a proposal which was opposed by the head of
+another government,&quot; it became known that they occasionally
+disagreed among themselves, were more than
+once on the point of separating, and that at best their
+unanimity was often of the verbal order, failing to take
+root in identity of views. To those who would fain predicate
+political tact or statesmanship of the men who thus
+undertook to set human progress on a new and ethical
+basis, the story of these bickerings, hasty improvisations,
+and amazing compromises is distressing. The incertitude
+and suspense that resulted were disconcerting. Nobody
+ever knew what was coming. A subcommission might
+deliver a reasoned judgment on the question submitted
+to it, and this might be unanimously confirmed by the
+commission, but the Four or Three or Two or even One
+could not merely quash the report, but also reverse the
+practical consequences that followed. This was done over
+and over again.</p>
+
+<p>And there were other performances still more amazing.
+When, for example, the Polish problem became so pressing
+that it could not be safely postponed any longer, the
+first delegates were at their wits' ends. Unable to agree
+on any of the solutions mooted, they conceived the idea
+of obtaining further data and a lead from a special commission.
+The commission was accordingly appointed.
+Among its members were Sir Esm&eacute; Howard, who has since
+become Ambassador in Rome, the American General
+Kernan, and M. Noulens, the ex-Ambassador of France
+in Petrograd. These envoys and their colleagues set out
+for Poland to study the problem on the spot. They
+exerted themselves to the utmost to gather data for a
+serious judgment, and returned to Paris after a sojourn
+of some two months, legitimately proud of the copious
+and well-sifted results of their research. And then they
+waited. Days passed and weeks, but nobody took the
+slightest interest in the envoys. They were ignored. At
+last the chief of the commission, M. Noulens, taking the
+initiative, wrote direct to M. Clemenceau, informing him
+that the task intrusted to him and his colleagues had been
+achieved, and requesting to be permitted to make their
+report to the Conference. The reply was an order dissolving
+the commission unheard.</p>
+
+<p>Once when the relations between Messrs. Wilson and
+Lloyd George were somewhat spiced by antagonism of
+purpose and incompatibility of methods, a political
+friend of the latter urged him to make a firm stand.
+But the British Premier, feeling, perhaps, that there
+were too many unascertained elements in the matter, or
+identifying the President with the United States, drew
+back. More than once, too, when a certain delegate was
+stating his case with incisive emphasis Mr. Wilson, who
+was listening with attention and in silence, would suddenly
+ask, &quot;Is this an ultimatum?&quot; The American President
+himself never shrank from presenting an ultimatum
+when sure of his ground and morally certain of victory.
+On one such occasion a proposal had been made to Mr.
+Lloyd George, who approved it whole-heartedly. But
+it failed to receive the <i>placet</i> of the American statesman.
+Thereupon the British Premier was strongly urged to
+stand firm. But he recoiled, his plea being that he had
+received an ultimatum from his American colleague,
+who spoke of quitting France and withdrawing the American
+troops unless the point were conceded. And Mr.
+Wilson had his way. One might have thought that
+this success would hearten the President to other and
+greater achievements. But the leader who incarnated
+in his own person the highest strivings of the age, and
+who seemed destined to acquire pontifical ascendancy
+in a regenerated world, lacked the energy to hold his own
+when matters of greater moment and high principle
+were at stake.</p>
+
+<p>These battles waged within the walls of the palace
+on the Quai d'Orsay were discussed out-of-doors by an
+interested and watchful public, and the conviction was
+profound and widespread that the President, having
+set his hand to the plow so solemnly and publicly, and
+having promised a harvest of far-reaching reforms, would
+not look back, however intractable the ground and however
+meager the crop. But confronted with serious
+obstacles, he flinched from his task, and therein, to my
+thinking, lay his weakness. If he had come prepared
+to assert his personal responsibility, to unfold his scheme,
+to have it amply and publicly discussed, to reject pusillanimous
+compromise in the sphere of execution, and to
+appeal to the peoples of the world to help him to carry
+it out, the last phase of his policy would have been worthy
+of the first, and might conceivably have inaugurated the
+triumph of the ideas which the indolent and the men of
+little faith rejected as incapable of realization. To this
+hardy course, which would have challenged the approbation
+of all that is best in the world, there was an alternative:
+Mr. Wilson might have confessed that his judgment
+was at fault, mankind not being for the moment
+in a fitting mood to practise the new tenets, that a speedy
+peace with the enemy was the first and most pressing
+duty, and that a world-parliament should be convened
+for a later date to prepare the peoples of the universe
+for the new ordering. But he chose neither alternative.
+At first it was taken for granted that in the twilight
+of the Conference hall he had fought valiantly for the
+principles which he had propounded as the groundwork
+of the new politico-social fabric, and that it was only when
+he found himself confronted with the insuperable antagonism
+of his colleagues of France and Britain that he
+reluctantly receded from his position and resolved to
+show himself all the more unbending to the envoys of
+the lesser countries. But this assumption was refuted
+by State-Secretary Lansing, who admitted to the Senate
+Foreign Relations Committee that the President's Fourteen
+Points, which he had vowed to carry out, were not
+even discussed at the Conference. The outcome of this
+attitude&mdash;one cannot term it a policy&mdash;was to leave the
+best of the ideas which he stood for in solution, to embitter
+every ally except France and Britain, and to scatter
+explosives all over the world.</p>
+
+<p>To this dwarfing parliamentary view of world-policy
+Mr. Lloyd George likewise fell a victim. But his fault
+was not so glaring. For it should in fairness be remembered
+that it was not he who first preached the advent of
+the millennium. He had only given it a tardy and cold
+assent, qualified by an occasional sally of keen pleasantry.
+Down to the last moment, as we saw, he not only was
+unaware that the Covenant would be inserted in the
+Peace Treaty, but he was strongly of the opinion, as
+indeed were M. Pichon and others, that the two instruments
+were incompatible. He also apparently inclined
+to the belief that spiritual and moral agencies, if not
+wholly impotent to bring about the requisite changes in
+the politico-social world, could not effect the transformation
+for a long while to come, and that in the interval it
+behooved the governments to fall back upon the old
+system of so-called equilibrium, which, after Germany's
+collapse, meant an informal kind of Anglo-Saxon overlordship
+of the world and a <i>pax Britannica</i> in Europe.
+As for his action at the Conference, in so far as it did not
+directly affect the well-being of the British Empire, which
+was his first and main care, one might describe it as one
+of general agreement with Mr. Wilson. He actually
+threw it into that formula when he said that whenever
+the interests of the British Empire permitted he would
+like to find himself at one with the United States. It was
+on that occasion that the person addressed warned him
+against identifying the President with the people of the
+United States.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, it was difficult to follow the distinguished
+American idealist, because one seldom knew whither
+he would lead. Neither, apparently, did he himself.
+Some of his own countrymen in Paris held that he had
+always been accustomed to follow, never to guide. Certainly
+at the Conference his practice was to meet the more
+powerful of his contradictors on their own ground and
+come to terms with them, so as to get at least a part of
+what he aimed at, and that he accepted, even when the
+instalment was accorded to him not as such, but as a
+final settlement. So far as one can judge by his public
+acts and by the admissions of State-Secretary Lansing,
+he cannot have seriously contemplated staking the success
+of his mission on the realization of his Fourteen
+Points. The manner in which he dealt with his Covenant,
+with the French demand for concrete military guaranties
+and with secret treaties, all afford striking illustrations
+of his easy temper. Before quitting Paris for Washington
+he had maintained that the Covenant as drafted was
+satisfactory, nay, he contended that &quot;not even a period
+could be changed in the agreement.&quot; The Monroe
+Doctrine, he held, needed no special stipulation. But as
+soon as Senator Lodge and others took issue with him
+on the subject, he shifted his position and hedged that
+doctrine round with defenses which cut off a whole continent
+from the purview of the League, which is nothing
+if not cosmic in its functions.<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id="FNanchor_115_115" href="#Footnote_115_115" >[115]</a> Again, there was to be no
+alliance. The French Premier foretold that there would
+be one. Mr. Wilson, who was in England at the time,
+answered him in a speech declaring that the United
+States would enter into no alliance which did not include
+all the world: &quot;no combination of power which is not a
+combination of all of us.&quot; Well, since then he became a
+party to a kind of triple alliance and in the judgment of
+many observers it constitutes the main result of the
+Conference. In the words of an American press organ:
+&quot;Clemenceau got virtually everything he asked. President
+Wilson virtually dropped his own program, and
+adopted the French and British, both of them imperialistic.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_116_116" id="FNanchor_116_116" href="#Footnote_116_116" >[116]</a></p>
+
+<p>Again, when the first commission of experts reported
+upon the frontiers of Poland, the British Premier objected
+to a section of the &quot;corridor,&quot; on the ground that as certain
+districts contained a majority of Germans their annexation
+would be a danger to the future peace and therefore
+to Poland herself, and also on the ground that it
+would run counter to one of Mr. Wilson's fundamental
+points; the President, who at that time dissented from
+Mr. Lloyd George, rose and remarked that his principles
+must not be construed too literally. &quot;When I said that
+Poland must be restored, I meant that everything indispensable
+to her restoration must be accorded. Therefore,
+if that should involve the incorporation of a number of
+Germans in Polish territory, it cannot be helped, for it
+is part of the restoration. Poland must have access to
+the sea by the shortest route, and everything else which
+that implies.&quot; None the less, the British Premier, whose
+attitude toward the claims of the Poles was marked by a
+degree of definiteness and persistency which could hardly
+be anticipated in one who had never even heard of Teschen
+before the year 1919, maintained his objections with emphasis
+and insistence, until Mr. Wilson and M. Clemenceau
+gave in.</p>
+
+<p>Or take the President's way of dealing with the non-belligerent
+states. Before leaving Paris for Washington,
+Mr. Wilson, officially questioned by one of his colleagues
+at an official sitting as to whether the neutrals would also
+sign the Covenant, replied that only the Allies would be
+admitted to affix their signatures. &quot;Don't you think it
+would be more conducive to the firm establishment of the
+League if the neutrals were also made parties to it now?&quot;
+insisted the plenipotentiary. &quot;No, I do not,&quot; answered
+the President. &quot;I think that it would be conferring too
+much honor on them, and they don't deserve it.&quot; The
+delegate was unfavorably impressed by this reply. It
+seemed lacking in breadth of view. Still, it was tenable
+on certain narrow, formal grounds. But what he could
+not digest was the eagerness with which Mr. Wilson, on
+his return from Washington, abandoned his way of thinking
+and adopted the opposite view. Toward the end of
+April the delegates and the world were surprised to learn
+that not only would Spain be admitted to the orthodox
+fold, but that she would have a voice in the management
+of the flock with a seat in the Council. The chief of the
+Portuguese delegation<a name="FNanchor_117_117" id="FNanchor_117_117" href="#Footnote_117_117" >[117]</a> at once delivered a trenchant protest
+against this abrupt departure from principle, and as
+a jurisconsult stigmatized the promotion of Spain to a
+voice in the Council as an irregularity, and then retired
+in high dudgeon.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the grave reproach cannot be spared Mr. Wilson
+of having been weak, vague, and inconsistent with himself.
+He constituted himself the supreme judge of a
+series of intricate questions affecting the organization and
+tranquillity of the European Continent, as he had previously
+done in the case of Mexico, with the results we
+know. This authority was accorded to him&mdash;with certain
+reservations&mdash;in virtue of the exalted position which
+he held in a state disposing of vast financial and economic
+resources, shielded from some of the dangers that continually
+overhang European nations, and immune from
+the immediate consequences of the mistakes it might
+commit in international politics. For every continental
+people in Europe is in some measure dependent on the
+good-will of the United States, and therefore anxious to
+deserve it by cultivating the most friendly relations with
+its chief. This predisposition on the part of his wards
+was an asset that could have been put to good account.
+It was a guaranty of a measure of success which would
+have satisfied a generous ambition; it would have enabled
+him to effect by a wise policy what revolution threatened to
+accomplish by violence, and to canalize and lead to fruitful
+fields the new-found strength of the proletarian masses.</p>
+
+<p>The compulsion of working with others is often a wholesome
+corrective. It helps one to realize the need of accommodating
+measures to people's needs. But Mr. Wilson
+deliberately segregated himself from the nations for
+whose behoof he was laboring, and from some of their
+authorized representatives. And yet the aspirations and
+conceptions of a large section of the masses differed very
+considerably from those of the two statesmen with whom
+he was in close collaboration. His avowed aims were at
+the opposite pole to those of his colleagues. To reconcile
+internationalism and nationalism was sheer impossible.
+Yet instead of upholding his own, taking the peoples into
+his confidence, and sowing the good seed which would
+certainly have sprouted up in the fullness of time, he set
+himself, together with his colleagues, to weld contradictories
+and contributed to produce a synthesis composed
+of disembodied ideas, disintegrated communities, embittered
+nations, conflicting states, frenzied classes, and a
+seething mass of discontent throughout the world.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wilson has fared ill with his critics, who, when in
+quest of explanations of his changeful courses, sought for
+them, as is the wont of the average politician, in the least
+noble parts of human nature. In his case they felt especially
+repelled by his imperial aloofness, the secrecy of his
+deliberations, and the magisterial tone of his judgments,
+even when these were in flagrant contradiction with one
+another. Obstinacy was also included among the traits
+which were commonly ascribed to him. As a matter of
+fact he was a very good listener, an intelligent questioner,
+and amenable to argument whenever he felt free to give
+practical effect to the conclusions. When this was not
+the case, arguments necessarily failed of their effect, and
+on these occasions considerations of expediency proved a
+lever sufficient to sway his decision. But, like his more
+distinguished colleagues, he had to rely upon counsel from
+outside, and in his case, as in theirs, the official adviser
+was not always identical with the real prompter. He, too,
+as we saw, set aside the findings of the commissions when
+they disagreed with his own. In a word, Mr. Wilson's
+fatal stumble was to have sacrificed essentials in order to
+score on issues of secondary moment; for while success
+enabled him to obtain his paper Covenant from his co-delegates
+in Paris, and to bring back tangible results to
+Washington, it lost him the leadership of the world. The
+cost of this deplorable weakness to mankind can be estimated
+only after its worst effects have been added up
+and appraised.</p>
+
+<p>In matters affecting the destinies of the lesser states
+Mr. Wilson was firm as a rock. Prom the position once
+taken up nothing could move him. Their economic
+dependence on his own country rendered their arguments
+pointless and lent irresistible force to his injunctions.
+Greece's dispute with Bulgaria was a classic instance.
+The Bulgars repaired to Paris more as claimants in support
+of indefeasible rights than as vanquished enemies
+summoned to learn the conditions imposed on them by
+the nations which they had betrayed and assailed. Victory
+alone could have justified their territorial pretensions;
+defeat made them grotesque. All at once, however, it
+was bruited abroad that President Wilson had become
+Bulgaria's intercessor and favored certain of her exorbitant
+claims. One of these was for the annexation of
+part of the coast of western Thrace, together with a seaport
+at the expense of the Greeks, the race which had
+resided on the seaboard for twenty-five hundred consecutive
+years. M. Venizelos offered them instead one commercial
+outlet<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id="FNanchor_118_118" href="#Footnote_118_118" >[118]</a> and special privileges in another, and the
+plenipotentiaries of Great Britain, France, and Japan
+considered the offer adequate.</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Wilson demurred. A commercial outlet
+through foreign territory, he said, might possibly be as
+good as a direct outlet through one's own territory in
+peace-time, but not in time of war, and, after all, one
+must bear in mind the needs of a country during hostilities.
+In the mouth of the champion of universal peace that was
+an unexpected argument. It had been employed by
+Italy in favor of her claim to Fiume. Mr. Wilson then
+met it by invoking the economic requirements of Jugoslavia,
+and by declaring that the Treaty was being devised
+for peace, not for war, that the League of Nations would
+hinder wars, or at the very least supply the deficiencies
+of those states which had sacrificed strategical positions
+for humanitarian aims. But in the case of Bulgaria he
+was taking what seems the opposite position and transgressing
+his own principle of nationality in order to
+maintain it.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wilson, pursuing his line of argument, further
+pointed out that the Supreme Council had not accepted
+as sufficient for Poland an outlet through German territory,
+but had created the city-state of Dantzig in order
+to confer a greater degree of security upon the Polish
+republic. To that M. Venizelos replied that there was no
+parity between the two instances. Poland had no outlet
+to the sea except through Dantzig, and could not, therefore,
+allow that one to remain in the hands of an unfriendly
+nation, whereas Bulgaria already possessed two
+very commodious ports, Varna and Burgas, on the Black
+Sea, which becomes a free sea in virtue of the internationalization
+of the straits. The possession of a third outlet on
+the &AElig;gean could not, therefore, be termed a vital question
+for his prot&eacute;g&eacute;e. Thus the comparison with Poland was
+irrelevant.</p>
+
+<p>If Poland, which is a very much greater state than
+Bulgaria, can live and prosper with a single port, and that
+not her own&mdash;if Rumania, which is also a much more
+numerous and powerful nation, can thrive with a single
+issue to the sea, by what line of argument, M. Venizelos
+asked, can one prove that little Bulgaria requires three
+or four exits, and that her need justifies the abandonment
+to her tender mercies of seven hundred and fifty thousand
+Greeks and the violation of one of the fundamental principles
+underlying the new moral ordering.</p>
+
+<p>Compliance with Bulgaria's demand would prevent
+Greece from including within her boundaries the three-quarters
+of a million Greeks who have dwelt in Thrace
+for twenty-five centuries, preserving their nationality intact
+through countless disasters and tremendous cataclysms.
+Further, the Greek Premier, taking a leaf from
+Wilson's book, turned to the aspect which the problem
+would assume in war-time. Bulgaria, he argued, is essentially
+a continental state, whose defense does not depend
+upon naval strength, whereas Greece contains an
+island population of nearly a million and a half and looks
+for protection against aggression chiefly to naval precautions.
+In case of war, Bulgaria, if her claim to an
+issue on the &AElig;gean were allowed, could with her submarines
+delay or hinder the transport and concentration
+in Macedonia of Greek forces from the islands and thus
+place Greece in a position of dangerous inferiority.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, if Greece's claims in Thrace were rejected, she
+would have a population of 1,790,000 souls outside her
+national boundaries&mdash;that is to say, more than one-third
+of the population which is within her state. Would this
+be fair? Of the total population of Bulgarian and
+Turkish Thrace the Turks and Greeks together form
+85 per cent., the Bulgars only 6 per cent., and the latter
+nowhere in compact masses. Moreover&mdash;and this ought
+to have clinched the matter&mdash;the Hellenic population
+formed an absolute as well as a relative majority in the
+year 1919.</p>
+
+<p>These arguments and various other considerations
+drawn from the inordinate ambitions, the savage cruelty,<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id="FNanchor_119_119" href="#Footnote_119_119" >[119]</a>
+and the Punic faith of the Bulgars convinced the British,
+French, and Japanese delegates of the soundness of
+Greece's pleas, and they sided with M. Venizelos. But
+Mr. Wilson clung to his idea with a tenacity which could
+not be justified by argument, and was concurrently
+explained by motives irrelevant to the merits of the case.
+Whether the influence of Bulgarophil American missionaries
+and strong religious leanings were at the root of his
+insistence, as was generally assumed, or whether other
+considerations weighed with him, is immaterial. And
+yet it is worth recording that a Bulgarian journal<a name="FNanchor_120_120" id="FNanchor_120_120" href="#Footnote_120_120" >[120]</a>
+announced with the permission of the governmental censor
+that the American missionaries in Bulgaria and the
+professors of Robert College of Constantinople had so
+primed the American delegates at the Conference on the
+question of Thrace, and generally on the Bulgarian
+problem, that all M. Venizelos's pains to convince them
+of the justice of his contention would be lost labor.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_121_121" id="FNanchor_121_121" href="#Footnote_121_121" >[121]</a></p>
+
+<p>However this may be, Mr. Wilson's attitude was the
+subject of adverse comment throughout Europe. His
+implied claim to legislate for the world and to take over
+its moral leadership earned for him the epithet of &quot;Dictator,&quot;
+and provoked such epigrammatic comments among
+his own countrymen and the French as this: &quot;Louis XIV
+said, 'I am the state!' Mr. Wilson, outdoing him, exclaimed,
+'I am all the states!'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The necessity of winning over dissentient colleagues to
+his grandiose scheme of world reorganization and of satisfying
+their demands, which were of a nature to render
+that scheme abortive, was the most influential agency in
+impairing his energies and upsetting his plans. This remark
+assumes what unhappily seems a fact, that those
+plans were mainly mechanical. It is certain that they
+made no provision for directly influencing the masses, for
+giving them sympathetic guidance, and enabling them to
+suffuse with social sentiments the aspirations and strivings
+which were chiefly of the materialistic order, with a
+view to bringing about a spiritual transformation of the
+social basis. Indeed we have no evidence that the need
+of such a transformation of the basis of political thought,
+which was still rooted in the old order, was grasped by
+any of those who set their hand to the legislative part of
+the work.</p>
+
+<p>These unfavorable impressions were general. Almost
+every step subsequently taken by the Conference confirmed
+them, and long before the Treaty was presented to
+the Germans, public confidence was gone in the ability
+of the Supreme Council to attain any of the moral victories
+over militarism, race-hatred, and secret intrigues
+which its leaders had encouraged the world to expect.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The leaders of the Conference,&quot; wrote an influential
+press organ,<a name="FNanchor_122_122" id="FNanchor_122_122" href="#Footnote_122_122" >[122]</a> &quot;are under suspicion. They may not know
+it, but it is true. The suspicion is doubtless unjust, but
+it exists. What exists is a fact; and men who ignore
+facts are not statesmen. The only way to deal with facts
+is to face them. The more unpleasant they are the more
+they need to be faced.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Some of the Conference leaders are suspected of having,
+at various times and in various circumstances, thought
+more of their own personal and political positions and
+ambitions than of the rapid and practical making of peace.
+They are suspected, in a word, of a tendency to subordinate
+policy to politics.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In regard to some important matters they are suspected
+of having no policy. They are also suspected of
+unwillingness to listen to their own competent advisers,
+who could lay down for them a sound policy. Some of
+them are even suspected of being under the spell of some
+benumbing influence that paralyzes their will and befogs
+their minds, when high resolve and clear visions are
+needful.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Another accusation of the same tenor was thus formulated:
+&quot;In various degrees<a name="FNanchor_123_123" id="FNanchor_123_123" href="#Footnote_123_123" >[123]</a> and with different qualities
+of guilt all the Allied and Associated leaders have dallied
+with dishonesty. While professing to seek naught save
+the welfare of mankind, they have harbored thoughts of
+self-interest. The result has been a progressive loss of
+faith in them by their own peoples severally, and by the
+Allied, Associated, and neutral peoples jointly. The tide
+of public trust in them has reached its lowest ebb.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the Conference, as we saw, the President of the
+United States possessed what was practically a veto on
+nearly all matters which left the vital interests of Britain
+and France intact. And he frequently exercised it. Thus
+the dispute about the Thracian settlement lay not between
+Bulgaria and Greece, nor between Greece and the Supreme
+Council, but between Greece and Mr. Wilson. In the
+quarrel over Fiume and the Dalmatian coast it was the
+same. When the Shantung question came up for settlement
+it was Mr. Wilson alone who dealt with it, his colleagues,
+although bound by their promises to support
+Japan, having made him their mouthpiece. The rigor he
+displayed in dealing with some of the smaller countries
+was in inverse ratio to the indulgence he practised toward
+the Great Powers. Not only were they peremptorily bidden
+to obey without discussion the behests which had
+been brought to their cognizance, but they were ordered,
+as we saw, to promise to execute other injunctions which
+might be issued by the Supreme Council on certain matters
+in the future, the details of which were necessarily
+undetermined.</p>
+
+<p>In order to stifle any velleities of resistance on the part
+of their governments, they were notified that America's
+economic aid, of which they were in sore need, would
+depend on their docility. It is important to remember
+that it was the motive thus clearly presented that determined
+their formal assent to a policy which they deprecated.
+A Russian statesman summed up the situation in
+the words: &quot;It is an illustration of one of our sayings,
+'Whose bread I eat, his songs I sing.'&quot; Thus it was reported
+in July that an agreement come to by the financial
+group Morgan with an Italian syndicate for a yearly
+advance to Italy of a large sum for the purchase of American
+food and raw stuffs was kept in abeyance until the
+Italian delegation should accept such a solution of the
+Adriatic problem as Mr. Wilson could approve. The
+Russian and anti-Bolshevists were in like manner compelled
+to give their assent to certain democratic dogmas
+and practices. It is also fair, however, to bear in mind
+that whatever one may think of the wisdom of the policy
+pursued by the President toward these peoples, the motives
+that actuated it were unquestionably admirable, and
+the end in view was their own welfare, as he understood it.
+It is all the more to be regretted that neither the arguments
+nor the example of the autocratic delegates were
+calculated to give these the slightest influence over the
+thought or the unfettered action of their unwilling wards.
+The arrangements carried out were entirely mechanical.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of time after the vital interests of Britain,
+France, and Japan had been disposed of, and only those
+of the &quot;lesser states,&quot; in the more comprehensive sense of
+this term, remained, President Wilson exercised supreme
+power, wielding it with firmness and encountering no
+gainsayer. Thus the peace between Italy and Austria
+was put off from month to month because he&mdash;and only
+he&mdash;among the members of the Supreme Council rejected
+the various projects of an arrangement. Into the merits
+of this dispute it would be unfruitful to enter. That
+there was much to be said for Mr. Wilson's contention,
+from the point of view of the League of Nations, and also
+from that of the Jugoslavs, will not be denied. That
+some of the main arguments to which he trusted his case
+were invalidated by the concessions which he had made
+to other countries was Italy's contention, and it cannot
+be thrust aside as untenable.</p>
+
+<p>At last Mr. Wilson ventured on a step which challenged
+the attention and stirred the disquietude of his friends.
+He despatched a note<a name="FNanchor_124_124" id="FNanchor_124_124" href="#Footnote_124_124" >[124]</a> to Turkey, warning her that if the
+massacres of Armenians were not discontinued he would
+withdraw the twelfth of his Fourteen Points, which provides
+for the maintenance of Turkish sovereignty over
+undeniable Turkish territories. The intention was excellent,
+but the necessary effects of his action were contrary
+to what the President can have aimed at. He had not
+consulted the Conference on the important change which
+he was about to make respecting a point which was
+supposed to be part of the groundwork of the new ordering.
+This from the Conference point of view was a
+momentous decision, which could be taken only with the
+consent of the Supreme Council. Even as a mere threat
+it was worthless if it did not stand for the deliberate
+will of that body which the President had deemed it
+superfluous to consult. As it happened, the British
+authorities were just then organizing a body of gendarmes
+to police the Turkish territories in question, and they were
+engaged in this work with the knowledge and approval
+of the Supreme Council. Mr. Wilson's announcement
+could therefore only be construed&mdash;and was construed&mdash;as
+the act of an authority superior to that of the Council.<a name="FNanchor_125_125" id="FNanchor_125_125" href="#Footnote_125_125" >[125]</a>
+The Turks, who are shrewd observers, must have drawn
+the obvious conclusion from these divergent measures
+as to the degree of harmony prevailing among the Allied
+and Associated Powers.</p>
+
+<p>M. Clemenceau had a conversation on the subject with
+Mr. Polk, who explained that the note was informal and
+given verbally, and conveyed the idea only of one nation
+in connection with the Armenian situation. This explanation,
+accepted by the French government, did not commend
+itself to public opinion, either in France or elsewhere.
+Moreover, the French were struck by another aspect of
+this arbitrary exercise of supreme power. &quot;President
+Wilson,&quot; wrote an eminent French publicist, &quot;throws
+himself into the attitude of a man who can bind and
+loose the Turkish Empire at the very moment when the
+Senate appears opposed to accepting any mandate,
+European or Asiatic, at the moment when Mr. Lansing
+declares to the Congress that the government of which
+he is a member does not desire to accept any mandate.
+But is it not obvious that if Mr. Wilson sovereignly determines
+the lot of Turkey he can be held in consequence to
+the performance of certain duties? We have often had to
+deplore the absence of policy common to the Allies. But
+has each one of them, considered separately, at least a
+policy of its own? Does it take action otherwise than at
+haphazard, yielding to the impulse of a general, a consul,
+or a missionary?&quot;<a name="FNanchor_126_126" id="FNanchor_126_126" href="#Footnote_126_126" >[126]</a></p>
+
+<p>It soon became manifest even to the most obtuse that
+whenever the Supreme Council, following its leaders
+and working on such lines as these, terminated its labors,
+the ties between the political communities of Europe
+would be just as flimsy as in the unregenerate days of
+secret diplomacy, secret alliances, and secret intrigues,
+unless in the meanwhile the peoples themselves intervened
+to render them stronger and more enduring. It
+would, however, be the height of unfairness to make
+Mr. Wilson alone answerable for this untoward ending
+to a far resonant beginning. He had been accused by the
+press of most countries of enwrapping personal ambition
+in the attractive covering of disinterestedness and altruism,
+just as many of his foreign colleagues were said to
+go in fear of the &quot;malady of lost power.&quot; But charges of
+this nature overstep the bounds of legitimate criticism.
+Motive is hardly ever visible, nor is it often deducible
+from deliberate action. If, for example, one were to
+infer from the vast territorial readjustments and the still
+vaster demands of the various belligerents at the Conference,
+the motives that had determined them to enter
+the war, the conclusion&mdash;except in the case of the American
+people, whose disinterestedness is beyond the reach of
+cavil&mdash;would indeed be distressing. The President of the
+United States merited well of all nations by holding up
+to them an ideal for realization, and the mere announcement
+of his resolve to work for it imparted an appreciable
+if inadequate incentive to men of good-will. The task,
+however, was so gigantic that he cannot have gaged its
+magnitude, discerned the defects of the instruments,
+nor estimated aright the force of the hindrances before
+taking the world to witness that he would achieve it.
+Even with the hearty co-operation of ardent colleagues
+and the adoption of a sound method he could hardly
+have hoped to do more than clear the ground&mdash;perhaps
+lay the foundation-stone&mdash;of the structure he dreamt of.
+But with the partners whom circumstance allotted him,
+and the gainsayers whom he had raised up and irritated
+in his own country, failure was a foregone conclusion
+from the first. The aims after which most of the European
+governments strove were sheer incompatible with
+his own. Doubtless they all were solicitous about the
+general good, but their love for it was so general and so
+diluted with attachment to others' goods as to be hardly
+discernible. The reproach that can hardly be spared to
+Mr. Wilson, however, is that of pusillanimity. If his
+faith in the principles he had laid down for the guidance
+of nations were as intense as his eloquent words suggested,
+he would have spurned the offer of a sequence of high-sounding
+phrases in lieu of a resettlement of the world.
+And his appeal to the peoples would most probably have
+been heard. The beacon once lighted in Paris would
+have been answered in almost every capital of the world.
+One promise he kept religiously: he did not return to
+Washington without a paper covenant. Is it more? Is
+it merely a paradox to assert that as war was waged in
+order to make war impossible, so a peace was made that
+will render peace impossible?</p>
+
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91" href="#FNanchor_91_91"> [91]</a> In March.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92" href="#FNanchor_92_92"> [92]</a> Quoted by <i>The Chicago Tribune</i> (Paris edition), August 10, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93" href="#FNanchor_93_93"> [93]</a> Delivered at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York on March
+4, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94" href="#FNanchor_94_94"> [94]</a> <i>The New York Herald</i>, March 19, 1919 (Paris edition).</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95" href="#FNanchor_95_95"> [95]</a> Cf. <i>The New York Herald</i>, July 8, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96" href="#FNanchor_96_96"> [96]</a> The semi-official journals manifested a steady tendency to lean toward
+the Republican opposition in the United States, down to the month of
+August, when the amendments proposed by various Senators bade fair to
+jeopardize the Treaties and render the promised military succor doubtful.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97" href="#FNanchor_97_97"> [97]</a> <i>Journal de Gen&egrave;ve</i>, May 18, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98" href="#FNanchor_98_98"> [98]</a> <i>The New York Herald</i> (Paris edition), August 14, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99" href="#FNanchor_99_99"> [99]</a> Cf. Paris papers of February 2, 1919, and <i>The Public Ledger</i> (Philadelphia),
+February 4, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100" href="#FNanchor_100_100"> [100]</a> Cf. <i>L'Echo de Paris</i>, April 19, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101" href="#FNanchor_101_101"> [101]</a> In April, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102" href="#FNanchor_102_102"> [102]</a> About April 10,1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103" href="#FNanchor_103_103"> [103]</a> On March 19, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104" href="#FNanchor_104_104"> [104]</a> Cf. my cablegram published in <i>The Public Ledger</i> (Philadelphia),
+January 12, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105" href="#FNanchor_105_105"> [105]</a> Cf. <i>The Public Ledger</i> (Philadelphia), February 5, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106" href="#FNanchor_106_106"> [106]</a> Doctor Bunke, Councilor at the court of Dantzig, endeavors in <i>The Dantzig
+Neueste Nachrichten</i> to prove that the problem of Dantzig was solved
+exclusively in the interests of the Naval Powers, America and Britain,
+who need it as a basis for their commerce with Poland, Russia, and Germany.
+Cf. also <i>Le Temps</i>, August 23, 1919</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107" href="#FNanchor_107_107"> [107]</a> <i>The New York Herald</i> (Paris edition), March 1, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108" href="#FNanchor_108_108"> [108]</a> Lysis, author of <i>Demain</i>, and many other remarkable studies of economic
+problems, and editor of <i>Le D&eacute;mocratie Nouvelle</i>, May 30, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109" href="#FNanchor_109_109"> [109]</a> For an account of analogous bargainings with Bela Kuhn, see the
+Chapter on Rumania.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110" href="#FNanchor_110_110"> [110]</a> Bearing the number 3882.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111" href="#FNanchor_111_111"> [111]</a> On October 12, 1918, and February 1, 1919</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112" href="#FNanchor_112_112"> [112]</a> On February 4, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113" href="#FNanchor_113_113"> [113]</a> <i>La D&eacute;mocratie Nouvelle</i>, May 30, 1919</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114" href="#FNanchor_114_114"> [114]</a> See his admirable article in <i>The New York Herald</i> (Paris edition) of
+May 21, 1919, from which the following extract is worth quoting: &quot;I have
+said that certain great forces have steadily and occultly worked for a German
+peace. But I mean, in fact, one force&mdash;an international finance to
+which all other forces hostile to the freedom of nations and of the individual
+soul are contributory. The influence of this finance had permeated
+the Conference, delaying the decisions as long as possible, increasing
+divisions between people and people, between class and class, between
+peace-makers and peace-makers, in order to achieve two definite ends, which
+two ends are one and the same.
+</p><p>
+&quot;The first end was so to manipulate the minds of the peace-makers, of
+their hordes of retainers and 'experts,' as to bring about, if possible, a peace
+that would not be destructive to industrial Germany. The second end was
+so to delay the Russian question, so to complicate and thwart every proposed
+solution, that, at last, either during or after the Peace Conference,
+a recognition of the Bolshevist power as the <i>de facto</i> government of Russia
+would be the only possible solution.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115" href="#FNanchor_115_115"> [115]</a> &quot;What confidence can be commanded by men who, asserting one week
+that the ultimate of human wisdom has been attained in a document, confess
+the next week that the document is frail? When are we to believe
+that their confessions are at an end?&quot;&mdash;<i>The Chicago Tribune</i> (Paris edition),
+August 23, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116" href="#FNanchor_116_116"> [116]</a> <i>The Chicago Tribune</i> (Paris edition), July 31, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117" href="#FNanchor_117_117"> [117]</a> M. Affonso Costa, who shortly before had succeeded the Minister of
+Foreign Affairs, M. Monas Egiz.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118" href="#FNanchor_118_118"> [118]</a> Dedeagatch.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119" href="#FNanchor_119_119"> [119]</a> See <i>Rapports et Enqu&ecirc;tes de la Commission Interalli&eacute;e sur les Violations
+du droit des gens commises en Mac&eacute;doine Orientale par les arm&eacute;es bulgares</i>.
+The conclusion of the report is one of the most terrible indictments ever
+drawn up by impartial investigators against what is practically a whole
+people.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_120_120" id="Footnote_120_120" href="#FNanchor_120_120"> [120]</a> <i>Zora</i>, August 11th. Cf. <i>Le Temps</i>, August 28, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_121_121" id="Footnote_121_121" href="#FNanchor_121_121"> [121]</a> Mr. Charles House published a statement in the press of Saloniki to
+the effect that the Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions forbids
+missionaries to take an active part in politics. He added that if this injunction
+was transgressed&mdash;and in Paris the current belief was that it had
+been&mdash;it would not be tolerated by the Missionary Board, nor recognized
+by the American government.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_122_122" id="Footnote_122_122" href="#FNanchor_122_122"> [122]</a> <i>The Daily Mail</i> (Paris edition), March 31, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_123_123" id="Footnote_123_123" href="#FNanchor_123_123"> [123]</a> <i>The Daily Mail</i> (Paris edition), April 6, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_124_124" id="Footnote_124_124" href="#FNanchor_124_124"> [124]</a> Somewhere between August 17 and 20, 1919. It was transmitted by
+Admiral Bristol, American member of the Inter-Allied Inquiry Mission at
+Smyrna.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_125_125" id="Footnote_125_125" href="#FNanchor_125_125"> [125]</a> Cf. <i>L'Echo de Paris</i>, August 28, 1919. Article by Pertinax.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_126_126" id="Footnote_126_126" href="#FNanchor_126_126"> [126]</a> <i>L'Echo de Paris</i>, August 28, 1919. Article by Pertinax.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI" />VI</h3>
+
+<h3>THE LESSER STATES</h3>
+
+
+<p>Before the Anglo-Saxon statesmen thus set themselves
+to rearrange the complex of interests, forces,
+policies, nationalities, rights, and claims which constituted
+the politico-social world of 1919, they were expected
+to deal with all the Allied and Associated nations,
+without favor or prejudice, as members of one family.
+This expectation was not fulfilled. It may not have been
+warranted. From the various discussions and decisions
+of which we have knowledge, a number of delegates drew
+the inference that France was destined for obvious reasons
+to occupy the leading position in continental Europe,
+under the protection of Anglo-Saxondom; and that a
+privileged status was to be conferred on the Jews in
+eastern Europe and in Palestine, while the other states
+were to be in the leading-strings of the Four. This view
+was not lightly expressed, however inadequately it may
+prove to have been then supported by facts. As to the
+desirability of forming this rude hierarchy of states, the
+principal plenipotentiaries were said to have been in
+general agreement, although responding to different motives.
+There was but one discordant voice&mdash;that of
+France&mdash;who was opposed to the various limitations set
+to Poland's aggrandizement, and also to the clause placing
+the Jews under the direct protection of the League of
+Nations, and investing them with privileges in which the
+races among whom they reside are not allowed to participate.
+Bulgaria had a position unique in her class,
+for she was luckier than most of her peers in having
+enlisted on her side the American delegation and Mr.
+Wilson as leading counsel and special pleader for her
+claim to an outlet to the &AElig;gean Sea.</p>
+
+<p>At the Conference each state was dealt with according
+to its class. Entirely above the new law, as we saw,
+stood its creators, the Anglo-Saxons. To all the others,
+including the French, the Wilsonian doctrine was applied
+as fully as was compatible with its author's main object,
+the elaboration of an instrument which he could take back
+with him to the United States as the great world settlement.
+Within these limits the President was evidently
+most anxious to apply his Fourteen Points, but he kept
+well within these. Thus he would, perhaps, have been
+quite ready to insist on the abandonment by Britain of
+her supremacy on the seas, on a radical change in the
+international status of Egypt and Ireland, and much
+else, had these innovations been compatible with his own
+special object. But they were not. He was apparently
+minded to test the matter by announcing his resolve to
+moot the problem of the freedom of the seas, but when
+admonished by the British government that it would
+not even brook its mention, he at once gave it up and,
+presumably drawing the obvious inference from this
+downright refusal, applied it to the Irish, Egyptian, and
+other issues, which were forthwith eliminated from the
+category of open or international problems. But France's
+insistent demand, on the other hand, for the Rhine
+frontier met with an emphatic refusal.<a name="FNanchor_127_127" id="FNanchor_127_127" href="#Footnote_127_127" >[127]</a></p>
+
+<p>The social reformer is disheartened by the one-sided
+and inexorable way in which maxims proclaimed to be of
+universal application were restricted to the second-class
+nations.</p>
+
+<p>Russia's case abounds in illustrations of this arbitrary,
+unjust, and impolitic pressure. The Russians had been
+our allies. They had fought heroically at the time when
+the people of the United States were, according to their
+President, &quot;too proud to fight.&quot; They were essential
+factors in the Allies' victory, and consequently entitled
+to the advantages and immunities enjoyed by the Western
+Powers. In no case ought they to have been placed on
+the same level as our enemies, and in lieu of recompense
+condemned to punishment. And yet this latter conception
+of their deserts was not wholly new. Soon after
+their defection, and when the Allies were plunged in the
+depths of despondency, a current of opinion made itself
+felt among certain sections of the Allied peoples tending
+to the conclusion of peace on the basis of compensations
+to Germany, to be supplied by the cession of Russian
+territory. This expedient was advocated by more than
+one statesman, and was making headway when fresh
+factors arose which bade fair to render it needless.</p>
+
+<p>At the Paris Conference the spirit of this conception
+may still have survived and prompted much that was
+done and much that was left unattempted. Russia was
+under a cloud. If she was not classed as an enemy she
+was denied the consideration reserved for the Allies and
+the neutrals. Her integrity was a matter of indifference
+to her former friends; almost every people and nationality
+in the Russian state which asked for independence
+found a ready hearing at the Supreme Council. And
+some of them before they had lodged any such claim were
+encouraged to lose no time in asking for separation. In
+one case a large sum of money and a mission were sent
+to &quot;create the independent state of the Ukraine,&quot; so
+impatient were peoples in the West to obtain a substitute
+for the Russian ally whom they had lost in the East,
+and great was their consternation when their prot&eacute;g&eacute;s misspent
+the funds and made common cause with the
+Teutons.</p>
+
+<p>Disorganized Russia was in some ways a godsend to
+the world's administrators in Paris. To the advocate of
+alliances, territorial equilibrium, and the old order of
+things it offered a facile means of acquiring new helpmates
+in the East by emancipating its various peoples
+in the name of right and justice. It held out to the
+capitalists who deplored the loss of their milliards a
+potential source whence part of that loss might be made
+good.<a name="FNanchor_128_128" id="FNanchor_128_128" href="#Footnote_128_128" >[128]</a> To the zealots of the League of Nations it
+offered an unresisting body on which all the requisite
+operations from amputation to trepanning might be performed
+without the use of anesthetics.</p>
+
+<p>The various border states of Russia were thus quietly
+lopped off without even the foreknowledge, much less the
+assent, of the patient, and without any pretense at
+plebiscites. Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Georgia were
+severed from the chaotic Slav state offhandedly, and
+the warrant was the doctrine propounded by President
+Wilson&mdash;that every people shall be free to choose its own
+mode of living and working. Every people? Surely not,
+remarked unbiased onlookers. The Egyptians, the
+Irish, the Austrians, the Persians, to name but four
+among many, are disqualified for the exercise of these indefeasible
+rights. Perhaps with good reason? Then
+modify the doctrine. Why this difference of treatment?
+they queried. Is it not because the supreme judge knows
+full well that Great Britain would not brook the discussion
+of the Egyptian or the Irish problem, and that
+France, in order to feel quite secure, must hinder the
+Austrian-Germans from coalescing with their brethren
+of the Reich? But if Britain and France have the right
+to veto every self-denying measure that smacks of disruption
+or may involve a sacrifice, why is Russia bereft
+of it? If the principle involved be of any value at all,
+its application must be universal. To an equal all-round
+distribution of sacrifice the only alternative is the
+supremacy of force in the service of arbitrary rule. And
+to this force, accordingly, the Supreme Council had
+recourse. The only cases in which it seriously vindicated
+the rights of oppressed or dissatisfied peoples to self-determination
+against the will of the ruling race or nation
+were those in which that race or nation was powerless to
+resist. Whenever Britain or France's interests were
+deemed to be imperiled by the putting in force of any
+of the Fourteen Points, Mr. Wilson desisted from its
+application. Thus it came about that Russia was put
+on the same plane with Germany and received similar,
+in some respects, indeed, sterner, treatment. The Germans
+were at least permitted to file objections to the
+conditions imposed and to point out flaws in the arrangements
+drafted, and their representations sometimes
+achieved their end. It was otherwise with the Russians.
+They were never consulted. And when their representatives
+in Paris respectfully suggested that all such changes
+as might be decided upon by the Great Powers during their
+country's political disablement should be taken to be
+provisional and be referred for definite settlement to the
+future constituent assembly, the request was ignored.</p>
+
+<p>Of psychological rather than political interest was
+Mr. Wilson's conscientious hesitation as to whether the
+nationalities which he was preparing to liberate were
+sufficiently advanced to be intrusted with self-government.
+As stated elsewhere, his first impulse would seem to have
+been to appoint mandatories to administer the territories
+severed from Russia. The mandatory arrangement under
+the ubiquitous League is said to have been his own.
+Presumably he afterward acquired the belief that the
+system might be wisely dispensed with in the case of some
+of Russia's border states, for they soon afterward received
+promises of independence and implicitly of protection
+against future encroachments by a resuscitated
+Russia.</p>
+
+<p>In this connection a scene is worth reproducing which
+was enacted at the Peace Table before the system of administering
+certain territories by proxy was fully elaborated.
+At one of the sittings the delegates set themselves
+to determine what countries should be thus governed,<a name="FNanchor_129_129" id="FNanchor_129_129" href="#Footnote_129_129" >[129]</a>
+and it was understood that the mandatory system was to
+be reserved for the German colonies and certain provinces
+of the Turkish Empire. But in the course of the conversation
+Mr. Wilson casually made use of the expression,
+&quot;The German colonies, the territories of the Turkish
+Empire and other territories.&quot; One of the delegates
+promptly put the question, &quot;What other territories?&quot;
+to which the President replied, unhesitatingly, &quot;Those
+of the late Russian Empire.&quot; Then he added by way of
+explanation: &quot;We are constantly receiving petitions from
+peoples who lived hitherto under the scepter of the
+Tsars&mdash;Caucasians, Central Asiatic peoples, and others&mdash;who
+refuse to be ruled any longer by the Russians and
+yet are incapable of organizing viable independent states
+of their own. It is meet that the desires of these nations
+should be considered.&quot; At this the Czech delegate,
+Doctor Kramarcz, flared up and exclaimed: &quot;Russia?
+Cut up Russia? But what about her integrity? Is that
+to be sacrificed?&quot; But his words died away without
+evoking a response. &quot;Was there no one,&quot; a Russian
+afterward asked, &quot;to remind those representatives of the
+Great Powers of their righteous wrath with Germany
+when the Brest-Litovsk treaty was promulgated?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Toward Italy, who, unlike Russia, was not treated as an
+enemy, but as relegated to the category of lesser states,
+the attitude of President Wilson was exceptionally firm
+and uncompromising. On the subject of Fiume and
+Dalmatia he refused to yield an inch. In vain the
+Italian delegation argued, appealed, and lowered its
+claims. Mr. Wilson was adamant. It is fair to admit
+that in no other way could he have contrived to get even
+a simulacrum of a League. Unless the weak states were
+awed into submitting to sacrifices for the great aim which
+he had made his own, he must return to Washington as
+the champion of a manifestly lost cause. On the other
+hand, it cannot be denied that his thesis was not destitute
+of arguments to support it. Accordingly the deadlock
+went on for months, until the Italian Cabinet fell and
+people wearied of the Adriatic problems.</p>
+
+<p>Poland was another of the communities which had to
+bend before Anglo-Saxon will, represented in her case
+mainly by Mr. Lloyd George, not, however, without the
+somewhat tardy backing of his colleague from Washington.
+It is important for the historian and the political
+student to observe that as the British Premier was not
+credited with any profound or original ideas about the
+severing or soldering of east European territories, the
+authorship of the powerful and successful opposition
+to the allotting of Dantzig to Poland was rightly or
+wrongly ascribed not to him, but to what is euphemistically
+termed &quot;international finance&quot; lurking in the background,
+whose interest in Poland was obviously keen,
+and whose influence on the Supreme Council, although
+less obvious, was believed to be far-reaching. The same
+explanation was currently suggested for the fixed resolve
+of Mr. Lloyd George not to assign Upper Silesia to Poland
+without a plebiscite. His own account of the matter was
+that although the inhabitants were Polish&mdash;they are as two
+to one compared with the Germans&mdash;it was conceivable
+that they entertained leanings toward the Germans, and
+might therefore desire to throw in their lot with these.
+When one compares this scrupulous respect for the likes
+and dislikes of the inhabitants of that province with the
+curt refusal of the same men at first to give ear to the
+ardent desire of the Austrians to unite with the Germans,
+or to abide by a plebiscite of the inhabitants of Fiume or
+Teschen, one is bewildered. The British Premier's wish
+was opposed by the official body of experts appointed to
+report on the matter. Its members had no misgivings.
+The territory, they said, belonged of right to Poland,
+the great majority of its population was unquestionably
+Polish, and the practical conclusion was that it should
+be handed over to the Polish government as soon as
+feasible. Thereupon the staff of the commission was
+changed and new members were substituted for the old.<a name="FNanchor_130_130" id="FNanchor_130_130" href="#Footnote_130_130" >[130]</a>
+But that was not enough. The British Premier still encountered
+such opposition among his foreign colleagues
+that it was only by dint of wordy warfare and stubbornness
+that he finally won his point.</p>
+
+<p>The stipulation for which the first British delegate toiled
+thus laboriously was that within a fortnight after the
+ratification of the Treaty the German and Polish forces
+should evacuate the districts in which the plebiscite was
+to be held, that the Workmen's Councils there should be
+dissolved, and that the League of Nations should take
+over the government of the district so as to allow the
+population to give full expression to its will. But the
+League of Nations did not exist and could not be constituted
+for a considerable time. It was therefore decided<a name="FNanchor_131_131" id="FNanchor_131_131" href="#Footnote_131_131" >[131]</a>
+that some temporary substitute for the League should be
+formed at once, and the Supreme Council decided that
+Inter-Allied troops should occupy the districts. That was
+the first instalment of the price to be paid for the British
+Premier's tenderness for plebiscites, which the expert commissions
+deprecated as unnecessary, and which, as events
+proved in this case, were harmful.</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile Bolshevist&mdash;some said German&mdash;agents
+were stirring up the population by suasion and by
+terrorism until it finally began to ferment. Thousands
+of working-men responded to the goad, &quot;turned down&quot;
+their tools and ceased work. Thereupon the coal-fields
+of Upper Silesia, the production of which had already
+dropped by 50 per cent, since the preceding November,
+ceased to produce anything. This consummation grieved
+the Supreme Council, which turned for help to the Inter-Allied
+armies. For the Silesian coal-fields represented
+about one-third of Germany's production, and both France
+and Italy were looking to Germany for part of their fuel-supply.
+The French press pertinently asked whether it
+would not have been cheaper, safer, and more efficacious
+to have forgone the plebiscite and relied on the Polish
+troops from the outset.<a name="FNanchor_132_132" id="FNanchor_132_132" href="#Footnote_132_132" >[132]</a> For, however ideal the intentions
+of Mr. Lloyd George may have been, the net result of his
+insistence on a plebiscite was to enable an ex-newspaper
+vender named Hoersing, who had undertaken to prevent
+the detachment of Upper Silesia from Germany, to set
+his machinery for agitation in motion and cause general
+unrest in the Silesian and Dombrova coal-mining districts.
+When the strike was declared the workmen, who are Poles
+to a man, rejected all suggestions that they should refer
+their grievances to arbitration courts. For these tribunals
+were conducted by Germans. The consequence of Mr.
+Lloyd George's spirited intervention was, in the words of
+an unbiased observer, to &quot;raise the specters of starvation,
+freezing and Bolshevism in eastern Europe&quot; during the
+ensuing winter&mdash;a heavy price to pay for pedantic adherence
+to the letter of an irrelevant ordinance, at a
+moment when the spirit of basic principles was being allowed
+to evaporate.</p>
+
+<p>Rumania was chastened and qualified in severer fashion
+for admission to the sodality of nations until her delegates
+quitted the Conference in disgust, struck out their own
+policy, and courteously ignored the Great Powers. Then
+the Supreme Council changed its note for the moment
+and abandoned the position which it had taken up respecting
+the armistice with Hungary, to revert to it
+shortly afterward.<a name="FNanchor_133_133" id="FNanchor_133_133" href="#Footnote_133_133" >[133]</a> The joy with which the upshot of
+this revolt was hailed by all the lesser states was an evil
+omen. For their antipathy toward the Supreme Council
+had long before hardened into a sentiment much more
+intense, and any stick seemed good enough to break the
+rod of the self-constituted governors of the planet.</p>
+
+<p>The concrete result of this tinkering and cobbling could
+only be a ramshackle structure, built without any reference
+to the canons of political architecture. It was shaped
+neither by the Fourteen Points nor by the canons of the
+balance of power and territory. It was hardly more than
+an abortive attempt to make a synthesis of the two.
+Created by force, it could be perpetuated only by force;
+but if symptoms are to be trusted, it is more likely to be
+broken up by force. As an American press organ remarked
+in August: &quot;The Council of Five complains that
+no one now condescends to recognize the League of Nations.
+Even the small nations are buying war material,
+quite oblivious of the fact that there are to be no more
+wars, now that the League is there to prevent them.
+Sweden is buying large supplies from Germany, and Spain
+is sending a commission to Paris to negotiate for some of
+France's war equipment.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_134_134" id="FNanchor_134_134" href="#Footnote_134_134" >[134]</a></p>
+
+<p>Belgium, too, was treated with scant consideration.
+The praise lavished on her courageous people during the
+war was apparently deemed an adequate recompense for
+the sacrifices she had made and the losses she endured.
+For the revision of the treaties of 1839, indispensable to
+the economic development of the country, no diplomatic
+preparation was made down to May, and among the
+Treaty clauses then drafted Belgium's share of justice was
+so slight and insufficient that the unbiased press published
+sharp strictures on the forgetfulness or egotism of
+the Supreme Council. &quot;The little that has leaked out of
+the decisions taken regarding the conditions which affect
+Belgium,&quot; wrote one journal, &quot;has caused not only bitter
+disappointment in Belgium, but also indignation everywhere....
+The Allies having decided not to accord moral
+satisfaction to Belgium (they chose Geneva as the capital
+of the League of Nations), it was perhaps to be expected
+that they would not accord her material satisfaction.
+And such expectations are being fulfilled. The Limburg
+province, annexed to Holland in 1839, the province which
+gave the retreating enemy unlawful refuge in 1918, a rank
+violation of Dutch neutrality, is apparently not to be
+restored to Belgium. Even the right, vital to the safety
+and welfare of Belgium, the right of unimpeded navigation
+of the Scheldt between Antwerp and the sea, has not
+yet been conceded. And the raw material that is indispensable
+if Belgian industry is to be revived is withheld;
+the Allies, however, are quite willing to flood the country
+with manufactured articles.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_135_135" id="FNanchor_135_135" href="#Footnote_135_135" >[135]</a></p>
+
+<p>And yet Belgium's demands were extremely modest.<a name="FNanchor_136_136" id="FNanchor_136_136" href="#Footnote_136_136" >[136]</a>
+They were formulated, not as the guerdon for her heroic
+defense of civilization, but as a plain corollary flowing
+direct from each and every principle officially recognized
+by the heads of the Conference&mdash;right, nationality, legitimate
+guarantees, and economic requirements. Tested
+by any or all of these accepted touchstones, everything
+asked for was reasonable and fair in itself, and seemingly
+indispensable to the durability of the new world-structure
+which the statesmen were endeavoring to raise on the
+ruins of the old. Belgium's forlorn political and territorial
+plight embodied all the worst vices of the old balance
+of power stigmatized by President Wilson: the mutilation
+of the country; the forcible separation of sections
+of its population from each other; the distribution of
+these lopped, ethnic fragments among alien states and
+dynasties; the control of her waterways handed over to
+commercial rivals; the transformation of cities and districts
+that were obviously destined to figure among her
+sources of national well-being and centers of culture
+into dead towns that paralyze her effort and hinder her
+progress. In a word, Belgium had had no political
+existence for her own behoof. She was not an organic
+unit in the sodality of nations, but a mere cog in the
+mechanism of European equilibrium.</p>
+
+<p>Ruined by the war, Belgium was sorely tried by the
+Peace Conference. She complained of two open wounds
+which poisoned her existence, stunted her economic
+growth, and rendered her self-defense an impossibility:
+the vast gap of Limburg on the east and the blocking
+of the Scheldt on the west. The great national <i>r&eacute;duit</i>,
+Antwerp, cut off from the sea, inaccessible to succor in
+case of war, on the one side, and Limburg opening to
+Germany's armies the road through central Belgium,
+on the other&mdash;these were the two standing dangers which
+it was hoped would be removed. How dangerous they
+are events had demonstrated. In October, 1914, Antwerp
+fell because Holland had closed the Scheldt and forbidden
+the entrance to warships and transports, and in November,
+1918, a German army of over seventy thousand men
+eluded pursuit by the Allies by passing through Dutch
+Limburg, carrying with them vast war materials and
+booty. Militarily Belgium is exposed to mortal perils
+so long as the treaties which ordained this preposterous
+division of territories are maintained in vigor.</p>
+
+<p>Economically, too, the consequences, especially of the
+status of the Scheldt, are admittedly baleful. To Holland
+the river is practically useless&mdash;indeed, the only advantage
+it could confer would be the power of impeding the growth
+and prosperity of Antwerp for the benefit of its rival,
+Rotterdam. All that the Belgians desired there was the
+complete control of their national river, with the right
+of carrying out the works necessary to keep it navigable.
+A like demand was put forward for the canal of Terneuzen,
+which links the city of Ghent with the Scheldt; and the
+suppression of the checks and hindrances to Belgium's
+free communications with her hinterland&mdash;<i>i.e.</i>, the basins
+of the Meuse and the Rhine. Prom every point of
+view, including that of international law, the claims
+made were at once modest and grounded. But the
+Supreme Council had no time to devote to such subsidiary
+matters, and, like more momentous issues, they
+were adjourned.</p>
+
+<p>The Belgian delegation did not ask that Holland's
+territory should be curtailed. On the contrary, they
+would have welcomed its increase by the addition of
+territory inhabited by people of her own idiom, under
+German sway.<a name="FNanchor_137_137" id="FNanchor_137_137" href="#Footnote_137_137" >[137]</a> But the Dutch demurred, as Denmark
+had done in the matter of the third Schleswig zone, for
+fear of offending Germany. And the Supreme Council
+acquiesced in the refusal. Again, when issues were under
+discussion that turned upon the Rhine country and
+affected Belgian interests, her delegates were never consulted.
+They were systematically ignored by the Conference.
+When the capital of the League of Nations
+was to be chosen, their hopes that Brussels would be
+deemed worthy of the honor were blasted by President
+Wilson himself. One of the American delegates informed
+a foreign colleague &quot;that the capital of the League must
+be situate in a tranquil country, must have a steady,
+settled population and a really good climate.&quot; &quot;A good
+climate?&quot; asked a continental statesman. &quot;Then why
+not choose Monte Carlo?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the decision in favor of Geneva was sent by courier
+from Switzerland ready made to President Wilson. The
+chief grounds which lent color to the belief that religious
+bias played a larger part in the Conference's decisions
+than was apparent were the following: It was from
+Geneva that the spirit of religious and political liberty
+first went forth to be incarnated among the various
+nations of the world. It is to John Calvin, rather than
+to Martin Luther, that the birth of the Scotch Covenanters
+and of English Puritanism is traceable. Hence Geneva
+is the parent of New England. So, too, it was Rousseau&mdash;a
+true child of Calvin&mdash;who was the author of America's
+Declaration of Independence. Again, one of the first
+pacifists and advocates of international arbitration was
+born in Geneva. John Knox sat for two years at the feet
+of Calvin. Consequently the Puritan Revolution, the
+French Revolution, and the American Revolution all
+had their springs in Geneva.</p>
+
+<p>These were the considerations which weighed with
+President Wilson when he refused to fix his choice on
+Brussels. In vain the Belgians argued and pleaded,
+urging that if the Conference were to vote for London,
+Washington, or Paris, they would receive the announcement
+with respectful acquiescence, but that among the
+lesser states they conceived that their country's claims
+were the best grounded. To the Americans who objected
+that Switzerland's mountains and lakes, being free from
+hateful war memories, offer more fitting surroundings
+for the capital of the League of Peace than Brussels, where
+vestiges of the odious struggle will long survive, they
+answered that they could only regret that Belgium's
+resistance to the lawless invaders should be taken to
+disqualify her for the honor.</p>
+
+<p>It is worth while pursuing this matter a step farther.
+The Federal Council in Berne having soon afterward
+officially recommended<a name="FNanchor_138_138" id="FNanchor_138_138" href="#Footnote_138_138" >[138]</a> the nation to enter the League
+which guarantees it neutrality,<a name="FNanchor_139_139" id="FNanchor_139_139" href="#Footnote_139_139" >[139]</a> an illuminating discussion
+ensued. And it was elicited that as there is an obligation
+imposed on all member-states to execute the decrees of
+the League for the coercion of rebellious fellow-members,
+it follows that in such cases Switzerland, too, would be
+obliged to take an active part in the struggle between the
+League and the recalcitrant country. From military
+operations, however, Switzerland is dispensed, but it
+would certainly be bound to adopt economic measures of
+pressure, and to this extent abandon its neutrality. Now
+not only would that attitude be construed by the disobedient
+nation as unfriendly, and the usual consequences
+drawn from it, but as Switzerland is freed from military
+co-operation, it follows that the League could not fix the
+headquarters of its military command in its own capital,
+Geneva, as that would constitute a violation of Swiss
+neutrality. And, if it did, Switzerland would in self-defense
+be bound to oppose the decision!</p>
+
+<p>The Belgians were discouraged by the disdainful demeanor
+and grudging disposition of the Supreme Council,
+and irritated by the arbitrariness of its decrees and the
+indefensible way in which it applied principles that were
+propounded as sacred. Before restoring the diminutive
+cantons of Eupen and Malmedy to Belgium, for example,
+Mr. Wilson insisted on ascertaining the will of the population
+by plebiscite. In itself the measure was reasonable,
+but the position of these little districts was substantially
+on all-fours with Alsace-Lorraine, which was restored
+to France without any such test. In Fiume, also,
+the will of the inhabitants went for nothing, Mr. Wilson
+refusing to consult them. Further, Austria, whose people
+were known to favor union with Germany, was systematically
+jockeyed into ruinous isolation. &quot;Now what, in
+the light of these conflicting judgments,&quot; asked the Belgians,
+&quot;is the true meaning of the principle of self-determination?&quot;
+The only reply they received was that Mr.
+Wilson was right when he told his fellow-countrymen that
+his principles stood in need of interpretation, and that, as
+he was the sole authorized interpreter, his presence was
+required in Europe.</p>
+
+<p>In money matters, too, the chief plenipotentiaries can
+hardly be acquitted of something akin to niggardliness
+toward the country which had saved theirs from a catastrophe.
+Down to the month of May, 1921, two and a
+half milliard francs was the maximum sum allotted to
+Belgium by the Supreme Council. And for the work of
+restoring the devastated country, which the Great Powers
+had spontaneously promised to accomplish, it was alleged
+by experts to be wholly inadequate. Other financial
+grievances were ignored&mdash;for a time. Further, it was decided
+that Germany should surrender her African colonies
+to the Great Powers; yet Belgium, who contributed materially
+to their conquest, was not to be associated with them.</p>
+
+<p>Irritated by this illiberality, the Belgian delegation, having
+consulted with M. Renkin, to whose judgment in these
+matters special weight attached, resolved to make a firm
+stand, and refused to sign the Treaty unless at least certain
+modest financial, economic, and colonial claims,
+which ought to have been settled spontaneously, were
+accorded under pressure. And the Supreme Council,
+rather than be arraigned before the world on the charge
+of behaving unjustly as well as ungenerously toward
+Belgium, ultimately gave way, leaving, however, an impression
+behind which seemed as indelible as it was profound....</p>
+
+<p>The domination which is now being exercised by the
+principal Powers over the remaining states of the world is
+fraught with consequences which were not foreseen, and
+have not yet been realized by those who established it.
+Among the least momentous, but none the less real, is one
+to which Belgium is exposed. Hitherto there was a language
+problem in that heroic country which, being an
+internal controversy, could be settled without noteworthy
+perturbations by the good-will of the Walloons and the
+Flemings. The danger, which one fervently hopes will
+be warded off, consists in the possible transformation of
+that dispute into an international question, in consequence
+of possible accords of a military or economic nature. The
+subject is too delicate to be handled by a foreigner, and
+the Belgian people are too practical and law-loving not
+to avoid unwary steps that might turn a linguistic problem
+into a racial issue.</p>
+
+<p>The Supreme Council soon came to be looked upon as
+the prototype of the future League, and in that light its
+action was sharply scrutinized by all whom the League
+concerned. Foremost among these were the representatives
+of the lesser states, or, as they were termed, &quot;states
+with limited interests.&quot; This band of patriots had pilgrimaged
+to Paris full of hope for their respective countries,
+having drunk in avidly the unstinted praise and
+promises which had served as pabulum for their attachment
+to the Allied cause during the war. But their illusions
+were short-lived. At one of their first meetings with
+the delegates of the Great Powers a storm burst which
+scattered their expectations to the winds. When the sky
+cleared it was discovered that from indispensable fellow-workers
+they had shrunk to dwarfish prot&eacute;g&eacute;es, mere
+units of an inferior category, who were to be told what to
+do and would be constrained to do it thoroughly if not
+unmurmuringly.</p>
+
+<p>At the historic sitting of January 26th, the delegates of
+the lesser states protested energetically against the purely
+decorative part assigned to them at a Conference in the
+decisions of which their peoples were so intensely interested.
+The Canadian Minister, having spoken of the
+&quot;proposal&quot; of the Great Powers, was immediately corrected
+by M. Clemenceau, who brusquely said that it was
+not a proposal, but a decision, which was therefore definitive
+and final. Thereupon the Belgian delegate, M.
+Hymans, delivered a masterly speech, pleading for genuine
+discussion in order to elucidate matters that so closely
+concerned them all, and he requested the Conference to
+allow the smaller belligerent Allies more than two delegates.
+Their demand was curtly rejected by the French
+Premier, who informed his hearers that the Conference
+was the creation of the Great Powers, who intended to
+keep the direction of its labors in their own hands. He
+added significantly that the smaller nations' representatives
+would probably not have been invited at all if the
+special problem of the League of Nations had not been
+mooted. Nor should it be forgotten, he added, that the
+five Great Powers represented no less than twelve million
+fighting-men.... In conclusion, he told them that they
+had better get on with their work in lieu of wasting precious
+time in speechmaking. These words produced a
+profound and lasting effect, which, however, was hardly
+the kind intended by the French statesman.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Conferential Tsarism&quot; was the term applied to this
+magisterial method by one of the offended delegates.
+He said to me on the morrow: &quot;My reply to M. Clemenceau
+was ready, but fear of impairing the prestige of the
+Conference prevented me from uttering it. I could have
+emphasized the need for unanimity in the presence of
+vigilant enemies, ready to introduce a wedge into every
+fissure of the edifice we are constructing. I could have
+pointed out that, this being an assembly of nations
+which had waged war conjointly, there is no sound reason
+why its membership should be diluted with states which
+never drew the sword at all. I might have asked what
+has become of the doctrine preached when victory was
+still undecided, that a league of nations must repose
+upon a free consent of all sovereign states. And above
+all things else I could have inquired how it came to pass
+that the architect-in-chief of the society of nations which
+is to bestow a stable peace on mankind should invoke
+the argument of force, of militarism, against the pacific
+peoples who voluntarily made the supreme sacrifice for
+the cause of humanity and now only ask for a hearing.
+Twelve million fighting-men is an argument to be employed
+against the Teutons, not against the peace-loving, law-abiding
+peoples of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Premier Clemenceau seemed to lay the blame for the
+waste of time on our shoulders, but the truth is that we
+were never admitted to the deliberations until yesterday;
+although two and one-half months have elapsed since the
+armistice was concluded, and although the progress
+made by these leading statesmen is manifestly limited,
+he grudged us forty-five minutes to give vent to our views
+and wishes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The French Tiger was admirable when crushing the
+enemies of civilization with his twelve million fighting-men;
+but gestures and actions which were appropriate to
+the battlefield become sources of jarring and discord when
+imported into a concert of peoples.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Much bitterness was generated by those high-handed
+tactics, whereupon certain slight concessions were made
+in order to placate the offended delegates; but, being doled
+out with a bad grace, they failed of the effect intended.
+Belgium received three delegates instead of two, and
+Jugoslavia three; but Rumania, whose population was
+estimated at fourteen millions, was allowed but two. This
+inexplicable decision caused a fresh wound, which was
+kept continuously open by friction, although it might
+readily have been avoided. Its consequences may be
+traced in Rumania's singular relations to the Supreme
+Council before and after the fall of Kuhn in Hungary.</p>
+
+<p>But even those drastic methods might be deemed warranted
+if the policy enforced were, in truth, conducive to
+the welfare of the nations on whom it was imposed. But
+hastily improvised by one or two men, who had no claim
+to superior or even average knowledge of the problems
+involved, and who were constantly falling into egregious
+and costly errors, it was inevitable that their intervention
+should be resented as arbitrary and mischievous by the
+leaders of the interested nations whose acquaintanceship
+with those questions and with the interdependent issues
+was extensive and precise. This resentment, however,
+might have been not, indeed, neutralized, but somewhat
+mitigated, if the temper and spirit in which the Duumvirate
+discharged its self-set functions had been free from
+hauteur and softened by modesty. But the magisterial
+wording in which its decisions were couched, the abruptness
+with which they were notified, and the threats that
+accompanied their imposition would have been repellent
+even were the authors endowed with infallibility.</p>
+
+<p>One of the delegates who unbosomed himself to me on
+the subject soon after the Germans had signed the
+Treaty remarked: &quot;The Big Three are superlatively unsympathetic
+to most of the envoys from the lesser belligerent
+states. And it would be a wonder if it were otherwise,
+for they make no effort to hide their disdain for us.
+In fact, it is downright contempt. They never consult
+us. When we approach them they shove us aside as
+importunate intruders. They come to decisions unknown
+to us, and carry them out in secrecy, as though we were
+enemies or spies. If we protest or remonstrate, we are
+imperialists and ungrateful.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Often we learn only from the newspapers the burdens
+or the restrictions that have been imposed on us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A couple of days previously M. Clemenceau, in an unofficial
+reply to a question put by the Rumanian delegation,
+directed them to consult the financial terms of the
+Treaty with Austria, forgetting that the delegates of the
+lesser states had not been allowed to receive or read those
+terms. Although communicated to the Austrians, they
+were carefully concealed from the Rumanians, whom they
+also concerned. At the same time, the Rumanian government
+was called upon to take and announce a decision
+which presupposed acquaintanceship with those conditions,
+whereupon the Rumanian Premier telegraphed from
+Bucharest to Paris to have them sent. But his <i>locum tenens</i>
+did not possess a copy and had no right to demand one.<a name="FNanchor_140_140" id="FNanchor_140_140" href="#Footnote_140_140" >[140]</a>
+Incongruities of this character were frequent.</p>
+
+<p>One statesman in Paris, who enjoys a world-wide
+reputation, dissented from those who sided with the lesser
+states. He looked at their protests and tactics from an
+angle of vision which the unbiased historian, however
+emphatically he may dissent from it, cannot ignore. He
+said: &quot;All the smaller communities are greedy and insatiable.
+If the chiefs of the World Powers had understood
+their temper and ascertained their aspirations in
+1914, much that has passed into history since then would
+never have taken place. During the war these miniature
+countries were courted, flattered, and promised the sun
+and the moon, earth and heaven, and all the glories therein.
+And now that these promises cannot be redeemed, they
+are wroth, and peevishly threaten the great states with
+disobedience and revolt. This, it is true, they could not
+do if the latter had not forfeited their authority and
+prestige by allowing their internal differences, hesitations,
+contradictions, and repentances to become manifest to
+all. To-day it is common knowledge that the Great
+Powers are amenable to very primitive incentives and
+deterrents. If in the beginning they had been united and
+said to their minor brethren: 'These are your frontiers.
+These your obligations,' the minor brethren would have
+bowed and acquiesced gratefully. In this way the
+boundary problems might have been settled to the satisfaction
+of all, for each new or enlarged state would have
+been treated as the recipient of a free gift from the World
+Powers. But the plenipotentiaries went about their task
+in a different and unpractical fashion. They began by
+recognizing the new communities, and then they gave
+them representatives at the Conference. This they did
+on the ground that the League of Nations must first be
+founded, and that all well-behaved belligerents on the
+Allied side have a right to be consulted upon that. And,
+finally, instead of keeping to their program and liquidating
+the war, they mingled the issues of peace with the clauses
+of the League and debated them simultaneously. In
+these debates they revealed their own internal differences,
+their hesitancy, and the weakness of their will. And the
+lesser states have taken advantage of that. The general
+results have been the postponement of peace, the physical
+exhaustion of the Central Empires, and the spread of
+Bolshevism.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It should not be forgotten that this mixture of the
+general and the particular of the old order and the new
+was objected to on other grounds. The Italians, for
+example, urged that it changed the status of a large
+number of their adversaries into that of highly privileged
+Allies. During the war they were enemies, before the
+peace discussions opened they had obtained forgiveness,
+after which they entered the Conference as cherished
+friends. The Italians had waged their war heroically
+against the Austrians, who inflicted heavy losses on them.
+Who were these Austrians? They were composed of the
+various nationalities which made up the Hapsburg
+monarchy, and in especial of men of Slav speech. These
+soldiers, with notable exceptions, discharged their duty
+to the Austrian Emperor and state conscientiously, according
+to the terms of their oath. Their disposition
+toward the Italians was not a whit less hostile than was
+that of the common German man against the French and
+the English. Why, then, argued the Italians, accord
+them privileges over the ally who bore the brunt of the
+fight against them? Why even treat the two as equals?
+It may be replied that the bulk of the people were indifferent
+and merely carried out orders. Well, the same
+holds good of the average German, yet he is not being
+spoiled by the victorious World Powers. But the Croats
+and others suddenly became the favorite children of the
+Conference, while the Germans and Teuton-Austrians,
+who in the meanwhile had accepted and fulfilled President
+Wilson's conditions for entry into the fellowship of nations,
+were not only punished heavily&mdash;which was perfectly
+just&mdash;but also disqualified for admission into the
+League, which was inconsistent.</p>
+
+<p>The root of all the incoherences complained of lay in
+the circumstance that the chiefs of the Great Powers
+had no program, no method; Mr. Wilson's pristine scheme
+would have enabled him to treat the gallant Serbs and
+their Croatian brethren as he desired. But he had failed
+to maintain it against opposition. On the other hand, the
+traditional method of the balance of power would have
+given Italy all that she could reasonably ask for, but
+Mr. Wilson had partially destroyed it. Nothing remained
+then but to have recourse to a <i>tertium quid</i> which
+profoundly dissatisfied both parties and imperiled the
+peace of the world in days to come. And even this makeshift
+the eminent plenipotentiaries were unable to contrive
+single-handed. Their notion of getting the work done
+was to transfer it to missions, commissions, and sub-commissions,
+and then to take action which, as often as
+not, ran counter to the recommendations of these selected
+agents. Oddly enough, none of these bodies received
+adequate directions. To take a concrete example: a
+central commission was appointed to deal with the Polish
+frontier problems, a second commission under M. Jules
+Cambon had to study the report on the Polish Delimitation
+question, but although often consulted, it was seldom
+listened to. Then there was a third commission, which
+also did excellent work to very little purpose. Now all
+the questions which formed the subjects of their inquiries
+might be approached from various sides. There
+were historical frontiers, ethnographical frontiers, political
+and strategical and linguistic frontiers. And this does not
+exhaust the list. Among all these, then, the commissioners
+had to choose their field of investigation as the
+spirit moved them, without any guidance from the
+Supreme Council, which presumably did not know what
+it wanted.</p>
+
+<p>As an example of the Council's unmethodical procedure,
+and of its slipshod way of tackling important work, the
+following brief sketch of a discussion which was intended
+to be decisive and final, but ended in mere waste of time,
+may be worth recording. The topic mooted was disarmament.
+The Anglo-Saxon plenipotentiaries, feeling
+that they owed it to their doctrines and their peoples to
+ease the military burdens of the latter and lessen temptations
+to acts of violence, favored a measure by which
+armaments should be reduced forthwith. The Italian
+delegates had put forward the thesis, which was finally accepted,
+that if Austria, for instance, was to be forbidden
+to keep more than a certain number of troops under arms,
+the prohibition should be extended to all the states of
+which Austria had been composed, and that in all these
+cases the ratio between the population and the army
+should be identical. Accordingly, the spokesmen of the
+various countries interested were summoned to take
+cognizance of the decision and intimate their readiness
+to conform to it.</p>
+
+<p>M. Paderewski listened respectfully to the decree, and
+then remarked: &quot;According to the accounts received
+from the French military authorities, Germany still has
+three hundred and fifty thousand soldiers in Silesia.&quot;
+&quot;No,&quot; corrected M. Clemenceau, &quot;only three hundred
+thousand.&quot; &quot;I accept the correction,&quot; replied the Polish
+Premier. &quot;The difference, however, is of no importance
+to my contention, which is that according to the symptoms
+reported we Poles may have to fight the Germans and to
+wage the conflict single-handed. As you know, we have
+other military work on hand. I need only mention our
+strife with the Bolsheviki. If we are deprived of effective
+means of self-defense, on the one hand, and told to expect
+no help from the Allies, on the other hand, the consequence
+will be what every intelligent observer foresees. Now
+three hundred thousand Germans is no trifle to cope with.
+If we confront them with an inadequate force and are
+beaten, what then?&quot; &quot;Undoubtedly,&quot; exclaimed M.
+Clemenceau, &quot;if the Germans were victorious in the east
+of Europe the Allies would have lost the war. And that
+is a perspective not to be faced.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>M. Bratiano spoke next. &quot;We too,&quot; he said, &quot;have to
+fight the Bolsheviki on more than one front. This struggle
+is one of life and death to us. But it concerns, if only
+in a lesser degree, all Europe, and we are rendering services
+to the Great Powers by the sacrifices we thus offer
+up. Is it desirable, is it politic, to limit our forces without
+reference to these redoubtable tasks which await them?
+Is it not incumbent on the Powers to allow these states
+to grow to the dimensions required for the discharge of
+their functions?&quot; &quot;What you advance is true enough
+for the moment,&quot; objected M. Clemenceau; &quot;but you
+forget that our limitations are not to be applied at once.
+We fix a term after the expiry of which the strength of the
+armies will be reduced. We have taken all the circumstances
+into account.&quot; &quot;Are you prepared to affirm,&quot;
+queried the Rumanian Minister, &quot;that you can estimate
+the time with sufficient precision to warrant our risking
+the existence of our country on your forecast?&quot; &quot;The
+danger will have completely disappeared,&quot; insisted the
+French Premier, &quot;by January, 1921.&quot; &quot;I am truly
+glad to have this assurance,&quot; answered M. Bratiano,
+&quot;for I doubt not that you are quite certain of what you
+advance, else you would not stake the fate of your eastern
+allies on its correctness. But as we who have not been
+told the grounds on which you base this calculation are
+asked to manifest our faith in it by incurring the heaviest
+conceivable risks, would it be too much to suggest that
+the Great Powers should show their confidence in their
+own forecast by guaranteeing that if by the insurgence
+of unexpected events they proved to be mistaken and
+Rumania were attacked, they would give us prompt and
+adequate military assistance?&quot; To this appeal there
+was no affirmative response; whereupon M. Bratiano
+concluded: &quot;The limitation of armaments is highly
+desirable. No people is more eager for it than ours.
+But it has one limitation which must, I venture to think,
+be respected. So long as you have a restive or dubious
+neighbor, whose military forces are subjected neither to
+limitation nor control, you cannot divest yourself of your
+own means of self-defense. That is our view of the matter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Months later the same difficulty cropped up anew, this
+time in a concrete form, and was dealt with by the
+Supreme Council in its characteristic manner. Toward
+the end of August Rumania's doings in Hungary and her
+alleged designs on the Banat alarmed and angered the
+delegates, whose authority was being flouted with impunity;
+and by way of summarily terminating the scandal
+and preventing unpleasant surprises M. Clemenceau
+proposed that all further consignments of arms to
+Rumania should cease. Thereupon Italy's chief representative,
+Signor Tittoni, offered an amendment. He
+deprecated, he said, any measure leveled specially against
+Rumania, all the more that there existed already an
+enactment of the old Council of Four limiting the armaments
+of all the lesser states. The Military Council of
+Versailles, having been charged with the study of this
+matter, had reached the conclusion that the Great Powers
+should not supply any of the governments with war material.
+Signor Tittoni was of the opinion, therefore, that
+those conclusions should now be enforced.</p>
+
+<p>The Council thereupon agreed with the Italian delegate,
+and passed a resolution to supply none of the lesser
+countries with war material. And a few minutes later
+it passed another resolution authorizing Germany to
+cede part of her munitions and war material to Czechoslovakia
+and some more to General Yudenitch!<a name="FNanchor_141_141" id="FNanchor_141_141" href="#Footnote_141_141" >[141]</a></p>
+
+<p>When the commissions to which all the complex
+problems had to be referred were being first created,<a name="FNanchor_142_142" id="FNanchor_142_142" href="#Footnote_142_142" >[142]</a>
+the lesser states were allowed only five representatives
+on the Financial and Economic commissions, and were
+bidden to elect them. The nineteen delegates of these
+States protested on the ground that this arrangement
+would not give them sufficient weight in the councils by
+which their interests would be discussed. These malcontents
+were headed by Senhor Epistacio Pessoa, the
+President-elect of the United States of Brazil. The
+Polish delegate, M. Dmowski, addressing the meeting,
+suggested that they should not proceed to an election,
+the results of which might stand in no relation to the
+interests which the states represented had in matters of
+European finance, but that they should ask the Great
+Powers to appoint the delegates. To this the President-elect
+of Brazil demurred, taking the ground that it would
+be undignified for the lesser states to submit to have their
+spokesman nominated by the greater. Thereupon they
+elected five delegates, all of them from South American
+countries, to deal with European finance, leaving the
+Europeans to choose five from among themselves. This
+would have given ten in all to the communities whose
+interests were described as limited, and was an affront
+to the Great Powers.</p>
+
+<p>This comedy was severely judged and its authors
+reprimanded by the heads of the Conference, who, while
+quashing the elections, relented to the extent of promising
+that extra delegates might be appointed for the lesser
+nations later on. As a matter of fact, the number of
+commissions was of no real consequence, because on all
+momentous issues their findings, unless they harmonized
+with the decisions of the chief plenipotentiaries, were
+simply ignored.</p>
+
+<p>The curious attitude of the Supreme Council toward
+Rumania may be contemplated from various angles of
+vision. But the safest coign of vantage from which to
+look at it is that formed by the facts.</p>
+
+<p>Rumania's grievances were many, and they began at
+the opening of the Conference, when she was refused more
+than two delegates as against the five attributed to each
+of the Great Powers and three each for Serbia and Belgium,
+whose populations are numerically inferior to hers.
+Then her treaty with Great Britain, France, and Russia,
+on the strength of which she entered the war, was upset
+by its more powerful signatories as soon as the frontier
+question was mooted at the Conference. Further, the
+existence of the Rumanian delegation was generally
+ignored by the Supreme Council. Thus, when the treaty
+with Germany was presented to Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau,
+a mere journalist<a name="FNanchor_143_143" id="FNanchor_143_143" href="#Footnote_143_143" >[143]</a> at the Conference possessed
+a complete copy, whereas the Rumanian delegation,
+headed by the Prime Minister Bratiano, had cognizance
+only of an incomplete summary. When the fragmentary
+treaty was drafted for Austria, the Rumanian delegation
+saw the text only on the evening before the presentation,
+and, noticing inacceptable clauses, formulated reservations.
+These reservations were apparently acquiesced in
+by the members of the Supreme Council. That, at any
+rate, was the impression of MM. Bratiano and Misu.
+But on the following day, catching a glimpse of the draft,
+they discovered that the obnoxious provisions had been
+left intact. Then they lodged their reserves in writing,
+but to no purpose. One of the obligations imposed on
+Rumania by the Powers was a promise to accept in advance
+any and every measure that the Supreme Council
+might frame for the protection of minorities in the country,
+and for further restricting the sovereignty of the state
+in matters connected with the transit of Allied goods.
+And, lastly, the Rumanians complained that the action of
+the Supreme Council was creating a dangerous ferment in
+the Dobrudja, and even in Transylvania, where the Saxon
+minority, which had willingly accepted Rumanian sway,
+was beginning to agitate against it. In Bessarabia the
+non-Rumanian elements of the population were fiercely
+opposing the Rumanians and invoking the support of the
+Peace Conference. The cardinal fact which, in the judgment
+of the Rumanians, dominated the situation was the
+<i>quasi</i> ultimatum presented to them in the spring, when
+they were summoned unofficially and privately to grant
+industrial concessions to a pushing body of financiers, or
+else to abide by the consequences, one of which, they were
+told, would be the loss of America's active assistance.
+They had elected to incur the threatened penalty after
+having carefully weighed the advantages and disadvantages
+of laying the matter before President Wilson himself,
+and inquiring officially whether the action in question
+was&mdash;as they felt sure it must be&mdash;in contradiction with
+the President's east European policy. For it would be
+sad to think that abundant petroleum might have washed
+away many of the tribulations which the Rumanians had
+afterward to endure, and that loans accepted on onerous
+conditions would, as was hinted, have softened the hearts
+of those who had it in their power to render the existence
+of the nation sour or sweet.<a name="FNanchor_144_144" id="FNanchor_144_144" href="#Footnote_144_144" >[144]</a> &quot;Look out,&quot; exclaimed a
+Rumanian to me. &quot;You will see that we shall be spurned
+as Laodiceans, or worse, before the Conference is over.&quot;
+Rumania's external situation was even more perilous than
+her domestic plight. Situated between Russia and Hungary,
+she came more and more to resemble the iron between
+the hammer and the anvil. A well-combined move
+of the two anarchist states might have pulverized her.
+Alive to the danger, her spokesmen in Paris were anxious
+to guard against it, but the only hope they had at the
+moment was centered in the Great Powers, whose delegates
+at the Conference were discharging the functions which
+the League of Nations would be called on to fulfil whenever
+it became a real institution. And their past experience
+of the Great Powers' mode of action was not calculated
+to command their confidence. It was the Great
+Powers which, for their own behoof and without the
+slightest consideration for the interests of Rumania, had
+constrained that country to declare war against the Central
+Empires<a name="FNanchor_145_145" id="FNanchor_145_145" href="#Footnote_145_145" >[145]</a> and had made promises of effective support
+in the shape of Russian troops, war material of every kind,
+officers, and heavy artillery. But neither the promises of
+help nor the assurances that Germany's army of invasion
+would be immobilized were redeemed, and so far as one
+can now judge they ought never to have been made. For
+what actually came to pass&mdash;the invasion of the country
+by first-class German armies under Mackensen&mdash;might
+easily have been foreseen, and was actually foretold.<a name="FNanchor_146_146" id="FNanchor_146_146" href="#Footnote_146_146" >[146]</a>
+The entire country was put to sack, and everything of
+value that could be removed was carried off to Hungary,
+Germany, or Austria. The Allies lavished their verbal
+sympathies on the immolated nation, but did little else
+to succor it, and want and misery and disease played havoc
+with the people.</p>
+
+<p>After the armistice things became worse instead of
+better. The Hungarians were permitted to violate the
+conditions and keep a powerful army out of all proportion
+to the area which they were destined to retain, and as the
+Allies disposed of no countering force in eastern Europe,
+their commands were scoffed at by the Budapest Cabinet.
+In the spring of 1919 the Bolshevists of Hungary waxed
+militant and threatened the peace of Rumania, whose
+statesmen respectfully sued for permission to occupy certain
+commanding positions which would have enabled
+their armies to protect the land from invasion. But the
+Duumviri in Paris negatived the request. They fancied
+that they understood the situation better than the people
+on the spot. Thereupon the Bolshevists, ever ready for
+an opportunity, seized upon the opening afforded them by
+the Supreme Council, attacked the Rumanians, and invaded
+their territory. Nothing abashed, the two Anglo-Saxon
+statesmen comforted M. Bratiano and his colleagues
+with the expression of their regret and the promise that
+tranquillity would not again be disturbed. The Supreme
+Council would see to that. But this promise, like those
+that preceded it, was broken.</p>
+
+<p>The Rumanians went so far as to believe that the
+Supreme Council either had Bolshevist leanings or underwent
+secret influences&mdash;perhaps unwittingly&mdash;the nature
+of which it was not easy to ascertain. In support of these
+theories they urged that when the Rumanians were on
+the very point of annihilating the Red troops of Kuhn,
+it was the Supreme Council which interposed its authority
+to save them, and did save them effectually, when nothing
+else could have done it. That Kuhn was on the point
+of collapsing was a matter of common knowledge. A
+radio-telegram flashed from Budapest by one of his
+lieutenants contained this significant avowal: &quot;He
+[Kuhn] has announced that the Hungarian forces are in
+flight. The troops which occupied a good position at the
+bridgehead of Gomi have abandoned it, carrying with
+them the men who were doing their duty. In Budapest
+preparations are going forward for equipping fifteen
+workmen's battalions.&quot; In other words, the downfall
+of Bolshevism had begun. The Rumanians were on the
+point of achieving it. Their troops on the bank of the
+river Tisza<a name="FNanchor_147_147" id="FNanchor_147_147" href="#Footnote_147_147" >[147]</a> were preparing to march on Budapest.
+And it was at that critical moment that the world-arbiters
+at the Conference who had anathematized the Bolshevists
+as the curse of civilization interposed their authority
+and called a halt. If they had solid grounds for intervening
+they were not avowed. M. Clemenceau sent for
+M. Bratiano and vetoed the march in peremptory terms
+which did scant justice to the services rendered and the
+sacrifices made by the Rumanian state. Secret arrangements,
+it was whispered, had been come to between agents
+of the Powers and Kuhn. At the time nobody quite
+understood the motive of the sudden change of disposition
+evinced by the Allies toward the Magyar Bolshevists.
+For it was assumed that they still regarded the Bolshevist
+leaders as outlaws. One explanation was that they objected
+to allow the Rumanian army alone to occupy the
+Hungarian capital. But that would not account for their
+neglect to despatch an Inter-Allied contingent to restore
+order in the city and country. For they remained absolutely
+inactive while Kuhn's supporters were rallying
+and consolidating their scattered and demoralized forces,
+and they kept the Rumanians from balking the Bolshevist
+work of preparing another attack. As one of their
+French critics<a name="FNanchor_148_148" id="FNanchor_148_148" href="#Footnote_148_148" >[148]</a> remarked, they dealt exclusively in negatives&mdash;some
+of them pernicious enough, whereas a positive
+policy was imperatively called for. To reconstruct a
+nation, not to say a ruined world, a series of contradictory
+vetoes is hardly sufficient. But another explanation of
+their attitude was offered which gained widespread acceptance.
+It will be unfolded presently.</p>
+
+<p>The dispersed Bolshevist army, thus shielded, soon recovered
+its nerve, and, feeling secure on the Rumanian
+front, where the Allies held the invading troops immobilized,
+attacked the Slovaks and overran their country.
+For Bolshevism is by nature proselytizing. The Prague
+Cabinet was dismayed. The new-born Czechoslovak
+state was shaken. A catastrophe might, as it seemed,
+ensue at any moment. Rumania's troops were on the
+watch for the signal to resume their march, but it came
+not. The Czechoslovaks were soliciting it prayerfully.
+But the weak-kneed plenipotentiaries in Paris were
+minded to fight, if at all, with weapons taken from a different
+arsenal. In lieu of ordering the Rumanian troops
+to march on Budapest, they addressed themselves to the
+Bolshevist leader, Kuhn, summoned him to evacuate the
+Slovak country, and volunteered the promise that they
+would compel the Rumanians to withdraw. This amazing
+line of action was decided on by the secret Council of
+Three without the assent or foreknowledge of the nation
+to whose interests it ran counter and the head of whose
+government was rubbing shoulders with the plenipotentiaries
+every day. But M. Bratiano's existence and that
+of his fellow-delegate was systematically ignored. It is
+not easy to fathom the motives that inspired this supercilious
+treatment of the spokesman of a nation which was
+sacrificing its sons in the service of the Allies as well as
+its own. Personal antipathy, however real, cannot be
+assumed without convincing grounds to have been the
+mainspring.</p>
+
+<p>But there was worse than the contemptuous treatment
+of a colleague who was also the chief Minister of a
+friendly state. If an order was to be given to the Rumanian
+government to recall its forces from the front
+which they occupied, elementary courtesy and political
+tact as well as plain common sense would have suggested
+its being communicated, in the first instance, to the
+chief of that government&mdash;who was then resident in
+Paris&mdash;as head of his country's delegation to the Conference.
+But that was not the course taken. The statesmen
+of the Secret Council had recourse to the radio, and,
+without consulting M. Bratiano, despatched a message
+&quot;to the government in Bucharest&quot; enjoining on it the
+withdrawal of the Rumanian army. For they were
+minded scrupulously to redeem their promise to the Bolshevists.
+One need not be a diplomatist to realize the
+amazement of &quot;the Rumanian government&quot; on receiving
+this abrupt behest. The feelings of the Premier,
+when informed of these underhand doings, can readily
+be imagined. And it is no secret that the temper of a
+large section of the Rumanian people was attuned by these
+petty freaks to sentiments which boded no good to the
+cause for which the Allies professed to be working. In
+September M. Bratiano was reported as having stigmatized
+the policy adopted by the Conference toward
+Rumania as being of a &quot;malicious and dangerous
+character.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_149_149" id="FNanchor_149_149" href="#Footnote_149_149" >[149]</a></p>
+
+<p>The frontier to which the troops were ordered to withdraw
+had, as we saw, just been assigned to Rumania<a name="FNanchor_150_150" id="FNanchor_150_150" href="#Footnote_150_150" >[150]</a>
+without the assent of her government, and with a degree
+of secrecy and arbitrariness that gave deep offense, not
+only to her official representatives, but also to those
+parliamentarians and politicians who from genuine attachment
+or for peace' sake were willing to go hand in
+hand with the Entente. &quot;If one may classify the tree
+by its fruits,&quot; exclaimed a Rumanian statesman in my
+hearing, &quot;the great Three are unconscious Bolshevists.
+They are undermining respect for authority, tradition,
+plain, straightforward dealing, and, in the case of Rumania,
+are behaving as though their staple aim were to
+detach our nation from France and the Entente. And
+this aim is not unattainable. The Rumanian people
+were heart and soul with the French, but the bonds which
+were strong a short while ago are being weakened among
+an influential section of the people, to the regret of all
+Rumanian patriots.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The answer given by the &quot;Rumanian government in
+Bucharest&quot; to the peremptory order of the Secret Council
+was a reasoned refusal to comply. Rumania, taught by
+terrible experience, declined to be led once more into
+deadly peril against her own better judgment. Her
+statesmen, more intimately acquainted with the Hungarians
+than were Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Wilson, and M.
+Clemenceau, required guaranties which could be supplied
+only by armed forces&mdash;Rumanian or Allied. Unless and
+until Hungary received a government chosen by the
+free will of the people and capable of offering guaranties
+of good conduct, the troops must remain where they were.
+For the line which they occupied at the moment could be
+defended with four divisions, whereas the new one could
+not be held by less than seven or eight. The Council
+was therefore about to commit another fateful mistake,
+the consequences of which it was certain to shift to the
+shoulders of the pliant people. It was then that Rumania's
+leaders kicked against the pricks.</p>
+
+<p>To return to the dispute between Bucharest and Paris:
+the Rumanian government would have been willing to
+conform to the desire of the Supreme Council and withdraw
+its troops if the Supreme Council would only make
+good its assurance and guarantee Rumania effectually
+from future attacks by the Hungarians. The proviso
+was reasonable, and as a measure of self-defense imperative.
+The safeguard asked for was a contingent of Allied
+force. But the two supreme councilors in Paris dealt
+only in counters. All they had to offer to M. Bratiano
+were verbal exhortations before the combat and lip-sympathy
+after defeat, and these the Premier rejected.
+But here, as in the case of the Poles, the representatives
+of the &quot;Allied and Associated&quot; Powers insisted. They
+were profuse of promises, exhortations, and entreaties
+before passing to threats&mdash;of guaranties they said nothing&mdash;but
+the Rumanian Premier, turning a deaf ear to
+cajolery and intimidation, remained inflexible. For he
+was convinced that their advice was often vitiated by
+gross ignorance and not always inspired by disinterestedness,
+while the orders they issued were hardly more than
+the velleities of well-meaning gropers in the dark who
+lacked the means of executing them.</p>
+
+<p>The eminent plenipotentiaries, thus set at naught by a
+little state, ruminated on the embarrassing situation.
+In all such cases their practice had been to resign themselves
+to circumstances if they proved unable to bend
+circumstances to their schemes. It was thus that President
+Wilson had behaved when British statesmen declined
+even to hear him on the subject of the freedom of the
+seas, when M. Clemenceau refused to accept a peace
+that denied the Saar Valley and a pledge of military
+assistance to France, and when Japan insisted on the
+retrocession of Shantung. Toward Italy an attitude of
+firmness had been assumed, because owing to her economic
+dependence on Britain and the United States she could
+not indulge in the luxury of nonconformity. Hence the
+plenipotentiaries, and in particular Mr. Wilson, asserted
+their will inexorably and were painfully surprised that
+one of the lesser states had the audacity to defy it.</p>
+
+<p>The circumstance that after their triumph over Italy
+the world's trustees were thus publicly flouted by a little
+state of eastern Europe was gall and wormwood to them.
+It was also a menace to the cause with which they were
+identified. None the less, they accepted the inevitable
+for the moment, pitched their voices in a lower key, and
+decided to approve the Rumanian thesis that Neo-Bolshevism
+in Hungary must be no longer bolstered up,<a name="FNanchor_151_151" id="FNanchor_151_151" href="#Footnote_151_151" >[151]</a>
+but be squashed vicariously. They accordingly invited
+the representatives of the three little countries on which
+the honor of waging these humanitarian wars in the
+anarchist east of Europe was to be conferred, and sounded
+them as to their willingness to put their soldiers in the
+field, and how many as to the numbers available. M.
+Bratiano offered eight divisions. The Czechoslovaks did
+not relish the project, but after some delay and fencing
+around agreed to furnish a contingent, whereas the Jugoslavs
+met the demand with a plain negative, which was
+afterward changed to acquiescence when the Council
+promised to keep the Italians from attacking them. As
+things turned out, none but the Rumanians actually
+fought the Hungarian Reds. Meanwhile the members
+of the American, British, and Italian missions in Hungary
+endeavored to reach a friendly agreement with the
+criminal gang in Budapest.</p>
+
+<p>The plan of campaign decided on had Marshal Foch
+for its author. It was, therefore, business-like. He demanded
+a quarter of a million men,<a name="FNanchor_152_152" id="FNanchor_152_152" href="#Footnote_152_152" >[152]</a> to which it was
+decided that Rumania should contribute 120,000, Jugoslavia
+50,000, and Czechoslovakia as many as she could
+conveniently afford. But the day before the preparations
+were to have begun,<a name="FNanchor_153_153" id="FNanchor_153_153" href="#Footnote_153_153" >[153]</a> Bela Kuhn flung his troops<a name="FNanchor_154_154" id="FNanchor_154_154" href="#Footnote_154_154" >[154]</a> against
+the Rumanians with initial success, drove them across the
+Tisza with considerable loss, took up commanding positions,
+and struck dismay into the members of the Supreme
+Council. The Semitic Dictator, with grim humor,
+explained to the crestfallen lawgivers, who were once
+more at fault, that a wanton breach of the peace was alien
+to his thoughts; that, on the contrary, his motive for
+action deserved high praise&mdash;it was to compel the rebellious
+Rumanians to obey the behest of the Conference
+and withdraw to their frontiers. The plenipotentiaries
+bore this gibe with dignity, and decided to have recourse
+once more to their favorite, and, indeed, only method&mdash;the
+despatch of exhortative telegrams. Of more efficacious
+means they were destitute. This time their message,
+which lacked a definite address, was presumably intended
+for the anti-Bolshevist population of Hungary, whom it
+indirectly urged to overthrow the Kuhn Cabinet and
+receive the promised reward&mdash;namely, the privilege of entering
+into formal relations with the Entente and signing
+the death-warrant of the Magyar state. It is not
+easy to see how this solution alone could have enabled the
+Supreme Council to establish normal conditions and tranquillity
+in the land. But the Duumvirate seemed utterly
+incapable of devising a coherent policy for central or
+eastern Europe. Even when Hungary had a government
+friendly to the Entente they never obtained any advantage
+from it. They had had no use for Count Karolyi. They
+had allowed things to slip and slide, and permitted&mdash;nay,
+helped&mdash;Bolshevism to thrive, although they had brand-marked
+it as a virulent epidemic to be drastically stamped
+out. Temper, education, and training disqualified them
+for seizing opportunity and pressing the levers that stood
+ready to their hand.</p>
+
+<p>In consequence of the vacillation of the two chiefs, who
+seldom stood firm in the face of difficulties, the members
+of the predatory gang which concealed its alien origin
+under Magyar nationality and its criminal propensities<a name="FNanchor_155_155" id="FNanchor_155_155" href="#Footnote_155_155" >[155]</a>
+under a political mask had been enabled to go on playing
+an odious comedy, to the disgust of sensible people and
+the detriment of the new and enlarged states of Europe.
+For the cost of the Supreme Council's weakness had to
+be paid in blood and substance, little though the two delegates
+appeared to realize this. The extent to which the
+ruinous process was carried out would be incredible were
+it not established by historic facts and documents.</p>
+
+<p>The permanent agents of the Powers in Hungary,<a name="FNanchor_156_156" id="FNanchor_156_156" href="#Footnote_156_156" >[156]</a> preferring
+conciliation to force, now exhorted the Hungarians
+to rid themselves of Kuhn and promised in return
+to expel the Rumanians from Hungarian territory once
+more and to have the blockade raised. At the close of
+July some Magyars from Austria met Kuhn at a frontier
+station<a name="FNanchor_157_157" id="FNanchor_157_157" href="#Footnote_157_157" >[157]</a> and strove to persuade him to withdraw quietly
+into obscurity, but he, confiding in the policy of the Allies
+and his star, scouted the suggestion. It was at this juncture
+that the Rumanians, pushing on to Budapest, resolved,
+come what might, to put an end to the intolerable
+situation and to make a clean job of it once for all. And
+they succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>For Rumania's initial military reverse<a name="FNanchor_158_158" id="FNanchor_158_158" href="#Footnote_158_158" >[158]</a> was the result
+of a surprise attack by some eighty thousand men. But
+her troops rapidly regained their warlike spirit, recrossed
+the river Tisza, shattered the Neo-Bolshevist regime, and
+reached the environs of Budapest.</p>
+
+<p>By the 1st of August the lawless band that was ruining
+the country relinquished the reins of power, which were
+taken over at first by a Socialist Cabinet of which an influential
+French press organ wrote: &quot;The names of the
+new ... commissaries of the people tell us nothing, because
+their bearers are unknown. But the endings of their
+names tell us that most of them are, like those of the preceding
+government, of Jewish origin. Never since the
+inauguration of official communism did Budapest better
+deserve the appellation of Judapest, which was assigned
+to it by the late M. Lueger, chief of the Christian Socialists
+of Vienna. That is an additional trait in common with
+the Russian Soviets.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_159_159" id="FNanchor_159_159" href="#Footnote_159_159" >[159]</a></p>
+
+<p>The Rumanians presented a stiff ultimatum to the new
+Hungarian Cabinet. They were determined to safeguard
+their country and its neighbors from a repetition of the
+danger and of the sacrifices it entailed; in other words, to
+dictate the terms of a new armistice. The Powers demurred
+and ordered them to content themselves with the
+old one concluded by the Serbian Voyevod Mishitch and
+General Henrys in November of the preceding year and
+violated subsequently by the Magyars. But the objections
+to this course were many and unanswerable. In
+fact they were largely identical with the objections which
+the Supreme Council itself had offered to the Polish-Ukrainian
+armistice. And besides these there were others.
+For example, the Rumanians had had no hand or part in
+drafting the old armistice. Moreover it was clearly inapplicable
+to the fresh campaign which was waged and
+terminated nine months after it had been drawn up.
+Experience had shown that it was inadequate to guarantee
+public tranquillity, for it had not hindered Magyar attacks
+on the Rumanians and Czechoslovaks. The Rumanians,
+therefore, now that they had worsted their adversaries,
+were resolved to disarm them and secure a real peace.
+They decided to leave fifteen thousand troops for the
+maintenance of internal order.<a name="FNanchor_160_160" id="FNanchor_160_160" href="#Footnote_160_160" >[160]</a> Rumania's insistence on
+the delivery of live-stock, corn, agricultural machinery,
+and rolling-stock for railways was, it was argued, necessitated
+by want and justified by equity. For it was no
+more than partial reparation for the immense losses wantonly
+inflicted on the nation by the Magyars and their
+allies. Until then no other amends had been made or
+even offered. The Austrians, Hungarians, and Germans,
+during their two years' occupation of Rumania, had seized
+and carried off from the latter country two million five
+hundred thousand tons of wheat and hundreds of thousands
+of head of cattle, besides vast quantities of clothing,
+wool, skins, and raw material, while thousands of Rumanian
+homes were gutted and their contents taken away
+and sold in the Central Empires. Factories were stripped
+of their machinery and the railways of their engines and
+wagons. When Mackensen left there remained in Rumania
+only fifty locomotives out of the twelve hundred
+which she possessed before the war. The material, therefore,
+that Rumania removed from Hungary during the
+first weeks of the occupation represented but a small
+part of the quantities of which she had been despoiled
+during the war.</p>
+
+<p>It was further urged that at the beginning the Rumanian
+delegates would have contented themselves with
+reparation for losses wantonly inflicted and for the
+restitution of the property wrongfully taken from them
+by their enemies, on the lines on which France had obtained
+this offset. They had asked for this, but were
+informed that their request could not be complied with.
+They were not even permitted to send a representative
+to Germany to point out to the Inter-Allied authorities
+the objects of which their nation had been robbed, as
+though the plunderers would voluntarily give up their
+ill-gotten stores! It was partly because of these restrictions
+that the Rumanian authorities resolved to take
+what belonged to them without more ado. And they
+could not, they said, afford to wait, because they were
+expecting an attack by the Russian Bolsheviki and it
+behooved them to have done with one foe before taking
+on another. These explanations irritated in lieu of calming
+the Supreme Council.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Possibly,&quot; wrote the well-informed <i>Temps</i>, &quot;Rumania
+would have been better treated if she had closed with
+certain proposals of loans on crushing terms or complied
+with certain demands for oil concessions.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_161_161" id="FNanchor_161_161" href="#Footnote_161_161" >[161]</a> Possibly.
+But surely problems of justice, equity, and right
+ought never to have been mixed up with commercial and
+industrial interests, whether with the connivance or by
+the carelessness of the holders of a vast trust who needed
+and should have merited unlimited confidence. It is
+neither easy nor edifying to calculate the harm which
+transactions of this nature, whether completed or merely
+inchoate, are capable of inflicting on the great community
+for whose moral as well as material welfare the Supreme
+Council was laboring in darkness against so many obstacles
+of its own creation. Is it surprising that the
+states which suffered most from these weaknesses of the
+potent delegates should have resented their misdirection
+and endeavored to help themselves as best they could?
+It may be blameworthy and anti-social, but it is unhappily
+natural and almost unavoidable. It is sincerely
+to be regretted that the art of stimulating the nations&mdash;about
+which the delegates were so solicitous&mdash;to enthusiastic
+readiness to accept the Council as the &quot;moral guide
+of the world&quot; should have been exercised in such bungling
+fashion.</p>
+
+<p>The Supreme Council then feeling impelled to assert
+its dignity against the wilfulness of a small nation decided
+on ignoring alike the service and the disservice
+rendered by Rumania's action. Accordingly, it proceeded
+without reference to any of the recent events except the
+disappearance of the Bolshevist gang. Four generals were
+accordingly told off to take the conduct of Hungarian
+affairs into their hands despite their ignorance of the
+actual conditions of the problem.<a name="FNanchor_162_162" id="FNanchor_162_162" href="#Footnote_162_162" >[162]</a> They were ordered to
+disarm the Magyars, to deliver up Hungary's war material
+to the Allies, of whom only the Rumanians and the
+Czechoslovaks had taken the field against the enemy
+since the conclusion of the armistice the year before, and
+they were also to exercise their authority over the Rumanian
+victors and the Serbs, both of whom occupied
+Hungarian territory. The <i>Temps</i> significantly remarked
+that the Supreme Council, while not wishing to deal with
+any Hungarian government but one qualified to represent
+the country, &quot;seems particularly eager to see resumed
+the importation of foreign wares into Hungary.
+Certain persons appear to fear that Rumania, by retaking
+from the Magyars wagons and engines, might check the
+resumption of this traffic.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_163_163" id="FNanchor_163_163" href="#Footnote_163_163" >[163]</a></p>
+
+<p>What it all came to was that the Great Powers, who had
+left Rumania to her fate when she was attacked by the
+Magyars, intervened the moment the assailed nation,
+helping itself, got the better of its enemy, and then they
+resolved to balk it of the fruits of victory and of the
+safeguards it would fain have created for the future.
+It was to rely upon the Supreme Council once more, to
+take the broken reed for a solid staff. That the Powers
+had something to urge in support of their interposition
+will not be denied. They rightly set forth that Rumania
+was not Hungary's only creditor. Her neighbors also
+possessed claims that must be satisfied as far as feasible,
+and equity prompted the pooling of all available assets.
+This plea could not be refuted. But the credit which the
+pleaders ought to have enjoyed in the eyes of the Rumanian
+nation was so completely sapped by their antecedents
+that no heed was paid to their reasoning, suasion,
+or promises.</p>
+
+<p>Rumania, therefore, in requisitioning Hungarian property
+was formally in the wrong. On the other hand, it
+should be borne in mind that she, like other nations,
+was exasperated by the high-handed action of the Great
+Powers, who proceeded as though her good-will and loyalty
+were of no consequence to the pacification of eastern
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p>After due deliberation the Supreme Council agreed upon
+the wording of a conciliatory message, not to the Rumanians,
+but to the Magyars, to be despatched to
+Lieutenant-Colonel Romanelli. The gist of it was the old
+refrain, &quot;to carry out the terms of the armistice<a name="FNanchor_164_164" id="FNanchor_164_164" href="#Footnote_164_164" >[164]</a> and
+respect the frontiers traced by the Supreme Council<a name="FNanchor_165_165" id="FNanchor_165_165" href="#Footnote_165_165" >[165]</a>
+and we will protect you from the Rumanians, who have
+no authority from us. We are sending forthwith an Inter-Allied
+military commission<a name="FNanchor_166_166" id="FNanchor_166_166" href="#Footnote_166_166" >[166]</a> to superintend the disarmament
+and see that the Rumanian troops withdraw.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It cannot be denied that the Rumanian conditions were
+drastic. But it should be remembered that the provocation
+amounted almost to justification. And as for the
+crime of disobedience, it will not be gainsaid that a large
+part of the responsibility fell on the shoulders of the lawgivers
+in Paris, whose decrees, coming oracularly from
+Olympian heights without reference to local or other
+concrete circumstances, inflicted heavy losses in blood
+and substance on the ill-starred people of Rumania. And
+to make matters worse, Rumania's official representatives
+at the Conference had been not merely ignored, but reprimanded
+like naughty school-children by a harsh dominie
+and occasionally humiliated by men whose only excuse was
+nervous tenseness in consequence of overwork combined
+with morbid impatience at being contradicted in matters
+which they did not understand. Other states had contemplated
+open rebellion against the big ferrule of the
+&quot;bosses,&quot; and more than once the resolution was taken
+to go on strike unless certain concessions were accorded
+them. Alone the Rumanians executed their resolve.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally the destiny-weavers of peoples and nations
+in Paris were dismayed at the prospect and apprehensive
+lest the Rumanians should end the war in their own way.
+They despatched three notes in quick succession to the
+Bucharest government, one of which reads like a peevish
+indictment hastily drafted before the evidence had been
+sifted or even carefully read. It raked up many of the
+old accusations that had been leveled against the Rumanians,
+tacked them on to the crime of insubordination, and
+without waiting for an answer&mdash;assuming, in fact, that
+there could be no satisfactory answer&mdash;summoned them
+to prove publicly by their acts that they accepted and
+were ready to execute in good faith the policy decided
+upon by the Conference.<a name="FNanchor_167_167" id="FNanchor_167_167" href="#Footnote_167_167" >[167]</a></p>
+
+<p>That note seemed unnecessarily offensive and acted
+on the Rumanians as a powerful irritant,<a name="FNanchor_168_168" id="FNanchor_168_168" href="#Footnote_168_168" >[168]</a> besides exposing
+the active members of the Supreme Council to scathing
+criticism. The Rumanians asked their Entente friends
+in private to outline the policy which they were accused
+of countering, and were told in reply that it was beyond
+the power of the most ingenious hair-splitting casuist
+to define or describe. &quot;As for us,&quot; wrote one of the
+stanchest supporters of the Entente in French journalism,
+&quot;who have followed with attention the labors and
+the utterances, written and oral, of the Four, the Five,
+the Ten, of the Supreme and Superior Councils, we have
+not yet succeeded in discovering what was the 'policy
+decided by the Conference.' We have indeed heard or
+read countless discourses pronounced by the choir-masters.
+They abound in noble thought, in eloquent expositions,
+in protests, and in promises. But of aught that could
+be termed a policy we have not found a trace.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_169_169" id="FNanchor_169_169" href="#Footnote_169_169" >[169]</a> This
+verdict will be indorsed by the historian.</p>
+
+<p>The Rumanians seemed in no hurry to reply to the
+Council's three notes. They were said to be too busy
+dealing out what they considered rough and ready justice
+to their enemies, and were impatient of the intervention
+of their &quot;friends.&quot; They seized rolling-stock, cattle,
+agricultural implements, and other property of the kind
+that had been stolen from their own people and sent
+the booty home without much ado. Work of this kind
+was certain to be accompanied by excesses and the Conference
+received numerous protests from the aggrieved
+inhabitants. But on the whole Rumania, at any rate
+during the first few weeks of the occupation, had the
+substantial sympathy of the largest and most influential
+section of the world's press. People declared that they
+were glad to see the haze of self-righteousness and cant at
+last dispelled by a whiff of wholesome egotism. From the
+outspoken comments of the most widely circulating
+journals in France and Britain the dictators in Paris,
+who were indignant that the counsels of the strong should
+carry so little weight in eastern Europe, could acquaint
+themselves with the impression which their efforts at
+cosmic legislation were producing among the saner elements
+of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>In almost every language one could read words of
+encouragement to the recalcitrant Rumanians for having
+boldly burst the irksome bonds in which the peoples of
+the world were being pinioned. &quot;It is our view,&quot; wrote
+one firm adherent of the Entente, &quot;that having proved
+incapable of protecting the Rumanians in their hour of
+danger, our alliance cannot to-day challenge the safeguards
+which they have won for themselves.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_170_170" id="FNanchor_170_170" href="#Footnote_170_170" >[170]</a></p>
+
+<p>&quot;If liberty had her old influence,&quot; one read in another
+popular journal,<a name="FNanchor_171_171" id="FNanchor_171_171" href="#Footnote_171_171" >[171]</a> &quot;the Great Powers would not be bringing
+pressure to bear on Rumania with the object of saving
+Hungary from richly deserved punishment.&quot; &quot;Instead
+of nagging the Rumanians,&quot; wrote an eminent French
+publicist, &quot;they would do much better to keep the Turks
+in hand. If the Turks in despair, in order to win American
+sympathies, proclaim themselves socialists, syndicalists,
+or laborists, will President Wilson permit them to
+renovate Armenia and other places after the manner of
+Jinghiz Khan?&quot;<a name="FNanchor_172_172" id="FNanchor_172_172" href="#Footnote_172_172" >[172]</a></p>
+
+<p>But what may have weighed with the Supreme Council
+far more than the disapproval of publicists were its own
+impotence, the undignified figure it was cutting, and the
+injury that was being done to the future League of Nations
+by the impunity with which one of the lesser states
+could thus set at naught the decisions of its creators and
+treat them with almost the same disrespect which they
+themselves had displayed toward the Rumanian delegates
+in Paris. They saw that once their energetic representations
+were ignored by the Bucharest government they
+were at the end of their means of influencing it. To
+compel obedience by force was for the time being out
+of the question. In these circumstances the only issue
+left them was to make a virtue of necessity and veer round
+to the Rumanian point of view as unobtrusively as might
+be, so as to tide over the transient crisis. And that was
+the course which they finally struck out.</p>
+
+<p>Matters soon came to the culminating point. The
+members of the Allied Military Mission had received full
+powers to force the commanders of the troops of occupation
+to obey the decisions of the Conference, and when
+they were confronted with M. Diamandi, the ex-Minister
+to Petrograd, they issued their orders in the name of the
+Supreme Council. &quot;We take orders here only from our
+own government, which is in Bucharest,&quot; was the answer
+they received. The Rumanians have a proverb which
+runs: &quot;Even a donkey will not fall twice into the same
+quicksand,&quot; and they may have quoted it to General
+Gorton when refusing to follow the Allies after their
+previous painful experience. Then the mission telegraphed
+to Paris for further instructions.<a name="FNanchor_173_173" id="FNanchor_173_173" href="#Footnote_173_173" >[173]</a> In the meanwhile
+the Rumanian government had sent its answer to
+the three notes of the Council. And its tenor was firm
+and unyielding. Undeterred by menaces, M. Bratiano
+maintained that he had done the right thing in sending
+troops to Budapest, imposing terms on Hungary and
+re-establishing order. As a matter of fact he had rendered
+a sterling service to all Europe, including France and
+Britain. For if Kuhn and his confederates had contrived
+to overrun Rumania, the Great Powers would have been
+morally bound to hasten to the assistance of their defeated
+ally. The press was permitted to announce that the
+Council of Five was preparing to accept the Rumanian
+position. The members of the Allied Military Mission were
+informed that they were not empowered to give orders
+to the Rumanians, but only to consult and negotiate
+with them, whereby all their tact and consideration were
+earnestly solicited.</p>
+
+<p>But the palliatives devised by the delegates were unavailing
+to heal the breach. After a while the Council,
+having had no answer to its urgent notes, decided to send
+an ultimatum to Rumania, calling on her to restore the
+rolling-stock which she had seized and to evacuate the
+Hungarian capital. The terms of this document were
+described as harsh.<a name="FNanchor_174_174" id="FNanchor_174_174" href="#Footnote_174_174" >[174]</a> Happily, before it was despatched
+the Council learned that the Rumanian government had
+never received the communications nor seventy others
+forwarded by wireless during the same period. Once
+more it had taken a decision without acquainting itself
+of the facts. Thereupon a special messenger<a name="FNanchor_175_175" id="FNanchor_175_175" href="#Footnote_175_175" >[175]</a> was sent
+to Bucharest with a note &quot;couched in stern terms,&quot;
+which, however, was &quot;milder in tone&quot; than the ultimatum.</p>
+
+<p>To go back for a moment to the elusive question of
+motive, which was not without influence on Rumania's
+conduct. Were the action and inaction of the plenipotentiaries
+merely the result of a lack of cohesion among
+their ideas? Or was it that they were thinking mainly
+of the fleeting interests of the moment and unwilling to
+precipitate their conceptions of the future in the form
+of a constructive policy? The historian will do well to
+leave their motives to another tribunal and confine himself
+to facts, which even when carefully sifted are numerous
+and significant enough.</p>
+
+<p>During the progress of the events just sketched there
+were launched certain interesting accounts of what was
+going on below the surface, which had such impartial and
+well-informed vouchers that the chronicler of the Conference
+cannot pass them over in silence. If true, as they
+appear to be, they warrant the belief that two distinct
+elements lay at the root of the Secret Council's dealings
+with Rumania. One of them was their repugnance to
+her whole system of government, with its survivals of
+feudalism, anti-Semitism, and conservatism. Associated
+with this was, people alleged, a wish to provoke a radical
+and, as they thought, beneficent change in the entire r&eacute;gime
+by getting rid of its chiefs. This plan had been successfully
+tried against MM. Orlando and Sonnino in
+Italy. Their solicitude for this latter aim may have
+been whetted by a personal lack of sympathy for the
+Rumanian delegates, with whom the Anglo-Saxon chiefs
+hardly ever conversed. It was no secret that the Rumanian
+Premier found it exceedingly difficult to obtain
+an audience of his colleague President Wilson, from whom
+he finally parted almost as much a stranger as when he
+first arrived in Paris.</p>
+
+<p>It may not be amiss to record an instance of the methods
+of the Supreme Council, for by putting himself in the place
+of the Rumanian Premier the reader may the more clearly
+understand his frame of mind toward that body. In
+June the troops of Moritz (or Bela) Kuhn had inflicted a
+severe defeat on the Czechoslavs. Thereupon the Secret
+Council of Four or Five, whose shortsighted action was
+answerable for the reverse, decided to remonstrate with
+him. Accordingly they requested him to desist from the
+offensive. Only then did it occur to them that if he was
+to withdraw his armies behind the frontiers, he must be
+informed where these frontiers were. They had already
+been determined in secret by the three great statesmen,
+who carefully concealed them not merely from an inquisitive
+public, but also from the states concerned. The
+Rumanian, Jugoslav and Czechoslovak delegates were,
+therefore, as much in the dark on the subject as were rank
+outsiders and enemies. But as soon as circumstances
+forced the hand of all the plenipotentiaries the secret had
+to be confided to them all.<a name="FNanchor_176_176" id="FNanchor_176_176" href="#Footnote_176_176" >[176]</a> The Hungarian Dictator
+pleaded that if his troops had gone out of bounds it was
+because the frontiers were unknown to him. The
+Czechoslovaks respectfully demurred to one of the
+boundaries along the river Ipol which it was difficult to
+justify and easy to rectify. But the Rumanian delegation,
+confronted with the map, met the decision with a
+frank protest. For it amounted to the abandonment of
+one of their three vital irreducible claims which they were
+not empowered to renounce. Consequently they felt
+unable to acquiesce in it. But the Supreme Council
+insisted. The second delegate, M. Misu, was in consequence
+obliged to start at once for Bucharest to consult
+with the King and the Cabinet and consider what action
+the circumstances called for. In the meantime, the entire
+question, and together with it some of the practical
+consequences involved by the tentative solution, remained
+in suspense.</p>
+
+<p>When certain clauses of the Peace Treaty, which, although
+they materially affected Rumania, had been
+drafted without the knowledge of her plenipotentiaries,
+were quite ready, the Rumanian Premier was summoned to
+take cognizance of them. Their tenor surprised and
+irritated him. As he felt unable to assent to them, and
+as the document was to be presented to the enemy in a
+day or two, he deemed it his duty to mention his objections
+at once. But hardly had he begun when M.
+Clemenceau arose and exclaimed, &quot;M. Bratiano, you are
+here to listen, not to comment.&quot; Stringent measures may
+have been considered useful and dictatorial methods indispensable
+in default of reasoning or suasion, but it was
+surely incumbent on those who employed them to choose
+a form which would deprive them of their sting or make
+them less personally painful.</p>
+
+<p>For whatever one may think of the wisdom of the
+policy adopted by the Supreme Council toward the unprivileged
+states, it would be difficult to justify the manner
+in which they imposed it. Patience, tact, and suasion
+are indispensable requisites in men who assume the functions
+of leaders and guides, yet know that military force
+alone is inadequate to shape the future after their conception.
+The delegates could look only to moral power for
+the execution of their far-reaching plans, yet they spurned
+the means of acquiring it. The best construction one
+can put upon their action will represent it as the wrecking
+of the substance by the form. By establishing a situation
+of force throughout Europe the Council created and sanctioned
+the principle that it must be maintained by force.</p>
+
+<p>But the affronted nations did not stop at this mild criticism.
+They assailed the policy itself, cast suspicion on
+the disinterestedness of the motives that inspired it, and
+contributed thereby to generate an atmosphere of distrust
+in which the frail organism that was shortly to be
+called into being could not thrive. Contemplated through
+this distorting medium, one set of delegates was taunted
+with aiming at a monopoly of imperialism and the other
+with rank hypocrisy. It is superfluous to remark that
+the idealism and lofty aims of the President of the United
+States were never questioned by the most reckless Thersites.
+The heaviest charges brought against him were
+weakness of will, exaggerated self-esteem, impatience of
+contradiction, and a naive yearning for something concrete
+to take home with him, in the shape of a covenant
+of peoples.</p>
+
+<p>The reports circulating in the French capital respecting
+vast commercial enterprises about to be inaugurated by
+English-speaking peoples and about proposals that the
+governments of the countries interested should facilitate
+them, were destructive of the respect due to statesmen
+whose attachment to lofty ideals should have absorbed
+every other motive in their ethico-political activity. Thus
+it was affirmed by responsible politicians that an official
+representative of an English-speaking country gave expression
+to the view, which he also attributed to his government,
+that henceforth his country should play a much
+larger part in the economic life of eastern Europe than
+any other nation. This, he added, was a conscious aim
+which would be steadily pursued, and to the attainment
+of which he hoped the politicians and their people would
+contribute. So far this, it may be contended, was perfectly
+legitimate.</p>
+
+<p>But it was further affirmed, and not by idle quidnuncs,
+that one of Rumania's prominent men had been informed
+that Rumania could count on the good-will and financial
+assistance of the United States only if her Premier gave
+an assurance that, besides the special privileges to be
+conferred on the Jewish minority in his country, he would
+also grant industrial and commercial concessions to certain
+Jewish groups and firms who reside and do business
+in the United States. And by way of taking time by the
+forelock one or more of these firms had already despatched
+representatives to Rumania to study and, if possible, earmark
+the resources which they proposed to exploit.</p>
+
+<p>Now, to expand the trade of one's country is a legitimate
+ambition, and to hold that Jewish firms are the best
+qualified to develop the resources of Rumania is a tenable
+position. But to mix up any commercial scheme with the
+ethical regeneration of Europe is, to put it mildly, impolitic.
+However unimpeachable the motives of the promoter
+of such a project, it is certain to damage both
+causes which he has at heart. But the report does not
+leave the matter here. It goes on to state that a very
+definite proposal, smacking of an ultimatum, was finally
+presented, which set before the Rumanians two alternatives
+from which they were to choose&mdash;either the concessions
+asked for, which would earn for them the financial
+assistance of the United States, or else no concessions and
+no help.</p>
+
+<p>At a Conference, the object of which was the uplifting
+of the life of nations from the squalor of sordid ambitions
+backed by brutal force, to ideal aims and moral relationship,
+haggling and chaffering such as this seemed wholly
+out of place. It reminded one of &quot;those that sold oxen
+and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting&quot;
+in the temple of Jerusalem who were one day driven out
+with &quot;a scourge of small cords.&quot; The Rumanians hoped
+that the hucksters in the latter-day temple of peace might
+be got rid of in a similar way; one of them suggested
+boldly asking President Wilson himself to say what he
+thought of the policy underlying the disconcerting proposal....</p>
+
+<p>The other alleged element of the Supreme Council's
+attitude needs no qualification. The mystery that enwrapped
+the orders from the Conference which suddenly
+arrested the march of the Rumanian and Allied troops,
+when they were nearing Budapest for the purpose of overthrowing
+Bela Kuhn, never perplexed those who claimed
+to possess trustworthy information about the goings-on
+between certain enterprising officers belonging some to
+the Allied Army of Occupation and others to the Hungarian
+forces. One of these transactions is alleged to have
+taken place between Kuhn himself, who is naturally a
+shrewd observer and hard bargain-driver, and a certain
+financial group which for obvious reasons remained nameless.
+The object of the compact was the bestowal on the
+group of concessions in the Banat in return for an undertaking
+that the Bolshevist Dictator would be left in power
+and subsequently honored by an invitation to the Conference.
+The plenipotentiaries' command arresting the
+march against Kuhn and their conditional promise to
+summon him to the Conference, dovetail with this contract.
+These undeniable coincidences are humiliating.
+The nexus between them was discovered and announced
+before the stipulations were carried out.</p>
+
+<p>The Banat had been an apple of discord ever since the
+close of hostilities. The country, inhabited chiefly by
+Rumanians, but with a considerable admixture of Magyar
+and Saxon elements, is one of the richest unexploited
+regions in Europe. Its mines of gold, zinc, lead, coal,
+and iron offer an irresistible temptation to pushing capitalists
+and their governments, who feel further attracted
+by the credible announcement that it also possesses oil
+in quantities large enough to warrant exploitation. It
+was partly in order to possess herself of these abundant
+resources and create an accomplished fact that Serbia,
+who also founded her claim on higher ground, laid hands
+on the administration of the Banat. But the experiment
+was disappointing. The Jugoslavs having failed to maintain
+themselves there, the bargain just sketched was entered
+into by officers of the Hungarian and Allied armies.
+For concession-hunters are not fastidious about the
+nationality or character of those who can bestow what
+they happen to be seeking.</p>
+
+<p>This stroke of jobbery had political consequences.
+That was inevitable. For so long as the Banat remained
+in Rumania or Serbian hands it could not be alienated
+in favor of any foreign group. Therefore secession from
+both those states was a preliminary condition to economic
+alienation. The task was bravely tackled. An &quot;independent
+republic&quot; was suddenly added to the states of
+Europe. This amazing creation, which fitted in with the
+Balkanizing craze of the moment, was the work of a
+few wire-pullers in which the easy-going inhabitants had
+neither hand nor part. Indeed, they were hardly aware
+that the Republic of the Banat had been proclaimed.
+The amateur state-builders were obliging officers of the
+two armies, and behind them were speculators and
+concession-hunters. It was obvious that the new community,
+as it contained a very small population for an
+independent state, would require a protector. Its sponsors,
+who had foreseen this, provided for it by promising
+to assign the humanitarian r&ocirc;le of protectress of the
+Banat Republic to democratic France. And French
+agents were on the spot to approve the arrangement.
+Thus far the story, of which I have given but the merest
+outline.<a name="FNanchor_177_177" id="FNanchor_177_177" href="#Footnote_177_177" >[177]</a></p>
+
+<p>In this compromising fashion then Bela Kuhn was left
+for the time being in undisturbed power, and none of his
+friends had any fear that he would be driven out by the
+Allies so long as he contrived to hit it off with the Hungarians.
+Should these turn away from him, however,
+the cosmopolitan financiers, whose cardinal virtues are
+suppleness and adaptability, would readily work with his
+successor, whoever he might be. The few who knew of
+this quickening of high ideals with low intrigue were
+shocked by the light-hearted way in which under the &aelig;gis
+of the Conference a discreditable pact was made with the
+&quot;enemy of the human race,&quot; a grotesque r&eacute;gime foisted
+on a simple-minded people without consideration for the
+principle of self-determination, and the very existence of
+the Czechoslovak Republic imperiled. Indeed, for a
+brief while it looked as though the Bolshevist forces of
+the Ukraine and Russia would effect a junction with the
+troops of Bela Kuhn and shatter eastern Europe to shreds.
+To such dangerous extent did the Supreme Council indirectly
+abet the Bolshevist peace-breakers against the
+Rumanians and Czechoslovak allies.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this conjuncture that a Rumanian friend remarked
+to me: &quot;The apprehension which our people
+expressed to you some months ago when they rejected
+the demand for concessions has been verified by events.
+Please remember that when striking the balance of
+accounts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The fact could not be blinked that in the camp of the
+Allies there was a serious schism. The partizans of the
+Supreme Council accused the Bucharest government of
+secession, and were accused in turn of having misled their
+Rumanian partners, of having planned to exploit them
+economically, of having favored their Bolshevist invaders,
+and pursued a policy of blackmail. The rights
+and wrongs of this quarrel had best be left to another
+tribunal. What can hardly be gainsaid is that in a
+general way the Rumanians&mdash;and not these alone&mdash;were
+implicitly classed as people of a secondary category, who
+stood to gain by every measure for their good which the
+culture-bearers in Paris might devise. These inferior
+nations were all incarnate anachronisms, relics of dark
+ages which had survived into an epoch of democracy and
+liberty, and it now behooved them to readjust themselves
+to that. Their institutions must be modernized, their
+Old World conceptions abandoned, and their people
+taught to imitate the progressive nations of the West.
+What the populations thought and felt on the subject
+was irrelevant, they being less qualified to judge what was
+good for them than their self-constituted guides and
+guardians. To the angry voices which their spokesmen
+uplifted no heed need be paid, and passive resistance
+could be overcome by coercion. This modified version
+of Carlyle's doctrine would seem to be at the root of the
+Supreme Council's action toward the lesser nations
+generally and in especial toward Rumania.</p>
+
+
+<p class='center'>POLAND AND THE SUPREME COUNCIL</p>
+
+<p>This frequent misdirection by the Supreme Council,
+however one may explain it, created an electric state of
+the political atmosphere among all nations whose interests
+were set down or treated as &quot;limited,&quot; and more than
+one of them, as we saw, contemplated striking out a
+policy of passive resistance. As a matter of fact some
+of them timidly adopted it more than once, almost
+always with success and invariably with impunity. It
+was thus that the Czechoslovaks&mdash;the most docile of
+them all&mdash;disregarding the injunctions of the Conference,
+took possession of contentious territory,<a name="FNanchor_178_178" id="FNanchor_178_178" href="#Footnote_178_178" >[178]</a> and remained
+in possession of it for several months, and that the Jugoslavs
+occupied a part of the district of Klagenfurt and for
+a long time paid not the slightest heed to the order issued
+by the Supreme Council to evacuate it in favor of the
+Austrians, and that the Poles applied the same tactics to
+eastern Galicia. The story of this last revolt is characteristic
+alike of the ignorance and of the weakness of the
+Powers which had assumed the functions of world-administrators.
+During the hostilities between the Ruthenians
+of Galicia and the Poles the Council, taunted
+by the press with the numerous wars that were being
+waged while the world's peace-makers were chatting about
+cosmic politics in the twilight of the Paris conclave,
+issued an imperative order that an armistice must be
+concluded at once. But the Poles appealed to events,
+which swiftly settled the matter as they anticipated.
+Neither the Supreme Council nor the agents it employed
+had a real grasp of the east European situation, or of the
+r&ocirc;le deliberately assigned to Poland by its French sponsors&mdash;that
+of superseding Russia as a bulwark against Germany
+in the East&mdash;or of the local conditions. Their
+action, as was natural in these circumstances, was a
+sequence of gropings in the dark, of incongruous behests,
+exhortations, and prohibitions which discredited them in
+the eyes of those on whose trust and docility the success
+of their mission depended.</p>
+
+<p>Consciousness of these disadvantages may have had
+much to do with the rigid secrecy which the delegates
+maintained before their desultory talks ripened into discussions.
+In the case of Poland, as of Rumania, the veil
+was opaque, and was never voluntarily lifted. One day<a name="FNanchor_179_179" id="FNanchor_179_179" href="#Footnote_179_179" >[179]</a>
+the members of the Polish delegation, eager to get an
+inkling of what had been arranged by the Council of Four
+about Dantzig, requested M. Clemenceau to apprize them
+at least of the upshot if not of the details. The French
+Premier, who has a quizzing way and a keen sense of
+humor, replied, &quot;On the 26th inst. you will learn the precise
+terms.&quot; But Poland's representative insisted and
+pleaded suasively for a hint of what had been settled.
+The Premier finally consented and said, &quot;Tell the General
+Secretary of the Conference, M. Dutasta, from me,
+that he may make the desired communication to you.&quot;
+The delegate accordingly repaired to M. Dutasta, preferred
+his request, and received this reply: &quot;M. Clemenceau
+may say what he likes. His words do not bind the
+Conference. Before I consider myself released from
+secrecy I must have the consent of all his colleagues as
+well. If you would kindly bring me their express authorization
+I will communicate the information you demand.&quot;
+That closed the incident.</p>
+
+<p>When the Council finally agreed to a solution, the delegates
+were convoked to learn its nature and to make a
+vow of obedience to its decisions. During the first stage
+of the Conference the representatives of the lesser states
+had sometimes been permitted to put questions and present
+objections. But later on even this privilege was
+withdrawn. The following description of what went on
+may serve as an illustration of the Council's mode of procedure.
+One day the Polish delegation was summoned
+before the Special Commission to discuss an armistice
+between the Ruthenians of Galicia and the Polish Republic.
+The late General Botha, a shrewd observer, whose
+valuable experience of political affairs, having been confined
+to a country which had not much in common with
+eastern Europe, could be of little help to him in solving
+the complex problems with which he was confronted, was
+handicapped from the outset. Unacquainted with any
+languages but English and Dutch, the general had to surmount
+the additional difficulty of carrying on the conversation
+through an interpreter. The form it took was
+somewhat as follows:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is the wish of the Supreme Council,&quot; the chairman
+began, &quot;that Poland should conclude an armistice with
+the Ruthenians, and under new conditions, the old ones
+having lost their force.<a name="FNanchor_180_180" id="FNanchor_180_180" href="#Footnote_180_180" >[180]</a> Are you prepared to submit your
+proposals?&quot; &quot;This is a military matter,&quot; replied the Polish
+delegate, &quot;and should be dealt with by experts. One of
+our most competent military authorities will arrive shortly
+in Paris with full powers to treat with you on the subject.
+In the meantime, I agree that the old conditions are
+obsolete and must be changed. I can also mention three
+provisos without which no armistice is possible: (1) The
+Poles must be permitted to get into permanent contact
+with Rumania. That involves their occupation of eastern
+Galicia. The principal grounds for this demand are that
+our frontier includes that territory and that the Rumanians
+are a law-abiding, pacific people whose interests
+never clash with ours and whose main enemy&mdash;Bolshevism&mdash;is
+also ours. (2) The Allies shall purge the Ukrainian
+army of the Bolshevists, German and other dangerous
+elements that now pervade it and render peace impossible.
+(3) The Poles must have control of the oil-fields were it
+only because these are now being treated as military resources
+and the Germans are receiving from Galicia, which
+contains the only supplies now open to them, all the oil
+they require and are giving the Ruthenians munitions in
+return, thus perpetuating a continuous state of warfare.
+You can realize that we are unwilling to have our oil-fields
+employed to supply our enemies with war material against
+ourselves.&quot; General Botha asked, &quot;Would you be satisfied
+if, instead of occupying all eastern Galicia at once in
+order to get into touch with the Rumanians, the latter
+were to advance to meet you?&quot; &quot;Quite. That would
+satisfy us as a provisional measure.&quot; &quot;But now suppose
+that the Supreme Council rejects your three conditions&mdash;a
+probable contingency&mdash;- what course do you propose
+to take?&quot; &quot;In that case our action would be swayed by
+events, one of which is the hostility of the Ruthenians,
+which would necessitate measures of self-defense and the
+use of our army. And that would bring back the whole
+issue to the point where it stands to-day.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_181_181" id="FNanchor_181_181" href="#Footnote_181_181" >[181]</a> To the suggestions
+made by the Polish delegate that the question of
+the armistice be referred to Marshal Foch, the answer
+was returned that the Marshal's views carried no authority
+with the Supreme Council.</p>
+
+<p>General Botha, thereupon adopting an emotional tone,
+said: &quot;I have one last appeal to make to you. It behooves
+Poland to lift the question from its present petty
+surroundings and set it in the larger frame of world issues.
+What we are aiming at is the overthrow of militarism and
+the cessation of bloodshed. As a civilized nation Poland
+must surely see eye to eye with the Supreme Council how
+incumbent it is on the Allies to put a stop to the misery
+that warfare has brought down on the world and is now
+inflicting on the populations of Poland and eastern Galicia.&quot;
+&quot;Truly,&quot; replied the Polish delegate, &quot;and so
+thoroughly does she realize it that it is repugnant to her
+to be satisfied with a sham peace, a mere pause during
+which a bloodier war may be organized. We want a
+settlement that really connotes peace, and our intimate
+knowledge of the circumstances enables us to distinguish
+between that and a mere truce. That is the ground of
+our insistence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bear well in mind,&quot; insisted the Boer general, &quot;the
+friendly attitude of the great Allies toward your country
+at a critical period of its history. They restored it.
+They meant and mean to help it to preserve its status.
+It behooves the Poles to show their appreciation of this
+friendship in a practical way by deferring to their wishes.
+Everything they ordain is for your good. Realize that
+and carry out their schemes.&quot; &quot;For their help we are
+and will remain grateful,&quot; was the answer, &quot;and we
+will go as far toward meeting their wishes as is feasible
+without actually imperiling their contribution to the restoration
+of our state. But we cannot blink the facts
+that their views are sometimes mistaken and their power
+to realize them generally imaginary. They have made
+numerous and costly mistakes already, which they now
+frankly avow. If they persisted in their present plan
+they would be adding another to the list. And as to
+their power to help us positively, it is nil. Their initial
+omission to send a formidable military force to Poland
+was an irreparable blunder, for it left them without an
+executive in eastern Europe, where they now can help
+none of their prot&eacute;g&eacute;es against their respective enemies.
+Poles, Rumanians, Jugoslavs are all left to themselves.
+From the Allies they may expect inspiriting telegrams,
+but little else. In fact, the utmost they can do is to issue
+decrees that may or may not be obeyed. Examples are
+many. They obtained for us by the armistice the right
+of disembarking troops at Dantzig, and we were unspeakably
+grateful to them. But they failed to make the
+Germans respect that right and we had to resign ourselves
+to abandon it. They ordered the Ukrainians to cease
+their numerous attacks on us and we appreciated their
+thoughtfulness. But the order was disobeyed; we were
+assailed and had no one to look to for help but ourselves.
+Still we are most thankful for all that they could do.
+But if we concluded the armistice which you are pleading
+for, this is what would happen: we should have the
+Ruthenians arrayed against us on one side and the
+Germans on the other. Now if the Ruthenians have
+brains, their forces will attack us at the same time as those
+of the Germans do. That is sound tactics. But if their
+strength is only on paper, they will give admission to the
+Bolsheviki. That is the twofold danger which you, in the
+name of the Great Powers, are unwillingly endeavoring
+to conjure up against us. If you admit its reality you
+cannot blame our reluctance to incur it. On the other
+hand, if you regard the peril as imaginary, you will draw
+the obvious consequences and pledge the word of the
+Great Powers that they will give us military assistance
+against it should it come?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>If clear thinking and straightforward action has counted
+for anything, the matter would have been settled satisfactorily
+then and there. But the Great Powers operated
+less with argument than with more forcible stimuli.
+Holding the economic and financial resources of the
+world in their hands, they sometimes merely toyed with
+reasoning and proceeded to coerce where they were unable
+to convince or persuade. One day the chief delegate of
+one of the states &quot;with limited interests&quot; said to me:
+&quot;The unvarnished truth is that we are being coerced.
+There is no milder term to signify this procedure. Thus
+we are told that unless we indorse the decrees of the
+Powers, whose interests are unlimited like their assurance,
+they will withhold from us the supplies of food, raw materials,
+and money without which our national existence
+is inconceivable. Necessarily we must give way, at any
+rate for the time being.&quot; Those words sum up the relations
+of the lesser to the greater Powers.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of Poland the conversation ended thus&mdash;General
+Botha, addressing the delegate, said: &quot;If you
+disregard the injunctions of the Big Four, who cannot
+always lay before you the grounds of their policy, you
+run the risk of being left to your own devices. And you
+know what that means. Think well before you decide!&quot;
+Just then, as it chanced, only a part of General Haller's
+soldiers in France had been transported to their own
+country,<a name="FNanchor_182_182" id="FNanchor_182_182" href="#Footnote_182_182" >[182]</a> and the Poles were in mortal terror lest the
+work of conveying the remainder should be interrupted.
+This, then, was an implicit appeal to which they could
+not turn a wholly deaf ear. &quot;Well, what is it that the
+Big Four ask of us?&quot; inquired the delegate. &quot;The conclusion
+of an armistice with the Ruthenians, also that
+Poland&mdash;as one of the newly created states&mdash;should allow
+the free transit of all the Allied goods through her territory.&quot;
+The delegate expressed a wish to be told why
+this measure should be restricted to the newly made
+states. The answer was because it was in the nature of
+an experiment and should, therefore, not be tried over too
+large an area. &quot;There is also another little undertaking
+which you are requested to give&mdash;namely, that you will
+accept and act upon the future decisions of the commission
+whatever they may be.&quot; &quot;Without an inkling
+of their character?&quot; &quot;If you have confidence in us you
+need have no misgivings as to that.&quot; In spite of the deterrents
+the Polish delegation at that interview met all
+these demands with a firm <i>non possumus</i>. It upheld the
+three conditions of the armistice, rejected the free transit
+proposal, and demurred to the demand for a promise
+to bow to all future decisions of a fallible commission.
+&quot;When the Polish dispute with the Czechoslovaks was
+submitted to a commission we were not asked in advance
+to abide by its decision. Why should a new rule be
+introduced now?&quot; argued the Polish delegates. And
+there the matter rested for a brief while.</p>
+
+<p>But the respite lasted only a few days, at the expiry of
+which an envoy called on the members of the Polish delegation
+and reopened the discussion on new lines. He
+stated that he spoke on behalf of the Big Four, of whose
+views and intentions he was the authorized exponent.
+And doubtless he thought he was. But as a matter of
+fact the French government had no cognizance of his visit
+or mission or of the conversation to which it led. He presented
+arguments before having recourse to deterrents.
+Poland's situation, he said, called for prudence. Her
+secular enemy was Germany, with whom it would be
+difficult, perhaps impossible, ever to cultivate such terms
+as would conciliate her permanently. All the more reason,
+therefore, to deserve and win the friendship of her
+other neighbors, in particular of the Ruthenians. The
+Polish plenipotentiary met the argument in the usual way,
+where upon the envoy exclaimed: &quot;Well, to make a long
+story short, I am here to say that the line of action traced
+out for your country emanates from the inflexible will of
+the Great Powers. To this you must bend. If it should
+lead to hostilities on the part of your neighbors you could,
+of course, rely on the help of your protectors. Will this
+not satisfy you?&quot; &quot;If the protection were real it certainly
+would. But where is it? Has it been vouchsafed
+at any moment since the armistice? Have the Allied governments
+an executive in eastern Europe? Are they likely
+to order their troops thither to assist any of their prot&eacute;g&eacute;es?
+And if they issued such an order, would it be obeyed?
+They cannot protect us, as we know to our cost. That is
+why we are prepared, in our interests&mdash;also in theirs&mdash;to
+protect ourselves.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This remarkable conversation was terminated by the
+announcement of the penalty of disobedience. &quot;If you
+persist in refusing the proposals I have laid before you, I
+am to tell you that the Great Powers will withdraw their
+aid from your country and may even feel it to be their
+duty to modify the advantageous status which they had
+decided to confer upon it.&quot; To which this answer was
+returned: &quot;For the assistance we are receiving we are
+and will ever be truly grateful. But in order to benefit
+by it the Polish people must be a living organism and your
+proposals tend to reduce us to a state of suspended vitality.
+They also place us at the mercy of our numerous enemies,
+the greatest of whom is Germany.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But lucid intelligence, backed by unflagging will, was
+of no avail against the threat of famine. The Poles had
+to give way. M. Paderewski pledged his word to Messrs.
+Lloyd George and Wilson that he would have an armistice
+concluded with the Ruthenians of eastern Galicia,
+and the Duumvirs rightly placed implicit confidence in
+his word as in his moral rectitude. They also felt grateful
+to him for having facilitated their arduous task by accepting
+the inevitable. To my knowledge President Wilson
+himself addressed a letter to him toward the end of April,
+thanking him cordially for the broad-minded way in which
+he had co-operated with the Supreme Council in its efforts
+to reconstitute his country on a solid basis. Probably
+no other representative of a state &quot;with limited interests&quot;
+received such high mark of approval.</p>
+
+<p>M. Paderewski left Paris for Warsaw, there to win over
+the Cabinet. But in Poland, where the authorities were
+face to face with the concrete elements of the problem, the
+Premier found no support. Neither the Cabinet nor the
+Diet nor the head of the state found it possible to redeem
+the promise made in their name. Circumstance was
+stronger than the human will. M. Paderewski resigned.
+The Ruthenians delivered a timely attack on the Poles,
+who counter-attacked, captured the towns of Styra, Tarnopol,
+Stanislau, and occupied the enemy country right
+up to Rumania, with which they desired to be in permanent
+contact. Part of the Ruthenian army crossed the
+Czech frontier and was disarmed, the remainder melted
+away, and there remained no enemy with whom to conclude
+an armistice.</p>
+
+<p>For the &quot;Big Four&quot; this turn of events was a humiliation.
+The Ruthenian army, whose interests they had so
+taken to heart, had suddenly ceased to exist, and the future
+danger which it represented to Poland was seen to have
+been largely imaginary. Their judgment was at fault
+and their power ineffectual. Against M. Paderewski's
+impotence they blazed with indignation. He had given
+way to their decision and promptly gone to Warsaw to see
+it executed, yet the conditions were such that his words
+were treated as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. The
+Polish Premier, it is true, had tendered his resignation in
+consequence, but it was refused&mdash;and even had it been
+accepted, what was the retirement of a Minister as compared
+with the indignity put upon the world's lawgivers
+who represented power and interests which were alike
+unlimited? Angry telegrams were flashed over the wires
+from Paris to Warsaw and the Polish Premier was summoned
+to appear in Paris without delay. He duly returned,
+but no new move was made. The die was cast.</p>
+
+<p>A noteworthy event in latter-day Polish history ensued
+upon that military victory over the Ruthenians of eastern
+Galicia. The Ukrainian<a name="FNanchor_183_183" id="FNanchor_183_183" href="#Footnote_183_183" >[183]</a> Minister at Vienna was despatched
+to request the Poles to sign a unilateral treaty
+with them after the model of that which was arranged by
+the two Anglo-Saxon states in favor of France. The
+proposal was that the Ukraine government would renounce
+all claims to eastern Galicia and place their troops
+under the supreme command of the Polish generalissimus,
+in return for which the Poles should undertake to protect
+the Ukrainians against all their enemies. This draft
+agreement, while under consideration in Warsaw, was
+negatived by the Polish delegates in Paris, who saw no
+good reason why their people should bind themselves to
+fight Russia one day for the independence of the Ukraine.
+Another inchoate state which made an offer of alliance to
+Poland was Esthonia, but its advances were declined on
+similar grounds. It is manifest, however, that in the new
+state system alliances are more in vogue than in the old,
+although they were to have been banished from it.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout all the negotiations that turned upon the
+future status and the territorial frontiers of Poland the
+British Premier unswervingly stood out against the
+Polish claims, just as the President of the United States
+inflexibly countered those of Italy, and both united to
+negative those of the Rumanians. Whatever one may
+think of the merits of these controversies&mdash;and various
+opinions have been put forward with obvious sincerity&mdash;there
+can be but one judgment as to the spirit in which
+they were conducted. It was a dictatorial spirit, which
+was intolerant not merely of opposition, but of enlightened
+and constructive criticism. To the representatives of the
+countries concerned it seemed made up of bitter prejudice
+and fierce partizanship, imbibed, it was affirmed, from
+those unseen sources whence powerful and, it was thought,
+noxious currents flowed continuously toward the Conference.
+For none of the affronted delegates credited with
+a knowledge of the subject either Mr. Lloyd George, who
+had never heard of Teschen, or Mr. Wilson, whose survey
+of Corsican politics was said to be so defective. And yet
+to the activity of men engaged like these in settling affairs
+of unprecedented magnitude it would be unfair to
+apply the ordinary tests of technical fastidiousness. Their
+position as trustees of the world's greatest states, even
+though they lacked political imagination, knowledge, and
+experience, entitled them to the high consideration which
+they generally received. But it could not be expected to
+dazzle to blindness the eyes of superior men&mdash;and the
+delegates of the lesser states, Venizelos, Dmowski, and
+Benes, were undoubtedly superior in most of the attributes
+of statesmanship. Yet they were frequently snubbed and
+each one made to feel that he was the fifth wheel in the
+chariot of the Conference. No sacred fame, says Goethe,
+requires us to submit to contempt, and they winced
+under it. The Big Three lacked the happy way of doing
+things which goes with diplomatic tact and engaging
+manners, and the consequence was that not only were
+their arguments mistrusted, but even their good faith
+was, as we saw, momentarily subjected to doubt. &quot;Bitter
+prejudice, furious antipathy&quot; were freely predicated of the
+two Anglo-Saxon statesmen, who were rashly accused of
+attempting by circuitous methods to deprive France of
+her new Slav ally in eastern Europe. Sweeping recriminations
+of this character deserve notice only as indicating
+the spirit of discord&mdash;not to use a stronger term&mdash;prevailing
+at a Conference which was professedly endeavoring
+to knit together the peoples of the planet in an
+organized society of good-fellowship.</p>
+
+<p>The delegates of the lesser states, to whom one should
+not look for impartial judgments, formulated some queer
+theories to explain the Allies' unavowed policy and revealed
+a frame of mind in no wise conducive to the attainment
+of the ostensible ends of the Conference. One
+delegate said to me: &quot;I have no longer the faintest doubt
+that the firm purpose of the 'Big Two' is the establishment
+of the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, which
+in the fullness of time may be transformed into the
+hegemony of the United States of North America. Even
+France is in some respects their handmaid. Already she is
+bound to them indissolubly. She is admittedly unable to
+hold her own without their protection. She will become
+more dependent on them as the years pass and Germany,
+having put her house in order, regains her economic preponderance
+on the Continent. This decline is due to the
+operation of a natural law which diplomacy may retard
+but cannot hinder. Numbers will count in the future,
+and then France's r&ocirc;le will be reduced. For this reason
+it is her interest that her new allies in eastern Europe
+should be equipped with all the means of growing and
+keeping strong instead of being held in the leading-strings
+of the overlords. But perhaps this tutelage is reckoned
+one of those means?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Against Britain in especial the Poles, as we saw, were
+wroth. They complained that whenever they advanced
+a claim they found her first delegate on their path barring
+their passage, and if Mr. Wilson chanced to be with them
+the British Premier set himself to convert him to his way
+of thinking or voting. Thus it was against Mr. Lloyd
+George that the eastern Galician problem had had to be
+fought at every stage. At the outset the British Premier
+refused Galicia to Poland categorically and purposed
+making it an entirely separate state under the League
+of Nations. This design, of which he made no secret,
+inspired the insistence with which the armistice with the
+Ruthenians of Galicia was pressed. The Polish delegates,
+one of them a man of incisive speech, left no stone unturned
+to thwart that part of the English scheme, and they
+finally succeeded. But their opponents contrived to drop
+a spoonful of tar in Poland's pot of honey by ordering a
+plebiscite to take place in eastern Galicia within ten or fifteen
+years. Then came the question of the Galician Constitution.
+The Poles proposed to confer on the Ruthenians
+a restricted measure of home rule with authority to arrange
+in their own way educational and religious matters,
+local communications, and the means of encouraging
+industry and agriculture, besides giving them a proportionate
+number of seats in the state legislature in
+Warsaw. But again the British delegates&mdash;experienced in
+problems of home rule&mdash;expressed their dissatisfaction and
+insisted on a parliament or diet for the Ukraine invested
+with considerable authority over the affairs of the province.
+The Poles next announced their intention to have a
+governor of eastern Galicia appointed by the President
+of the Polish Republic, with a council to advise him.
+The British again amended the proposal and asked that
+the governor should be responsible to the Galician parliament,
+but to this the Poles demurred emphatically, and
+finally it was settled that only the members of his council
+should be responsible to the provincial legislature. The
+Poles having suggested that military conscription should
+be applied to eastern Galicia on the same terms as to the
+rest of Poland, the British once more joined issue with
+them and demanded that no troops whatever should be
+levied in the province. The upshot of this dispute was
+that after much wrangling the British Commission gave
+way to the Poles, but made it a condition that the troops
+should not be employed outside the province. To this
+the Poles made answer that the massing of so many
+soldiers on the Rumanian frontier might reasonably be
+objected to by the Rumanians&mdash;and so the amoebean
+word-game went on in the subcommission. In a word,
+when dealing with the eastern Galician problem, Mr.
+Lloyd George played the part of an ardent champion
+of complete home rule.</p>
+
+<p>To sum up, the Conference linked eastern Galicia with
+Poland, but made the bonds extremely tenuous, so that
+they might be severed at any moment without involving
+profound changes in either country, and by this arrangement,
+which introduced the provisional into the definitive,
+a broad field of operations was allotted to political agitation
+and revolt was encouraged to rear its crest.</p>
+
+<p>The province of Upper Silesia was asked for on grounds
+which the Poles, at any rate, thought convincing. But
+Mr. Lloyd George, it was said, declared them insufficient.
+The subject was thrashed out one day in June when the
+Polish delegates were summoned before their all-powerful
+colleagues to be told of certain alterations that had been
+recently introduced into the Treaty which concerned them
+to know. They appeared before the Council of Five.<a name="FNanchor_184_184" id="FNanchor_184_184" href="#Footnote_184_184" >[184]</a>
+President Wilson, addressing the two delegates, spoke
+approximately as follows: &quot;You claim Silesia on the
+ground that its inhabitants are Poles and we have
+given your demand careful consideration. But the
+Germans tell us that the inhabitants, although Polish
+by race, wish to remain under German rule as heretofore.
+That is a strong objection if founded on fact. At present
+we are unable to answer it. In fact, nobody can answer
+it with finality but the inhabitants themselves. Therefore
+we must order a plebiscite among them.&quot; One of the
+Polish delegates remarked: &quot;If you had put the question
+to the inhabitants fifty years ago they would have expressed
+their wish to remain with the Germans because
+at that time they were profoundly ignorant and their
+national sentiment was dormant. Now it is otherwise.
+For since then many of them have been educated, and
+the majority are alive to the issue and will therefore
+declare for Poland. And if any section of the territory
+should still prefer German sway to Polish and their district
+in consequence of your plebiscite becomes German, the
+process of enlightenment which has already made such
+headway will none the less go on, and their children,
+conscious of their loss, will anathematize their fathers
+for having inflicted it. And then there will be trouble.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wilson retorted: &quot;You are assuming more than
+is meet. The frontiers which we are tracing are provisional,
+not final. That is a consideration which ought
+to weigh with you. Besides, the League of Nations will
+intervene to improve what is imperfect.&quot; &quot;O League
+of Nations, what blunders are committed in thy name!&quot;
+the delegate may have muttered to himself as he listened
+to the words meant to comfort him and his countrymen.</p>
+
+<p>Much might have been urged against this proffered
+solace if the delegates had been in a captious mood.
+The League of Nations had as yet no existence. If its
+will, intelligence, and power could indeed be reckoned
+upon with such confidence, how had it come to pass that
+its creators, Britain and the United States, deemed them
+dubious enough to call for a reinforcement in the shape
+of a formal alliance for the protection of France? If this
+precautionary measure, which shatters the whole Wilsonian
+system, was indispensable to one Ally it was at
+least equally indispensable to another. And in the case
+of Poland it was more urgent than in the case of France,
+because if Germany were again to scheme a war of conquest
+the probability is infinitesimal that she would invade
+Belgium or move forward on the western front. The
+line of least resistance, which is Poland, would prove
+incomparably more attractive. And then? The absence
+of Allied troops in eastern Europe was one of the principal
+causes of the wars, tumults, and chaotic confusion that
+had made nervous people tremble for the fate of civilization
+in the interval between the conclusion of the armistice
+and the ratification of the Treaty. In the future the
+absence of strongly situated Allies there, if Germany were
+to begin a fresh war, would be more fatal still, and the
+Polish state might conceivably disappear before military
+aid from the Allied governments could reach it. Why
+should the safety of Poland and to some extent the
+security of Europe be made to depend upon what is at
+best a gambler's throw?</p>
+
+<p>But no counter-objections were offered. On the contrary,
+M. Paderewski uttered the soft answer that turneth
+away wrath. He profoundly regretted the decision of
+the lawgivers, but, recognizing that it was immutable,
+bowed to it in the name of his country. He knew, he said,
+that the delegates were animated by very friendly feelings
+toward his country and he thanked them for their help.
+M. Paderewski's colleague, the less malleable M. Dmowski,
+is reported to have said: &quot;It is my desire to be quite
+sincere with you, gentlemen. Therefore I venture to
+submit that while you profess to have settled the matter
+on principle, you have not carried out that principle
+thoroughly. Doubtless by inadvertence. Thus there
+are places inhabited by a large majority of Poles which
+you have allotted to Germany on the ground that they are
+inhabited by Germans. That is inconsistent.&quot; At this
+Mr. Lloyd George jumped up from his place and asked:
+&quot;Can you name any such places?&quot; M. Dmowski gave
+several names. &quot;Point them out to me on the map,&quot;
+insisted the British Premier. They were pointed out
+on the map. Twice President Wilson asked the delegate
+to spell the name Bomst for him.<a name="FNanchor_185_185" id="FNanchor_185_185" href="#Footnote_185_185" >[185]</a> Mr. Lloyd George
+then said: &quot;Well, those are oversights that can be
+rectified.&quot; &quot;Oh yes,&quot; added Mr. Wilson, &quot;we will see
+to that.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_186_186" id="FNanchor_186_186" href="#Footnote_186_186" >[186]</a> M. Dmowski also questioned the President
+about the plebiscite, and under whose auspices the voting
+would take place, and was told that there would be an
+Inter-Allied administration to superintend the arrangements
+and insure perfect freedom of voting. &quot;Through
+what agency will that administration work? Is it through
+the officials?&quot; &quot;Evidently,&quot; Mr. Wilson answered.
+&quot;You are doubtless aware that they are Germans?&quot;
+&quot;Yes. But the administration will possess the right to
+dismiss those who prove unworthy of their confidence.&quot;
+&quot;Don't you think,&quot; insisted M. Dmowski, &quot;that it would
+be fairer to withdraw one half of the German bureaucrats
+and give their places to Poles?&quot; To which the President
+replied: &quot;The administration will be thoroughly impartial
+and will adopt all suitable measures to render the voting
+free.&quot; There the matter ended.</p>
+
+<p>The two potentates in council, tackling the future
+status of Lithuania, settled it in an offhand and singular
+fashion which at any rate bespoke their good intentions.
+The principle of self-determination, or what was facetiously
+termed the Balkanization of Europe, was at first
+applied to that territory and a semi-independent state
+created <i>in petto</i> which was to contain eight million inhabitants
+and be linked with Poland. Certain obstacles
+were soon afterward encountered which had not been
+foreseen. One was that all the Lithuanians number only
+two millions, or say at the most two millions and one
+hundred thousand. Out of these even the Supreme
+Council could not make eight millions. In Lithuania
+there are two and a half million Poles, one and a half
+million Jews, and the remainder are White Russians.<a name="FNanchor_187_187" id="FNanchor_187_187" href="#Footnote_187_187" >[187]</a>
+It was recognized that a community consisting of such
+disparate elements, situated where it now is, could hardly
+live and strive as an independent state. The Lithuanian
+Jews, however, were of a different way of thinking, and
+they opposed the Polish claims with a degree of steadfastness
+and animation which wounded Poland's national
+pride and left rankling sores behind.</p>
+
+<p>It is worth noting that the representatives of Russia,
+who are supposed to clutch convulsively at all the states
+which once formed part of the Tsardom, displayed a degree
+of political detachment in respect of Lithuania which
+came as a pleasant surprise to many. The Russian Ambassador
+in Paris, M. Maklakoff, in a remarkable address
+before a learned assembly<a name="FNanchor_188_188" id="FNanchor_188_188" href="#Footnote_188_188" >[188]</a> in the French capital, announced
+that Russia was henceforward disinterested in
+the status of Lithuania.</p>
+
+<p>That the Poles were minded to deal very liberally with
+the Lithuanians became evident during the Conference.
+General Pilsudski, on his own initiative, visited Vilna and
+issued a proclamation to the Lithuanians announcing that
+elections would be held, and asking them to make known
+their desires, which would be realized by the Warsaw
+government. One of the many curious documents of the
+Conference is an official missive signed by the General
+Secretary, M. Dutasta, and addressed to the first Polish
+delegate, exhorting him to induce his government to come
+to terms with the Lithuanian government, as behooves
+two neighboring states. Unluckily for the soundness of
+that counsel there was no recognized Lithuanian state or
+Lithuanian government to come to terms with.</p>
+
+<p>As has been often enough pointed out, the actions and
+utterances of the two world-menders were so infelicitous
+as to lend color to the belief&mdash;shared by the representatives
+of a number of humiliated nations&mdash;that greed of
+new markets was at the bottom of what purported to be
+a policy of pure humanitarianism. Some of the delegates
+were currently supposed to be the unwitting instruments
+of elusive capitalistic influences. Possibly they would
+have been astonished were they told this: Great Britain
+was suspected of working for complete control of the Baltic
+and its seaboard in order to oust the Germans from the
+markets of that territory and to have potent levers for
+action in Poland, Germany, and Russia. The achievement
+of that end would mean command of the Baltic,
+which had theretofore been a German lake.<a name="FNanchor_189_189" id="FNanchor_189_189" href="#Footnote_189_189" >[189]</a> It would also
+entail, it was said, the separation of Dantzig from Poland,
+and the attraction of the Finns, Esthonians, Letts, and
+Lithuanians from Germany's orbit into that of Great
+Britain. In vain the friends of the delegates declared that
+economic interests were not the mainspring of their deliberate
+action and that nothing was further from their
+intention than to angle for a mandate for those countries.
+The conviction was deep-rooted in the minds of many
+that each of the Great Powers was playing for its own
+hand. That there was some apparent foundation for this
+assumption cannot, as we saw, be gainsaid. Widely and
+unfavorably commented was the circumstance that in the
+heat of those discussions at the Conference a man of confidence
+of the Allies put this significant and impolitic
+question to one of the plenipotentiaries: &quot;How would
+you take it if England were to receive a mandate for
+Lithuania?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Great Powers,&quot; observed the most outspoken of
+the delegates of the lesser states, &quot;are bandits, but as
+their operations are on a large scale they are entitled to
+another and more courteous name. Their gaze is fascinated
+by markets, concessions, monopolies. They are
+now making preparations for a great haul. At this
+politicians cannot affect to be scandalized. For it has
+never been otherwise since men came together in ordered
+communities. But what is irritating and repellent is the
+perfume of altruism and philanthropy which permeates
+this decomposition. We are told that already they are
+purchasing the wharves of Dantzig, making ready for
+'big deals' in Libau, Riga, and Reval, founding a bank in
+Klagenfurt and negotiating for oil-wells in Rumania. Although
+deeply immersed in the ethics of politics, they have
+not lost sight of the worldly goods to be picked up and
+appropriated on the wearisome journey toward ideal goals.
+The atmosphere they have thus renewed is peculiarly
+favorable to the growth of cant, and tends to accelerate
+the process of moral and social dissolution. And the
+effects of this mephitic air may prove more durable than
+the contribution of its creators to the political reorganization
+of Europe. If we compare the high functions which
+they might have fulfilled in relation to the vast needs and
+the unprecedented tendencies of the new age with those
+which they have unwittingly and deliberately performed
+as sophists of sentimental morality and destroyers of the
+wheat together with the tares, we shall have to deplore
+one of the rarest opportunities missed beyond retrieve.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In this criticism there is a kernel of truth. The ethico-social
+currents to which the war gave rise had a profoundly
+moral aspect, and if rightly canalized might have fertilized
+many lands and have led to a new and healthy state-system.
+One indispensable condition, however, was that
+the peoples of the world should themselves be directly
+interested in the process, that they should be consulted
+and listened to, and helped or propelled into new grooves
+of thought and action. Instead of that the delegates contented
+themselves with giving new names to old institutions
+and tendencies which stood condemned, and with
+teaching lawless disrespect for every check and restraint
+except such as they chose to acknowledge. They were
+powerful advocates for right and justice, democracy and
+publicity, but their definitions of these abstract nouns
+made plain-speaking people gasp. Self-interest and material
+power were the idols which they set themselves to pull
+down, but the deities which they put in their places wore
+the same familiar looks as the idols, only they were differently
+colored.</p>
+
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_127_127" id="Footnote_127_127" href="#FNanchor_127_127"> [127]</a> In February, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_128_128" id="Footnote_128_128" href="#FNanchor_128_128"> [128]</a> The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. Pichon, undertook to
+recognize in principle the independence of Esthonia, provided that Esthonia
+would take over her part of the Russian debt.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_129_129" id="Footnote_129_129" href="#FNanchor_129_129"> [129]</a> In the first version of the Covenant, Article XIX deals with this subject.
+In the revised version it is Article XXI.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_130_130" id="Footnote_130_130" href="#FNanchor_130_130"> [130]</a> Cf. <i>L'Echo de Paris</i>, August 19, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_131_131" id="Footnote_131_131" href="#FNanchor_131_131"> [131]</a> In July, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_132_132" id="Footnote_132_132" href="#FNanchor_132_132"> [132]</a> <i>L'Echo de Paris</i>, August 19, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_133_133" id="Footnote_133_133" href="#FNanchor_133_133"> [133]</a> The armistice concluded with Hungary was grossly violated by the Hungarians
+and had lost its force. The Rumanians, when occupying the country,
+demanded a new one, and drafted it. The Supreme Council at first
+demurred, and then desisted from dictation. But its attitude underwent
+further changes later.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_134_134" id="Footnote_134_134" href="#FNanchor_134_134"> [134]</a> <i>The New York Herald</i>, (Paris ed.), August 20, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_135_135" id="Footnote_135_135" href="#FNanchor_135_135"> [135]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, May 4, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_136_136" id="Footnote_136_136" href="#FNanchor_136_136"> [136]</a> I discussed Belgium's demands in a series of special articles published
+in <i>The London Daily Telegraph</i> and <i>The Philadelphia Public Ledger</i> in the
+months of January, February, and March, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_137_137" id="Footnote_137_137" href="#FNanchor_137_137"> [137]</a> In Frisia and Ghelderland.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_138_138" id="Footnote_138_138" href="#FNanchor_138_138"> [138]</a> In August, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_139_139" id="Footnote_139_139" href="#FNanchor_139_139"> [139]</a> By Article XXI of the Covenant and Article CCCCXXXV of the
+Treaty.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_140_140" id="Footnote_140_140" href="#FNanchor_140_140"> [140]</a> I was in possession of a complete copy.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_141_141" id="Footnote_141_141" href="#FNanchor_141_141"> [141]</a> Cf. <i>Corriere della Sera</i>, August 24, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_142_142" id="Footnote_142_142" href="#FNanchor_142_142"> [142]</a> In February.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_143_143" id="Footnote_143_143" href="#FNanchor_143_143"> [143]</a> Cf. Chapter, &quot;Censorship and Secrecy.&quot; The writer of these pages
+was the journalist.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_144_144" id="Footnote_144_144" href="#FNanchor_144_144"> [144]</a> <i>Le Temps</i>, July 8, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_145_145" id="Footnote_145_145" href="#FNanchor_145_145"> [145]</a> At the close of August, 1916.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_146_146" id="Footnote_146_146" href="#FNanchor_146_146"> [146]</a> I was one of those who at the time maintained that even in the Allies'
+interests Rumania ought not to enter the war at that conjuncture, and anticipation
+of that invasion was one of the reasons I adduced.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_147_147" id="Footnote_147_147" href="#FNanchor_147_147"> [147]</a> Also known by the German name of Theiss.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_148_148" id="Footnote_148_148" href="#FNanchor_148_148"> [148]</a> Cf. <i>Le Temps</i>, July 28, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_149_149" id="Footnote_149_149" href="#FNanchor_149_149"> [149]</a> Cf. <i>The Daily Mail</i> (Paris edition), September 5, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_150_150" id="Footnote_150_150" href="#FNanchor_150_150"> [150]</a> On June 13, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_151_151" id="Footnote_151_151" href="#FNanchor_151_151"> [151]</a> On July 11, 1919, some days later, the decision was suspended, owing to
+the opinion of General Bliss, who disagreed with Foch.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_152_152" id="Footnote_152_152" href="#FNanchor_152_152"> [152]</a> On July 17, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_153_153" id="Footnote_153_153" href="#FNanchor_153_153"> [153]</a> On July 20th.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_154_154" id="Footnote_154_154" href="#FNanchor_154_154"> [154]</a> Estimated at 85,000.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_155_155" id="Footnote_155_155" href="#FNanchor_155_155"> [155]</a> Moritz Kuhn, who altered his name to Bela Kuhn, was a vulgar criminal.
+Expelled from school for larceny, he underwent several terms of
+imprisonment, and is alleged to have pilfered from a fellow-prisoner. Even
+among some thieves there is no honor.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_156_156" id="Footnote_156_156" href="#FNanchor_156_156"> [156]</a> Italy was represented by Lieutenant-Colonel Romanelli, who resided in
+Budapest; Britain, by Col. Sir Thomas Cunningham, who was in Vienna,
+as was also Prince Livio Borghese. Later on the Powers delegated generals
+to be members of a military mission to the Hungarian capital.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_157_157" id="Footnote_157_157" href="#FNanchor_157_157"> [157]</a> At Bruck.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_158_158" id="Footnote_158_158" href="#FNanchor_158_158"> [158]</a> On July 20th.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_159_159" id="Footnote_159_159" href="#FNanchor_159_159"> [159]</a> <i>Le Journal des D&eacute;bats</i>, August 4, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_160_160" id="Footnote_160_160" href="#FNanchor_160_160"> [160]</a> This is a larger proportion than was left to the Germans by the Treaty
+of Versailles.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_161_161" id="Footnote_161_161" href="#FNanchor_161_161"> [161]</a> <i>Le Temps</i>, July 8, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_162_162" id="Footnote_162_162" href="#FNanchor_162_162"> [162]</a> It was the habitual practice of the Conference to intrust missions abroad
+to generals who knew nothing whatever about the countries to which they
+were sent.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_163_163" id="Footnote_163_163" href="#FNanchor_163_163"> [163]</a> <i>Le Temps</i>, August 8, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_164_164" id="Footnote_164_164" href="#FNanchor_164_164"> [164]</a> Armistice of November 13, 1918, which had become void.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_165_165" id="Footnote_165_165" href="#FNanchor_165_165"> [165]</a> On June 13, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_166_166" id="Footnote_166_166" href="#FNanchor_166_166"> [166]</a> Composed of four members, one each for Britain, the United States,
+France, and Italy.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_167_167" id="Footnote_167_167" href="#FNanchor_167_167"> [167]</a> On July 20th.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_168_168" id="Footnote_168_168" href="#FNanchor_168_168"> [168]</a> Paris journals ascribed it to Mr. Balfour, although it does not bear the
+hall-mark of a diplomatist.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_169_169" id="Footnote_169_169" href="#FNanchor_169_169"> [169]</a> <i>Le Journal des D&eacute;bats</i>, August 13, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_170_170" id="Footnote_170_170" href="#FNanchor_170_170"> [170]</a> Pertinax in <i>L'Echo de Paris</i>, August 10, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_171_171" id="Footnote_171_171" href="#FNanchor_171_171"> [171]</a> <i>The New York Herald</i> (Paris edition), August 10, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_172_172" id="Footnote_172_172" href="#FNanchor_172_172"> [172]</a> <i>Le Journal des D&eacute;bats</i>, August 13, 1919. Article by Auguste Gauvain.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_173_173" id="Footnote_173_173" href="#FNanchor_173_173"> [173]</a> General Gorton is the one who is said to have despatched the telegram.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_174_174" id="Footnote_174_174" href="#FNanchor_174_174"> [174]</a> In the beginning of September, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_175_175" id="Footnote_175_175" href="#FNanchor_175_175"> [175]</a> The French government having prudently refused to furnish an envoy,
+the British chose Sir George Clark.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_176_176" id="Footnote_176_176" href="#FNanchor_176_176"> [176]</a> On June 10, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_177_177" id="Footnote_177_177" href="#FNanchor_177_177"> [177]</a> The actors in this episode were not all officers and civil servants. They
+included some men in responsible positions.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_178_178" id="Footnote_178_178" href="#FNanchor_178_178"> [178]</a> In Teschen.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_179_179" id="Footnote_179_179" href="#FNanchor_179_179"> [179]</a> On Friday, April 18, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_180_180" id="Footnote_180_180" href="#FNanchor_180_180"> [180]</a> The Rumanians, on the contrary, had been ordered to keep to the old
+conditions, although they, too, had lost their force.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_181_181" id="Footnote_181_181" href="#FNanchor_181_181"> [181]</a> That is exactly what happened in the end. But the delegates would
+not believe it until it became an accomplished fact.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_182_182" id="Footnote_182_182" href="#FNanchor_182_182"> [182]</a> About twenty-five thousand had already left France.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_183_183" id="Footnote_183_183" href="#FNanchor_183_183"> [183]</a> The Ruthenians, Ukrainians, and Little Russians are racially the same
+people, just as those who speak German in northwestern Germany, Dutch
+in Holland, and Flemish in Belgium are racially close kindred. The main
+distinctions between the members of each branch are political.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_184_184" id="Footnote_184_184" href="#FNanchor_184_184"> [184]</a> The Messrs. Wilson, George, Clemenceau, Barons Makino and Sonnino.
+M. Clemenceau was the nominal chairman, but in reality it was
+President Wilson who conducted the proceedings.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_185_185" id="Footnote_185_185" href="#FNanchor_185_185"> [185]</a> Bomst is a canton in the former Province (Regierungs-besirk) of Posen,
+with about sixty thousand inhabitants.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_186_186" id="Footnote_186_186" href="#FNanchor_186_186"> [186]</a> Minutes of this conversation exist.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_187_187" id="Footnote_187_187" href="#FNanchor_187_187"> [187]</a> An interesting Russian tribe, dwelling chiefly in the provinces of Minsk
+and Grodno (excepting the extreme south), a small part of Suvalki, Vilna
+(excepting the northwest corner), the entire provinces of Vitebsk and
+Moghileff, the west part of Smolensk, and a few districts of Tshernigoff.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_188_188" id="Footnote_188_188" href="#FNanchor_188_188"> [188]</a> La Soci&eacute;t&eacute; des &Eacute;tudes Politiques. The discourse in question was
+printed and published.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_189_189" id="Footnote_189_189" href="#FNanchor_189_189"> [189]</a> In Germany and Russia the same view was generally taken of the
+motives that actuated the policy of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. The most
+elaborate attempt to demonstrate its correctness was made by Cr. Bunke,
+in <i>The Dantziger Neueste Nachrichten</i>, already mentioned in this book.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII" />VII</h3>
+
+<h3>POLAND'S OUTLOOK IN THE FUTURE</h3>
+
+
+<p>Casting a parting glance at Poland as she looked
+when emerging from the Conference in the leading-strings
+of the Great Western Powers, after having escaped
+from the Bolshevist dangers that compassed her
+round, we behold her about to begin her national existence
+as a semi-independent nation, beset with enemies domestic
+and foreign. For it would be an abuse of terms to affirm
+that Poland, or, indeed, any of the lesser states, is fully
+independent in the old sense of the word. The special
+treaty imposed on her by the Great Two obliges her to
+accord free transit to Allied goods and certain privileges
+to her Jewish and other minorities; to accept the supervision
+and intervention of the League of Nations, which
+the Poles contend means in their case an Anglo-Saxon-Jewish
+association; and, at the outset, at any rate, to
+recognize the French generalissimus as the supreme commander
+of her troops.</p>
+
+<p>Poland's frontiers and general status ought, if the
+scheme of her French protectors had been executed, to
+have been accommodated to the peculiar functions
+which they destined her to fill in New Europe. France's
+plan was to make of Poland a wall between Germany
+and Russia. The marked tendency of the other two
+Conference leaders was to transform it into a bridge
+between those two countries. And the outcome of the
+compromise between them has been to construct something
+which, without being either, combines all the disadvantages
+of both. It is a bridge for Germany and a
+wall for Bolshevist Russia. That is the verdict of a
+large number of Poles. Although the Europe of the
+future is to be a pacific and ethically constituted community,
+whose members will have their disputes and
+quarrels with one another settled by arbitration courts
+and other conciliatory tribunals, war and efficient preparation
+for it were none the less uppermost in the minds of
+the circumspect lawgivers. Hence the Anglo-Saxon
+agreement to defend France against unprovoked aggression.
+Hence, too, the solicitude displayed by the French
+to have the Polish state, which is to be their mainstay in
+eastern Europe, equipped with every territorial and other
+guaranty necessary to qualify it for the duties. But
+what the French government contrived to obtain for
+itself it failed to secure for its new Slav ally. Nay,
+oddly enough it voted with the Anglo-Saxon delegates for
+keeping all the lesser states under the tutelage of the
+League. The Duumvirs, having made the requisite concessions
+to France, were resolved in Poland's case to avoid
+a further recoil toward the condemned forms of the old
+system of equilibrium. Hence the various plebiscites,
+home-rule charters, subdivisions of territory, and other
+evidences of a struggle for reform along the line of least
+resistance, as though in the unavoidable future conflict
+between timidly propounded theories and politico-social
+forces the former had any serious chance of surviving. In
+politics, as in coinage, it is the debased metal that ousts
+the gold from circulation.</p>
+
+<p>Poland's situation is difficult; some people would call
+it precarious. She is surrounded by potential enemies
+abroad and at home&mdash;Germans, Russians, Ukrainians,
+Magyars, and Jews. A considerable number of Teutons
+are incorporated in her republic to-day, and also a large
+number of people of Russian race. Now, Russia and
+Germany, even if they renounce all designs of reconquering
+the territory which they misruled for such a long span of
+time, may feel tempted one day to recover their own
+kindred, and what they consider to be their own territory.
+And irredentism is one of the worst political plagues for
+all the three parties who usually suffer from it. If then
+Germany and Russia were to combine and attack Poland,
+the consequences would be serious. That democratic Germany
+would risk such a wild adventure in the near future
+is inconceivable. But history operates with long periods
+of time, and it behooves statesmanship to do likewise.</p>
+
+<p>A Polish statesman would start from the assumption that,
+as Russia and Germany have for the time being ceased
+to be efficient members of the European state-system,
+a good understanding may be come to with both of them,
+and a close intimacy cultivated with one. Resourcefulness
+and statecraft will be requisite to this consummation.
+For some Russians are still uncompromising, and would
+fain take back a part of what the revolutionary wave
+swept out of their country's grasp, but circumstance
+bids fair to set free a potent moderating force in the near
+future. Already it is incarnated in statesmen of the new
+type. In this connection it is instructive to pass in review
+the secret maneuvers by which the recognition of Poland's
+independence was, so to say, extorted from a Russian
+Minister, who was reputed at the time to be a Democrat
+of the Democrats. As some governments have now
+become champions of publicity, I venture to hope that this
+disclosure will be as helpful to those whom it concerns
+as was the systematic suppression of my articles and
+telegrams during the space of four years.<a name="FNanchor_190_190" id="FNanchor_190_190" href="#Footnote_190_190" >[190]</a></p>
+
+<p>On the outbreak of the Russian revolution Poland's
+representatives in Britain, who had been ceaselessly
+working for the restoration of their country, approached
+the British government with a request that the opportunity
+should be utilized at once, and the new democratic
+Cabinet in Petrograd requested to issue a proclamation
+recognizing the independence of Poland. The reasons
+for this move having been propounded in detail, orally
+and in writing, the Foreign Secretary despatched at once
+a telegram to the Ambassador in the Russian capital,
+instructing him to lay the matter before the Russian
+Foreign Minister and urge him to lose no time in establishing
+the claim of the Polish provisional government to the
+sympathies of the world, and the redress of its wrongs
+by Russia. Sir George Buchanan called on Professor
+Milyukoff, then Minister of Foreign Affairs and President
+of the Constitutional Democratic party, and propounded
+to him the views of the British government, which agreed
+with those of France and Italy, and hoped he would see
+his way to profit by the opportunity. The answer was
+prompt and definite, and within forty-eight hours of Mr.
+Balfour's despatch it reached the Foreign Office. The
+gist of it was that the Minister of Foreign Affairs regretted
+his inability to deal with the problem at that
+conjuncture, owing to its great complexity and various
+bearings, and also because of his apprehension that the
+Poles would demand the incorporation of Russian lands
+in their reconstituted state. From this answer many
+conclusions might fairly be drawn respecting persons,
+parties, and principles on the surface of revolutionary
+Russia. But to his credit, Mr. Balfour did not accept it
+as final. He again telegraphed to the British Ambassador,
+instructing him to insist upon the recognition of Poland,
+as the matter was urgent, and to exhort the provisional
+government to give in good time the desired proof of the
+democratic faith that is to save Russia. Sir George
+Buchanan accomplished the task expeditiously. M. Milyukoff
+gave way, drafted and issued the proclamation.
+Mr. Bonar Law welcomed it in a felicitous speech in the
+House of Commons,<a name="FNanchor_191_191" id="FNanchor_191_191" href="#Footnote_191_191" >[191]</a> and the Entente press lauded to the
+skies the generous spirit of the new Russian government.
+The Russian people and their leaders have traveled far
+since then, and have rid themselves of much useless
+ballast.</p>
+
+<p>As Slavs the Poles might have been naturally predisposed
+to live in amity with the Russians, were it not
+for the specter of the past that stands between them.
+But now that Russia is a democracy in fact as well as in
+name, this is much more feasible than it ever was before,
+and it is also indispensable to the Russians. In the
+first place, it is possible that Poland may have consolidated
+her forces before her mighty neighbor has recovered the
+status corresponding to her numbers and resources. If
+the present estimates are correct, and the frontiers, when
+definitely traced, leave Poland a republic with some thirty-five
+million people, such is her extraordinary birth-rate
+and the territorial scope it has for development, that
+in the not far distant future her population may exceed
+that of France. Assuming for the sake of argument that
+armies and other national defenses will count in politics
+as much as hitherto, Poland's specific weight will then be
+considerable. She will have become not indeed a world
+power (to-day there are only two such), but a European
+Great Power whose friendship will be well worth acquiring.</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile Polish statesmen&mdash;the Poles have
+one in Roman Dmowski&mdash;may strike up a friendly accord
+with Russia, abandoning definitely and formally all
+claims to so-called historic Poland, disinteresting themselves
+in all the Baltic problems which concern Russia so
+closely, and envisaging the Ukraine from a point of view
+that harmonizes with hers. And if the two peoples
+could thus find a common basis of friendly association,
+Poland would have solved at least one of her Sphinx
+questions.</p>
+
+<p>As for the internal development of the nation, it is
+seemingly hampered with as many hindrances as the
+international. It may be likened to the world after
+creation, bearing marks of the chaos of the eve. The
+German Poles differ considerably from the Austrian, while
+the Russian Poles are differentiated from both. The last-named
+still show traces of recent servitude in their everyday
+avocations. They lack the push and the energy
+of purpose so necessary nowadays in the struggle for life.
+The Austrian Poles in general are reputed to be likewise
+easy-going, lax, and more brilliant than solid, while their
+administrative qualities are said to be impaired by a
+leaning toward Oriental methods of transacting business.
+The Polish inhabitants of the provinces hitherto under
+Germany are people of a different temperament. They
+have assimilated some of the best qualities of the Teuton
+without sacrificing those which are inherent in men of
+their own race. A thorough grasp of detail and a gift
+for organization characterize their conceptions, and precision,
+thoroughness, and conscientiousness are predicated
+of their methods. If it be true that the first reform peremptorily
+called for in the new republic is an administrative
+purge, it follows that it can be most successfully
+accomplished with the whole-hearted co-operation of the
+German Poles, whose superior education fits them to conform
+their schemes to the most urgent needs of the nation
+and the epoch.</p>
+
+<p>The next measure will be internal colonization. There
+are considerable tracts of land in what once was Russian
+Poland, the population of which, owing to the havoc of
+war, is abnormally sparse. Some districts, like that of
+the Pripet marshes, which even at the best of times had
+but five persons to the kilometer, are practically deserts.
+For the Russian army, when retreating before the Germans,
+drove before it a huge population computed at
+eight millions, who inhabited the territory to the east of
+Brest-Litovsk and northward between Lida and Minsk.
+Of these eight millions many perished on the way. A
+large percentage of the survivors never returned.<a name="FNanchor_192_192" id="FNanchor_192_192" href="#Footnote_192_192" >[192]</a> Roughly
+speaking, a couple of millions (mostly Poles and Jews)
+went back to their ruined homes. Now the Poles, who
+are one of the most prolific races in Europe, might be
+encouraged to settle on these thinly populated lands,
+which they could convert into ethnographically Polish
+districts within a relatively short span of time. These,
+however, are merely the ideas of a friendly observer,
+whose opinion cannot lay claim to any weight.</p>
+
+<p>To-day Poland's hope is not, as it has been hitherto, the
+nobleman, the professor, and the publicist, but the
+peasant. The members of this class are the nucleus of
+the new nation. It is from their midst that Poland's
+future representatives in politics, arts, and science will be
+drawn. Already the peasants are having their sons
+educated in high-schools and universities, of which the
+republic has a fair number well supplied with qualified
+teachers,<a name="FNanchor_193_193" id="FNanchor_193_193" href="#Footnote_193_193" >[193]</a> and they are resolute adversaries of every
+movement tainted with Bolshevism.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the difficulties and dangers with which new
+Poland will have to contend are redoubtable. But she
+stands a good chance of overcoming them and reaching
+the goal where lies her one hope of playing a noteworthy
+part in reorganized Europe. The indispensable condition
+of success is that the current of opinion and sentiment in
+the country shall buoy up reforming statesmen. These
+must not only understand the requirements of the new
+epoch and be alive to the necessity of penetrating public
+opinion, but also possess the courage to place high social
+aims at the head of their life and career. Statesmen of
+this temper are rare to-day, but Poland possesses at least
+one of them. Her resources warrant the conviction which
+her chiefs firmly entertain that she may in a relatively
+near future acquire the economic leadership of eastern
+Europe, and in population, military strength, and area
+equal France.</p>
+
+<p>Parenthetically it may be observed that the enthusiasm
+of the Poles for British institutions and for intimate relations
+with Great Britain has perceptibly cooled.</p>
+
+<p>In the limitations to which she is now subjected, her
+more optimistic leaders discern the temporarily unavoidable
+condition of a beneficent process of working forward
+toward indefinite amelioration. Their people's faith,
+that may one day raise the country above the highest
+summit of its past historical development, if it does not
+reconcile them to the present, may nerve them to the
+effort which shall realize that high consummation in the
+future.</p>
+
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_190_190" id="Footnote_190_190" href="#FNanchor_190_190"> [190]</a> Most of my articles written during the last half of the war, and some
+during the armistice, were held back on grounds which were presumably
+patriotic. I share with those who were instrumental in keeping them
+from the public the moral portion of the reward which consists in the
+assumption that some high purpose was served by the suppression.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_191_191" id="Footnote_191_191" href="#FNanchor_191_191"> [191]</a> On April 26, 1917.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_192_192" id="Footnote_192_192" href="#FNanchor_192_192"> [192]</a> Mainly White Russians.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_193_193" id="Footnote_193_193" href="#FNanchor_193_193"> [193]</a> The Poles have universities in Cracow, Warsaw, Lvoff (Lemberg),
+Liublin, and will shortly open one in Posen. One Polish statesman entertains
+a novel and useful idea which will probably be tested in the University
+of Posen. Noticing that the greater the progress of technical knowledge
+the less is the advance made in the knowledge of men, which is perhaps
+the most pressing need of the new age, this statesman proposes to create
+a new type of university, where there would be two principal sections, one
+for the study of natural sciences and mathematics, and the other for the
+study of men, which would include biology, psychology, ethnography,
+sociology, philology, history, etc.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII" />VIII</h3>
+
+<h3>ITALY</h3>
+
+
+<p>Of all the problems submitted to the Conference,
+those raised by Italy's demands may truly be said
+to have been among the easiest. Whether placed in the
+light of the Fourteen Points or of the old system of the
+rights of the victors, they would fall into their places
+almost automatically. But the peace criteria were identical
+with neither of those principles. They consisted of
+several heterogeneous maxims which were invoked alternately,
+Mr. Wilson deciding which was applicable to the
+particular case under discussion. And from his judgment
+there was no appeal.</p>
+
+<p>It is of the essence of statesmanship to be able to put
+oneself in the place&mdash;one might almost say in the skin&mdash;of
+the foreign peoples and governments with which one
+is called upon to deal. But the feat is arduous and presupposes
+a variety of conditions which the President was
+unable to fulfil. His conception of Europe, for example,
+was much too simple. It has been aptly likened to that
+of the American economist who once remarked to the
+manager of an English railway: &quot;You Britishers are
+handicapped by having to build your railway lines through
+cities and towns. We go to work diligently: we first
+construct the road and create the cities afterward.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Wilson happened just then to be in quest of
+a fulcrum on which to rest his idealistic lever. For he
+had already been driven by egotistic governments from
+several of his commanding positions, and people were
+gibingly asking whether the new political gospel was being
+preached only as a foil for backslidings. Thus he abandoned
+the freedom of the seas ... on which he had taken
+a determined stand before the world. Although he refused
+the Rhine frontier to France, he had reluctantly
+given way to M. Clemenceau in the matter of the Saar
+Valley, assenting to a monstrous arrangement by which
+the German inhabitants of that region were to be handed
+over to the French Republic against their expressed will,
+as a set-off for a sum in gold which Germany would certainly
+be unable to pay.<a name="FNanchor_194_194" id="FNanchor_194_194" href="#Footnote_194_194" >[194]</a> He doubtless foresaw that he
+would also yield on the momentous issue of Shantung and
+the Chino-Japanese secret treaty. In a word, some of his
+more important abstract tenets professed in words were
+being brushed aside when it came to acts, and his position
+was truly unenviable. Naturally, therefore, he seized
+the first favorable occasion to apply them vigorously and
+unswervingly. This was supplied by the dispute between
+Italy and Jugoslavia, two nations which he held, so to say,
+in the hollow of his hand.</p>
+
+<p>The latter state, still in the making, depended for its
+frontiers entirely on the fiat of the American President
+backed by the Premiers of Britain and France. And of
+this backing Mr. Wilson was assured. Italy, although
+more powerful militarily than Jugoslavia, was likewise
+economically dependent upon the good-will of the two
+English-speaking communities, who were assured in advance
+of the support of the French Republic. If, therefore,
+she could not be reasoned or cajoled into obeying
+the injunctions of the Supreme Council, she could easily
+be made malleable by other means. In her case, therefore,
+Mr. Wilson's ethical notions might be fearlessly
+applied. That this was the idea which underlay the
+President's policy is the obvious inference from the calm,
+unyielding way in which he treated the Italian delegation.
+In this connection it should be borne in mind that there
+is no more important distinction between all former peace
+settlements and that of the Paris Conference than the
+unavowed but indubitable fact that the latter rests upon
+the hegemony of the English-speaking communities of the
+world, whereas the former were based upon the balance
+of power. So immense a change could not be effected
+without discreetly throwing out as useless ballast some of
+the highly prized dogmas of the accepted political creeds,
+even at the cost of impairing the solidarity of the Latin
+races. This was effected incidentally. As a matter of
+fact, the French are not, properly speaking, a Latin race,
+nor has their solidarity with Italy or Spain ever been a
+moving political force in recent times. Italy's refusal to
+fight side by side with her Teuton allies against France
+and her backers may conceivably be the result of racial
+affinities, but it has hardly ever been ascribed to that
+sentimental source. Sentiment in politics is a myth. In
+any case, M. Clemenceau discerned no pressing reason
+for making painful efforts to perpetuate the Latin union,
+while solicitude for national interests hindered him from
+making costly concessions to it.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally the cardinal innovation of which this was a
+corollary was never invoked as the ground for any of the
+exceptional measures adopted by the Conference. And
+yet it was the motive for several, for although no allusion
+was made to the hegemony of Anglo-Saxondom, it was
+ever operative in the subconsciousness of the two plenipotentiaries.
+And in view of the omnipotence of these
+two nations, they temporarily sacrificed consistency to
+tactics, probably without conscientious qualms, and certainly
+without political misgivings. That would seem
+to be a partial explanation of the lengths to which the
+Conference went in the direction of concessions to the
+Great Powers' imperialist demands. France asked to be
+recognized and treated as the personification of that
+civilization for which the Allied peoples had fought. And
+for many reasons, which it would be superfluous to discuss
+here, a large part of her claim was allowed. This concession
+was attacked by many as connoting a departure
+from principle, but the deviation was more apparent than
+real, for under all the wrappings of idealistic catchwords
+lay the primeval doctrine of force. The only substantial
+difference between the old system and the new was to be
+found in the wielders of the force and the ends to which
+they intended to apply it. Force remains the granite
+foundation of the new ordering, as it had been of the old.
+But its employment, it was believed, would be different
+in the future from what it had been in the past. Concentrated
+in the hands of the English-speaking peoples,
+it would become so formidable a weapon that it need
+never be actually wielded. Possession of overwhelmingly
+superior strength would suffice to enforce obedience to
+the decrees of its possessors, which always will, it is
+assumed, be inspired by equity. An actual trial of
+strength would be obviated, therefore, at least so long
+as the relative military and economic conditions of the
+world states underwent no sensible change. To this
+extent the war specter would be exorcised and trying
+abuses abolished.</p>
+
+<p>That those views were expressly formulated and thrown
+into the clauses of a secret program is unlikely. But it
+seems to be a fact that the general outlines of such a
+policy were conceived and tacitly adhered to. These
+outlines governed the action of the two world-arbiters,
+not only in the dictatorial decrees issued in the name of
+political idealism and its Fourteen Points, which were so
+bitterly resented as oppressive by Italy, Rumania, Jugoslavia,
+Poland, and Greece, but likewise in those other
+concessions which scandalized the political puritans and
+gladdened the hearts of the French, the Japanese, the
+Jugoslavs, and the Jews. The dictatorial decrees were
+inspired by the delegates' fundamental aims, the concessions
+by their tactical needs&mdash;the former, therefore,
+were meant to be permanent, the latter transient.</p>
+
+<p>All other explanations of the Italian crisis, however
+well they may fit certain of its phases, are, when applied
+to the pith of the matter, beside the mark. Even if it
+were true, as the dramatist, Sem Benelli, wrote, that
+&quot;President Wilson evidently considers our people as on the
+plane of an African colony, dominated by the will of a few
+ambitious men,&quot; that would not account for the tenacious
+determination with which the President held to his
+slighted theory.</p>
+
+<p>Italy's position in Europe was in many respects peculiar.
+Men still living remember the time when her name
+was scarcely more than a geographical expression which
+gradually, during the last sixty years, came to connote a
+hard-working, sober, patriotic nation. Only little by
+little did she recover her finest provinces and her capital,
+and even then her unity was not fully achieved. Austria
+still held many of her sons, not only in the Trentino, but
+also on the other shore of the Adriatic. But for thirty
+years her desire to recover these lost children was paralyzed
+by international conditions. In her own interests,
+as well as in those of peace, she had become the third
+member of an alliance which constrained her to suppress
+her patriotic feelings and allowed her to bend all her energies
+to the prevention of a European conflict.</p>
+
+<p>When hostilities broke out, the attitude of the Italian
+government was a matter of extreme moment to France
+and the Entente. Much, perhaps the fate of Europe,
+depended on whether they would remain neutral or throw
+in their lot with the Teutons. They chose the former
+alternative and literally saved the situation. The question
+of motive is wholly irrelevant. Later on they were
+urged to move a step farther and take an active part
+against their former allies. But a powerful body of
+opinion and sentiment in the country was opposed to
+military co-operation, on the ground that the sum total
+of the results to be obtained by quiescence would exceed
+the guerdon of victory won by the side of the Entente.
+The correctness of this estimate depended upon many
+incalculable factors, among which was the duration of the
+struggle. The consensus of opinion was that it would
+be brief, in which case the terms dangled before Italy's
+eyes by the Entente would, it was believed by the Cabinet,
+greatly transcend those which the Central Powers were
+prepared to offer. Anyhow they were accepted and the
+compact was negotiated, signed, and ratified by men
+whose idealism marred their practical sense, and whose
+policy of sacred egotism, resolute in words and feeble
+in action, merely impaired the good name of the government
+without bringing any corresponding compensation
+to the country. The world struggle lasted much longer
+than the statesmen had dared to anticipate; Italy's
+obligations were greatly augmented by Russia's defection,
+she had to bear the brunt of all, instead of a part of
+Austria's forces, whereby the sacrifices demanded of her
+became proportionately heavier. Altogether it is fair
+to say that the difficulties to be overcome and the hardships
+to be endured before the Italian people reached their
+goal were and still are but imperfectly realized by their
+allies. For the obstacles were gigantic, the effort heroic;
+alone the results shrank to disappointing dimensions.</p>
+
+<p>The war over, Italian statesmen confidently believed
+that those supererogatory exertions would be appropriately
+recognized by the Allies. And this expectation
+quickly crystallized into territorial demands. The press
+which voiced them ruffled the temper of Anglo-Saxondom
+by clamoring for more than it was ever likely to concede,
+and buoyed up their own nation with illusory hopes, the
+non-fulfilment of which was certain to produce national
+discontent. Curiously enough, both the government and
+the press laid the main stress upon territorial expansion,
+leaving economic advantages almost wholly out of
+account.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this conjuncture that Mr. Wilson made his
+appearance and threw all the pieces on the political chessboard
+into weird confusion. &quot;You,&quot; he virtually said,
+&quot;have been fighting for the dismemberment of your secular
+enemy, Austria. Well, she is now dismembered and
+you have full satisfaction. Your frontiers shall be extended
+at her expense, but not at the expense of the new
+states which have arisen on her ruins. On the contrary,
+their rights will circumscribe your claims and limit your
+territorial aggrandizement. Not only can you not have
+all the additional territory you covet, but I must refuse
+to allot even what has been guaranteed to you by your
+secret treaty. I refuse to recognize that because the
+United States government was no party to it, was, in
+fact, wholly unaware of it until recently. New circumstances
+have transformed it into a mere scrap of paper.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This language was not understood by the Italian people.
+For them the sacredness of treaties was a dogma not to
+be questioned, and least of all by the champion of right,
+justice, and good faith. They had welcomed the new
+order preached by the American statesman, but were
+unable to reconcile it with the tearing up of existing conventions,
+the repudiation of legal rights, the dissolution
+of alliances. In particular their treaty with France, Britain,
+and Russia had contributed materially to the victory
+over the common enemy, had in fact saved the Allies.
+&quot;It was Italy's intervention,&quot; said the chief of the Austrian
+General Staff, Conrad von Hoetzendorff, &quot;that
+brought about the disaster. Without that the Central
+Empires would infallibly have won the war.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_195_195" id="FNanchor_195_195" href="#Footnote_195_195" >[195]</a> And there
+is no reason to doubt his assertion. In truth Italy had
+done all she had promised to the Allies, and more. She
+had contributed materially to save France&mdash;wholly gratuitously.
+It was also her neutrality, which she could have
+bartered, but did not,<a name="FNanchor_196_196" id="FNanchor_196_196" href="#Footnote_196_196" >[196]</a> that turned the scale at Bucharest
+against the military intervention of Rumania on the side
+of the Teutons.<a name="FNanchor_197_197" id="FNanchor_197_197" href="#Footnote_197_197" >[197]</a> And without the neutrality of both these
+countries at the outset of hostilities the course of the
+struggle and of European history would have been widely
+different from what they have been. And now that the
+Allies had achieved their aim they were to refuse to perform
+their part of the compact in the name, too, of a moral
+principle from the operation of which three great Powers
+were dispensed. That was the light in which the matter
+appeared to the unsophisticated mind of the average
+Italian, and not to him alone. Others accustomed to
+abstract reasoning asked whether the best preparation for
+the future r&eacute;gime of right and justice, and all that these
+imply, is to transgress existing rights and violate ordinary
+justice, and what difference there is between the demoralizing
+influence of this procedure and that of professional
+Bolshevists. There was but one adequate answer to this
+objection, and it consisted in the whole-hearted and rigid
+application of the Wilsonian tenets to all nations without
+exception. But even the author of these tenets did not
+venture to make it.</p>
+
+<p>The essence of the territorial question lay in the disposal
+of the eastern shore of the Adriatic.<a name="FNanchor_198_198" id="FNanchor_198_198" href="#Footnote_198_198" >[198]</a> The Jugoslavs
+claimed all Istria and Dalmatia, and based their claim
+partly on the principle of nationalities and partly on the
+vital necessity of having outlets on that sea, and in particular
+Fiume, the most important of them all, which they
+described as essentially Croatian and indispensable as a
+port. The Italian delegates, joining issue with the Jugoslavs,
+and claiming a section of the seaboard and Fiume,
+argued that the greatest part of the East Adriatic shore
+would still remain Croatian, together with all the ports
+of the Croatian coast and others in southern Dalmatia&mdash;in
+a word, twelve ports, including Spalato and Ragusa, and
+a thousand kilometers of seaboard. The Jugoslavs met
+this assertion with the objection that the outlets in question
+were inaccessible, all except Fiume and Metkovitch.
+As for Fiume,<a name="FNanchor_199_199" id="FNanchor_199_199" href="#Footnote_199_199" >[199]</a> the Italian delegates contended that
+although not promised to Italy by the Treaty of London,
+it was historically hers, because, having been for centuries
+an autonomous entity and having as such religiously preserved
+its Italian character, its inhabitants had exercised
+their rights to manifest by plebiscite their desire to be
+united with the mother country. They further denied
+that it was indispensable to the Jugoslavs because these
+would receive a dozen other ports and also because the
+traffic between Croatia and Fiume was represented by
+only 7 per cent. of the whole, and even that of Croatia,
+Slavonia, and Dalmatia combined by only 13 per cent.
+Further, Italy would undertake to give all requisite
+export facilities in Fiume to the Jugoslavs.</p>
+
+<p>The latter traversed many of these statements, and in
+particular that which described Fiume as a separate
+autonomous entity and as an essentially Italian city.
+Archives were ransacked by both parties, ancient documents
+produced, analyzed, condemned as forgeries or
+appealed to as authentic proofs, chance phrases were
+culled from various writers of bygone days and offered as
+evidence in support of each contention. Thus the contest
+grew heated. It was further inflamed by the attitude
+of Italy's allies, who appeared to her as either covertly
+unfriendly or at best lukewarm.</p>
+
+<p>M. Clemenceau, who maintained during the peace
+negotiations the epithet &quot;Tiger&quot; which he had earned
+long before, was alleged to have said in the course of one
+of those conversations which were misnamed private,
+&quot;For Italy to demand Fiume is to ask for the moon.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_200_200" id="FNanchor_200_200" href="#Footnote_200_200" >[200]</a>
+Officially he took the side of Mr. Wilson, as did also the
+British Premier, and Italy's two allies signified but a cold
+assent to those other claims which were covered by their
+own treaty. But they made no secret of their desire to
+see that instrument wholly set aside. Fiume they would
+not bestow on their ally, at least not unless she was
+prepared to offer an equivalent to the Jugoslavs and to
+satisfy the President of the United States.</p>
+
+<p>This advocacy of the claims of the Jugoslavs was bitterly
+resented by the Italians. For centuries the two
+peoples had been rivals or enemies, and during the war
+the Jugoslavs fought with fury against the Italians. For
+Italy the arch-enemy had ever been Austria and Austria
+was largely Slav. &quot;Austria,&quot; they say, &quot;was the official
+name given to the cruel enemy against whom we fought,
+but it was generally the Croatians and other Slavs whom
+our gallant soldiers found facing them, and it was they
+who were guilty of the misdeeds from which our armies
+suffered.&quot; Official documents prove this.<a name="FNanchor_201_201" id="FNanchor_201_201" href="#Footnote_201_201" >[201]</a> Orders of
+the day issued by the Austrian Command eulogize &quot;the
+Serbo-Croatian battalions who vied with the Austro-German
+and Hungarian soldiers in resisting the pitfalls
+dug by the enemy to cause them to swerve from their
+fidelity and take the road to treason.<a name="FNanchor_202_202" id="FNanchor_202_202" href="#Footnote_202_202" >[202]</a> In the last battle
+which ended the existence of the Austro-Hungarian
+monarchy a large contingent of excellent Croatian troops
+fought resolutely against the Italian armies.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In Italy an impressive story is told which shows how
+this transformation of the enemy of yesterday into the
+ally of to-day sometimes worked out. The son of an
+Italian citizen who was fighting as an aviator was killed
+toward the end of the war, in a duel fought in the air,
+by an Austrian combatant. Soon after the armistice
+was signed the sorrowing father repaired to the place
+where his son had fallen. He there found an ex-Austrian
+officer, the lucky victor and slayer of his son, wearing in
+his buttonhole the Jugoslav <i>cocarde</i>, who, advancing
+toward him with extended hand, uttered the greeting,
+&quot;You and I are now allies.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_203_203" id="FNanchor_203_203" href="#Footnote_203_203" >[203]</a> The historian may smile
+at the na&iuml;vet&eacute; of this anecdote, but the statesman will
+acknowledge that it characterized the relations between
+the inhabitants of the new state and the Italians. One
+can divine the feelings of these when they were exhorted
+to treat their ex-enemies as friends and allies.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is it surprising, then,&quot; the Italians asked, &quot;that we
+cannot suddenly conceive an ardent affection for the ruthless
+'Austrians' of whose cruelties we were bitterly complaining
+a few months back? Is it strange that we cannot
+find it in our hearts to cut off a slice of Italian territory
+and make it over to them as one of the fruits of&mdash;our
+victory over them? If Italy had not first adopted
+neutrality and then joined the Allies in the war there
+would be no Jugoslavia to-day. Are we now to pay
+for our altruism by sacrificing Italian soil and Italian
+souls to the secular enemies of our race?&quot; In a word, the
+armistice transformed Italy's enemy into a friend and
+ally for whose sake she was summoned to abandon some
+of the fruits of a hard-earned victory and a part of her
+secular aspirations. What, asked the Italian delegates,
+would France answer if she were told that the Prussians
+whom her matchless armies defeated must henceforth be
+looked upon as friends and endowed with some new colonies
+which would otherwise be hers? The Italian dramatist
+Sem Benelli put the matter tersely: &quot;The collapse
+of Austria transforms itself therefore into a play of words,
+so much so that our people, who are much more precise
+because they languished under the Austrian yoke and the
+Austrian scourge, never call the Austrians by this name;
+they call them always Croatians, knowing well that the
+Croatians and the Slavs who constituted Austria were our
+fiercest taskmasters and most cruel executioners. It is
+na&iuml;ve to think that the ineradicable characteristics and
+tendencies of peoples can be modified by a change of name
+and a new flag.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But there was another way of looking at the matter,
+and the Allies, together with the Jugoslavs, made the
+most of it. The Slav character of the disputed territory
+was emphasized, the principle of nationality invoked, and
+the danger of incorporating an unfriendly foreign element
+which could not be assimilated was solemnly pointed out.
+But where sentiment actuates, reason is generally impotent.
+The policy of the Italian government, like
+that of all other governments, was frankly nationalistic;
+whether it was also statesman-like may well be questioned&mdash;indeed
+the question has already been answered by some
+of Italy's principal press organs in the negative.<a name="FNanchor_204_204" id="FNanchor_204_204" href="#Footnote_204_204" >[204]</a> They
+accuse the Cabinet of having deliberately let loose popular
+passions which it afterward vainly sought to allay, and
+the facts which they allege in support of the charge have
+never been denied.</p>
+
+<p>It was certainly to Italy's best interests to strike up
+a friendly agreement with the new state, if that were
+feasible, and some of the men in whose hands her destinies
+rested, feeling their responsibility, made a laudable attempt
+to come to an understanding. Signor Orlando,
+whose sagacity is equal to his resourcefulness, was one.
+In London he had talked the subject over with the
+Croatian leader, M. Trumbic, and favored the movement
+toward reconciliation<a name="FNanchor_205_205" id="FNanchor_205_205" href="#Footnote_205_205" >[205]</a> which Baron Sonnino, his colleague,
+as resolutely discouraged. A congress was accordingly
+held in Rome<a name="FNanchor_206_206" id="FNanchor_206_206" href="#Footnote_206_206" >[206]</a> and an accord projected. The
+reciprocal relations became amicable. The Jugoslav
+committee in the Italian capital congratulated Signor
+Orlando on the victory of the Piave. But owing to
+various causes, especially to Baron Sonnino's opposition,
+these inchoate sentiments of neighborliness quickly lost
+their warmth and finally vanished. No trace of them
+remained at the Paris Conference, where the delegates
+of the two states did not converse together nor even
+salute one another.</p>
+
+<p>President Wilson's visit to Rome, where, to use an
+Italian expression, he was welcomed by Delirium, seemed
+to brighten Italy's outlook on the future. Much was
+afterward made by the President's enemies of the subsequent
+change toward him in the sentiments of the
+Italian people. This is commonly ascribed to his failure
+to fulfil the expectations which his words or attitude
+aroused or warranted. Nothing could well be more misleading.
+Mr. Wilson's position on the subject of Italy's
+claims never changed, nor did he say or do aught that
+would justify a doubt as to what it was. In Rome he
+spoke to the Ministers in exactly the same terms as in
+Paris at the Conference. He apprized them in January
+of what he proposed to do in April and he even contemplated
+issuing a declaration of his Italian policy at
+once. But he was earnestly requested by the Ministers
+to keep his counsel to himself and to make no public
+allusion to it during his sojourn in Italy.<a name="FNanchor_207_207" id="FNanchor_207_207" href="#Footnote_207_207" >[207]</a> It was not his
+fault, therefore, if the Italian people cherished illusory
+hopes. In Paris Signer Orlando had an important
+encounter with Mr. Wilson,<a name="FNanchor_208_208" id="FNanchor_208_208" href="#Footnote_208_208" >[208]</a> who told him plainly that
+the allotment of the northern frontiers traced for Italy
+by the London Treaty would be confirmed, while that of
+the territory on the eastern Adriatic would be quashed.
+The division of the spoils of Austria there must, he added,
+be made congruously with a map which he handed to the
+Italian Premier. It was proved on examination to be
+identical with one already published by the <i>New Europe</i>.<a name="FNanchor_209_209" id="FNanchor_209_209" href="#Footnote_209_209" >[209]</a>
+Signor Orlando glanced at the map and in courteous
+phraseology unfolded the reasons why he could not entertain
+the settlement proposed. He added that no Italian
+parliament would ratify it. Thereupon the President
+turned the discussion to politico-ethical lines, pointed out
+the harm which the annexation of an alien and unfriendly
+element could inflict upon Italy, the great advantages
+which cordial relations with her Slav neighbor would
+confer on her, and the ease with which she might gain the
+markets of the new state. A young and small nation
+like the Jugoslavs would be grateful for an act of generosity
+and would repay it by lasting friendship&mdash;a return
+worth far more than the contentious territories. &quot;Ah,
+you don't know the Jugoslavs, Mr. President,&quot; exclaimed
+Signor Orlando. &quot;If Italy were to cede to them Dalmatia,
+Fiume, and eastern Istria they would forthwith
+lay claim to Trieste and Pola and, after Trieste and Pola,
+to Friuli and Gorizia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After some further discussion Mr. Wilson said: &quot;Well,
+I am unable to reconcile with my principles the recognition
+of secret treaties, and as the two are incompatible I
+uphold the principles.&quot; &quot;I, too,&quot; rejoined the Italian
+Premier, &quot;condemn secret treaties in the future when the
+new principles will have begun to regulate international
+politics. As for those compacts which were concluded
+during the war they were all secret, not excluding those to
+which the United States was a party.&quot; The President
+demurred to this reservation. He conceived and put his
+case briefly as follows: Italy, like her allies, had had
+it in her power to accept the Fourteen Points, reject
+them, or make reserves. Britain and France had taken
+exception to those clauses which they were determined
+to reject, whereas Italy signified her adhesion to them all.
+Therefore she was bound by the principles underlying
+them and had forfeited the right to invoke a secret treaty.
+The settlement of the issues turning upon Dalmatia,
+Istria, Fiume, and the islands must consequently be
+taken in hand without reference to the clauses of that
+instrument. Examined on their merits and in the light
+of the new arrangements, Italy's claims could not be
+upheld. It would be unfair to the Jugoslavs who inhabit
+the whole country to cut them off from their own seaboard.
+Nor would such a measure be helpful to Italy
+herself, whose interest it was to form a homogeneous
+whole, consolidate her dominions, and prepare for the
+coming economic struggle for national well-being. The
+principle of nationality must, therefore, be allowed full
+play.</p>
+
+<p>As for Fiume, even if the city were, as alleged, an
+independent entity and desirous of being incorporated in
+Italy, one would still have to set against these facts Jugoslavia's
+imperative need of an outlet to the sea. Here
+the principle of economic necessity outweighs those of
+nationality and free determination. A country must live,
+and therefore be endowed with the wherewithal to support
+life. On these grounds, judgment should be entered
+for the Jugoslavs.</p>
+
+<p>The Italian Premier's answer was equally clear, but he
+could not unburden his mind of it all. His government
+had, it was true, adhered to the Fourteen Points without
+reservation. But the assumptions on which it gave this
+undertaking were that it would not be used to upset past
+compacts, but would be reserved for future settlements;
+that even had it been otherwise the maxims in question
+should be deemed relevant in Italy's case only if applied
+impartially to all states, and that the entire work of
+reorganization should rest on this ethical foundation. A
+r&eacute;gime of exceptions, with privileged and unprivileged
+nations, would obviously render the scheme futile and
+inacceptable. Yet this was the system that was actually
+being introduced. If secret treaties were to be abrogated,
+then let the convention between Japan and China be also
+put out of court and the dispute between them adjudicated
+upon its merits. If the Fourteen Points are binding,
+let the freedom of the seas be proclaimed. If equal rights
+are to be conferred upon all states, let the Monroe Doctrine
+be repealed. If disarmament is to become a reality,
+let Britain and America cease to build warships. Suppose
+for a moment that to-morrow Brazil or Chile were
+to complain of the conduct of the United States, the
+League of Nations, in whose name Mr. Wilson speaks,
+would be hindered by the Monroe Doctrine from intervening,
+whereas Britain and the United States in analogous
+conditions may intermeddle in the affairs of any of
+the lesser states. When Ireland or Egypt or India uplifts
+its voice against Britain, it is but a voice in the desert
+which awakens no echo. If Fiume were inhabited by
+American citizens who, with a like claim to be considered
+a separate entity, asked to be allowed to live under the
+Stars and Stripes, what would President Wilson's attitude
+be then? Would he turn a deaf ear to their prayer?
+Surely not. Why, in the case of Italy, does he not do
+as he would be done by? What it all comes to is that
+the new ordering under the flag of equality is to consist
+of superior and inferior nations, of which the former, who
+speak English, are to possess unlimited power over the
+latter, to decide what is good for them and what is bad,
+what is licit and what is forbidden. And against their
+fiat there is to be no appeal. In a word, it is to be the
+hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon race.</p>
+
+<p>It is worth noting that Signor Orlando's arguments
+were all derived from the merits of the case, not from
+the terms or the force of the London Treaty. Fiume,
+he said, had besought Italy to incorporate it, and had
+made this request before the armistice, at a moment
+when it was risky to proclaim attachments to the kingdom.<a name="FNanchor_210_210" id="FNanchor_210_210" href="#Footnote_210_210" >[210]</a>
+The inhabitants had invoked Mr. Wilson's own
+words: &quot;National aspirations must be respected.... Self-determination
+is not a mere phrase.&quot; &quot;Peoples and provinces
+are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to
+sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a
+game. Every territorial settlement involved in this war
+must be made in the interest and for the benefit of the
+populations concerned, and not as a part of any adjustment
+for compromise of claims among rival states.&quot; And
+in his address at Mount Vernon the President had advocated
+a doctrine which is peculiarly applicable to Fiume&mdash;<i>i.e.</i>:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The settlement of every question, whether of territory,
+of sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or of political
+relationship, upon the basis of the free acceptance of that
+settlement by the people immediately concerned, and not
+upon the basis of material interest or advantage of any
+other nation or people which may desire a different settlement,
+for the sake of its own exterior influence or mastery.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_211_211" id="FNanchor_211_211" href="#Footnote_211_211" >[211]</a>
+These maxims laid down by Mr. Wilson implicitly
+allot Fiume to Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Finally as to the objection that Italy's claims would
+entail the incorporation of a number of Slavs, the answer
+was that the percentage was negligible as compared with
+the number of foreign elements annexed by other states.
+The Poles, it was estimated, would have some 30 per
+cent. of aliens, the Czechs not less, Rumania 17 per
+cent., Jugoslavia 11 per cent., France 4 per cent., and
+Italy only 3 per cent.</p>
+
+<p>In February the Jugoslavs made a strategic move,
+which many admired as clever, and others blamed as
+unwise. They proposed that all differences between their
+country and Italy should be submitted to Mr. Wilson's
+arbitration. Considering that the President's mind was
+made up on the subject from the beginning, and that he
+had decided against Italy, it was natural that the delegation
+in whose favor his decision was known to incline
+should be eager to get it accepted by their rivals. As
+neither side was ignorant of what the result of the arbitration
+would be, only one of the two could be expected
+to close with the offer, and the most it could hope by doing
+this was to embarrass the other. The Italian answer was
+ingenious. Their dispute, they said, was not with Serbia,
+who alone was represented at the Conference; it concerned
+Croatia, who had no official standing there, and whose
+frontiers were not yet determined, but would in due time
+be traced by the Conference, of which Italy was a member.
+The decision would be arrived at after an exhaustive
+study, and its probable consequences to Europe's peace
+would be duly considered. As extreme circumspection
+was imperative before formulating a verdict, five plenipotentiaries
+would seem better qualified than any one of
+them, even though he were the wisest of the group. To
+remove the question from the competency of the Conference,
+which was expressly convoked to deal with such
+issues, and submit it to an individual, would be felt as
+a slight on the Supreme Council. And so the matter
+dropped.</p>
+
+<p>Signor Orlando knew that if he had adopted the suggestion
+and made Mr. Wilson arbiter, Italy's hopes would
+have been promptly extinguished in the name of the
+Fourteen Points, and her example held up for all the lesser
+states to imitate. The President was, however, convinced
+that the Italian people would have ratified the
+arrangement with alacrity. It is worth recording that he
+was so sure of his own hold on the Italian masses that,
+when urging Signor Orlando to relinquish his demand for
+Fiume and the Dalmatian coast, he volunteered to provide
+him with a message written by himself to serve as
+the Premier's justification. Signor Orlando was to read
+out this document in Parliament in order to make it clear
+to the nation that the renunciation had been demanded
+by America, that it would most efficaciously promote
+Italy's best interests, and should for that reason be ratified
+with alacrity. Signor Orlando, however, declined the certificate
+and things took their course.</p>
+
+<p>In Paris the Italian delegation made little headway.
+Every one admired, esteemed, and felt drawn toward the
+first delegate, who, left to himself, would probably have
+secured for his country advantageous conditions, even
+though he might be unable to add Fiume to those secured
+by the secret treaty. But he was not left to himself. He
+had to reckon with his Minister of Foreign Affairs, who
+was as mute as an oyster and almost as unsociable.
+Baron Sonnino had his own policy, which was immutable,
+almost unutterable. At the Conference he seemed unwilling
+to propound, much less to discuss it, even with
+those foreign colleagues on whose co-operation or approval
+its realization depended. He actually shunned delegates
+who would fain have talked over their common interests
+in a friendly, informal way, and whose business it was to
+strike up an agreement. In fact, results which could be
+secured only by persuading indifferent or hostile people
+and capturing their good-will he expected to attain by
+holding aloof from all and leading the life of a hermit, one
+might almost say of a misanthrope. One can imagine
+the feelings, if one may not reproduce the utterances, of
+English-speaking officials, whose legitimate desire for a
+free exchange of views with Italy's official spokesman was
+thwarted by the idiosyncrasies of her own Minister of
+Foreign Affairs. In Allied circles Baron Sonnino was distinctly
+unpopular, and his unpopularity produced a
+marked effect on the cause he had at heart. He was
+wholly destitute of friends. He had, it is true, only two
+enemies, but they were himself and the foreign element
+who had to work with him. Italy's cause was therefore
+inadequately served.</p>
+
+<p>Several months' trial showed the unwisdom of Baron
+Sonnino's attitude, which tended to defeat his own policy.
+Italy was paid back by her allies in her own coin, aloofness
+for aloofness. After she had declined the Jugoslavs'
+ingenious proposal to refer their dispute to Mr. Wilson
+the three delegates<a name="FNanchor_212_212" id="FNanchor_212_212" href="#Footnote_212_212" >[212]</a> agreed among themselves to postpone
+her special problems until peace was signed with Germany,
+but Signor Orlando, having got wind of the matter,
+moved every lever to have them put into the forefront
+of the agenda. He went so far as to say that he would
+not sign the Treaty unless his country's claims were first
+settled, because that document would make the League
+of Nations&mdash;and therefore Italy as a member of the
+League&mdash;the guarantor of other nations' territories,
+whereas she herself had no defined territories for others
+to guarantee. She would not undertake to defend the
+integrity of states which she had helped to create while
+her own frontiers were indefinite. But in the art of procrastination
+the Triumvirate was unsurpassed, and, as the
+time drew near for presenting the Treaty to Germany,
+neither the Adriatic, the colonial, the financial, nor the
+economic problems on which Italy's future depended were
+settled or even broached. In the meanwhile the plenipotentiaries
+in secret council, of whom four or five were
+wont to deliberate and two to take decisions, had disagreed
+on the subject of Fiume. Mr. Wilson was inexorable
+in his refusal to hand the city over to Italy, and
+the various compromises devised by ingenious weavers
+of conflicting interests failed to rally the Italian delegates,
+whose inspirer was the taciturn Baron Sonnino. The
+Italian press, by insisting on Fiume as a <i>sine qua non</i> of
+Italy's approval of the Peace Treaty and by announcing
+that it would undoubtedly be accorded, had made it
+practically impossible for the delegates to recede. The
+circumstance that the press was inspired by the government
+is immaterial to the issue. President Wilson, who
+had been frequently told that a word from him to the
+peoples of Europe would fire their enthusiasm and carry
+them whithersoever he wished, even against their own
+governments, now purposed wielding this unique power
+against Italy's plenipotentiaries. As we saw, he would
+have done this during his sojourn in Rome, but was dissuaded
+by Baron Sonnino. His intention now was to
+compel the delegates to go home and ascertain whether
+their inflexible attitude corresponded with that of their
+people and to draw the people into the camp of the
+&quot;idealists.&quot; He virtually admitted this during his conversation
+with Signor Orlando. What he seems to have
+overlooked, however, is that there are time limits to every
+policy, and that only the same causes can be set in motion
+to produce the same results. In Italy the President's
+name had a very different sound in April from the clarion-like
+tones it gave forth in January, and the secret of his
+popularity even then was the prevalent faith in his firm
+determination to bring about a peace of justice, irrespective
+of all separate interests, not merely a peace with
+indulgence for the strong and rigor for the weak. The
+time when Mr. Wilson might have summoned the peoples
+of Europe to follow him had gone by irrevocably. It is
+worth noting that the American statesman's views about
+certain of Italy's claims, although originally laid down
+with the usual emphasis as immutable, underwent considerable
+modifications which did not tend to reinforce
+his authority. Thus at the outset he had proclaimed the
+necessity of dividing Istria between the two claimant
+nations, but, on further reflection, he gave way in Italy's
+favor, thus enabling Signor Orlando to make the point
+that even the President's solutions needed corrections.
+It is also a fact that when the Italian Premier insisted
+on having the Adriatic problems definitely settled before
+the presentation of the Treaty to the Germans<a name="FNanchor_213_213" id="FNanchor_213_213" href="#Footnote_213_213" >[213]</a> his
+colleagues of France and Britain assured him that this
+reasonable request would be complied with. The circumstance
+that this promise was disregarded did not
+tend to smooth matters in the Council of Five.</p>
+
+<p>The decisive duel between Signor Orlando and Mr.
+Wilson was fought out in April, and the overt acts which
+subsequently marked their tense relations were but the
+practical consequences of that. On the historic day each
+one set forth his program with a <i>ne varietur</i> attached, and
+the President of the United States gave utterance to an
+estimate of Italian public opinion which astonished and
+pained the Italian Premier, who, having contributed to
+form it, deemed himself a more competent judge of its
+trend than his distinguished interlocutor. But Mr. Wilson
+not only refused to alter his judgment, but announced
+his intention to act upon it and issue an appeal to the
+Italian nation. The gist of this document was known to
+M. Clemenceau and Mr. Lloyd George. It has been
+alleged, and seems highly probable, that the British
+Premier was throughout most anxious to bring about a
+workable compromise. Proposals were therefore put forward
+respecting Fiume and Dalmatia, some of which were
+not inacceptable to the Italians, who lodged counter-proposals
+about the others. On the fate of these counter-proposals
+everything depended.</p>
+
+<p>On April 23d I was at the H&ocirc;tel Edouard VII, the headquarters
+of the Italian delegation, discussing the outlook
+and expecting to learn that some agreement had been
+reached. In an adjoining room the members of the
+delegation were sitting in conference on the burning subject,
+painfully aware that time pressed, that the Damocles's
+sword of Mr. Wilson's declaration hung by a thread over
+their heads, and that a spirit of large compromise was
+indispensable. At three o'clock Mr. Lloyd George's
+secretary brought the reply of the Council of Three to
+Italy's maximum of concessions. Only one point remained
+in dispute, I was told, but that point hinged upon
+Fiume, and, by a strange chance, it was not mentioned in
+the reply which the secretary had just handed in. The
+Italian delegation at once telephoned to the British
+Premier asking him to receive the Marquis Imperiali,
+who, calling shortly afterward, learned that Fiume was
+to be a free city and exempt from control. It was when
+the marquis had just returned that I took leave of my
+hosts and received the assurance that I should be informed
+of the result. About half an hour later, on
+receipt of an urgent message, I hastened back to the
+Italian headquarters, where consternation prevailed, and
+I learned that hardly had the delegates begun to discuss
+the contentious clause when a copy of the <i>Temps</i> was
+brought in, containing Mr. Wilson's appeal to the Italian
+people &quot;over the heads of the Italian government.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The publication fell like a powerful explosive. The
+public were at a loss to fit in Mr. Wilson's unprecedented
+action with that of his British and French colleagues.
+For if in the morning he sent his appeal to the newspapers,
+it was asked, why did he allow his Italian colleagues
+to go on examining a proposal on which he manifestly
+assumed that they were no longer competent to treat?
+Moreover a rational desire to settle Italy's Adriatic
+frontiers, it was observed, ought not to have lessened his
+concern about the larger issues which his unwonted
+procedure was bound to raise. And one of these was
+respect for authority, the loss of which was the taproot of
+Bolshevism. Signor Orlando replied to the appeal in a
+trenchant letter which was at bottom a reasoned protest
+against the assumed infallibility of any individual and,
+in particular, of one who had already committed several
+radical errors of judgment. What the Italian Premier
+failed to note was the consciousness of overwhelming
+power and the will to use it which imparted its specific
+mark to the whole proceeding. Had he realized this element,
+his subsequent tactics would perhaps have run
+on different lines.</p>
+
+<p>The suddenness with which the President carried out
+his purpose was afterward explained as the outcome of
+misinformation. In various Italian cities, it had been
+reported to him, posters were appearing on the walls announcing
+that Fiume had been annexed. Moreover, it
+was added, there were excellent grounds for believing that
+at Rome the Italian Cabinet was about to issue a decree
+incorporating it officially, whereby things would become
+more tangled than ever. Some French journals gave
+credit to these allegations, and it may well be that Mr.
+Wilson, believing them, too, and wanting to be beforehand,
+took immediate action. This, however, is at most an
+explanation; it hardly justifies the precipitancy with
+which the Italian plenipotentiaries were held up to the
+world as men who were misrepresenting their people.
+As a matter of fact careful inquiry showed that all those
+reports which are said to have alarmed the President were
+groundless. Mr. Wilson's sources of information respecting
+the countries on which he was sitting in judgment were
+often as little to be depended on as presumably were the
+decisions of the special commissions which he and Mr.
+Lloyd George so unceremoniously brushed aside.</p>
+
+<p>On the following morning Signori Orlando and Sonnino
+called on the British Premier in response to his urgent
+invitation. To their surprise they found Mr. Wilson and
+M. Clemenceau also awaiting them, ready, as it might
+seem, to begin the discussion anew, curious in any case
+to observe the effect of the declaration. But the Italian
+Premier burned his boats without delay or hesitation.
+&quot;You have challenged the authority of the Italian government,&quot;
+he said, &quot;and appealed to the Italian people. Be
+it so. It is now become my duty to seek out the representatives
+of my people in Parliament and to call upon
+them to decide between Mr. Wilson and me.&quot; The President
+returned the only answer possible, &quot;Undoubtedly
+that is your duty.&quot; &quot;I shall inform Parliament then that
+we have allies incapable of agreeing among themselves on
+matters that concern us vitally.&quot; Disquieted by the
+militant tone of the Minister, Mr. Lloyd George uttered a
+suasive appeal for moderation, and expressed the hope
+that in his speech to the Italian Chamber, Signor Orlando
+would not forget to say that a satisfactory solution may
+yet be found. He would surely be incapable of jeopardizing
+the chances of such a desirable consummation. &quot;I
+will make the people arbiters of the whole situation,&quot; the
+Premier announced, &quot;and in order to enable them to
+judge with full knowledge of the data, I herewith ask your
+permission to communicate my last memorandum to the
+Council of Four. It embodies the pith of the facts which
+it behooves the Parliament to have before it. In the meantime,
+the Italian government withdraws from the Peace
+Conference.&quot; On this the painful meeting terminated and
+the principal Italian plenipotentiaries returned to Rome.
+In France a section of the press sympathized with the
+Italians, while the government, and in particular M.
+Clemenceau, joined Mr. Wilson, who had promised to
+restore the sacredness of treaties<a name="FNanchor_214_214" id="FNanchor_214_214" href="#Footnote_214_214" >[214]</a> in exhorting Signor
+Orlando to give up the Treaty of London. The clash
+between Mr. Wilson and Signor Orlando and the departure
+of the Italian plenipotentiaries coincided with the
+arrival of the Germans in Versailles, so that the Allies
+were faced with the alternative of speeding up their desultory
+talks and improvising a definite solution or giving
+up all pretense at unanimity in the presence of the enemy.
+One important Paris journal found fault with Mr. Wilson
+and his &quot;Encyclical,&quot; and protested emphatically against
+his way of filling every gap in his arrangements by wedging
+into it his League of Nations. &quot;Can we harbor any
+illusion as to the net worth of the League of Nations when
+the revised text of the Covenant reveals it shrunken to
+the merest shadow, incapable of thought, will, action, or
+justice?... Too often have we made sacrifices to the Wilsonian
+doctrine.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_215_215" id="FNanchor_215_215" href="#Footnote_215_215" >[215]</a> ... Another press organ compared
+Fiume to the Saar Valley and sympathized with Italy,
+who, relying on the solidarity of her allies, expected to
+secure the city.<a name="FNanchor_216_216" id="FNanchor_216_216" href="#Footnote_216_216" >[216]</a></p>
+
+<p>While those wearisome word-battles&mdash;in which the personal
+element played an undue part&mdash;were being waged
+in the twilight of a secluded Valhalla, the Supreme Economic
+Council decided that the seized Austrian vessels
+must be pooled among all the Allies. When the untoward
+consequences of this decision were flashed upon the Italians
+and the Jugoslavs, the rupture between them was seen to
+be injurious to both and profitable to third parties. For
+if the Austrian vessels were distributed among all the
+Allied peoples, the share that would fall to those two
+would be of no account. Now for the first time the adversaries
+bestirred themselves. But it was not their diplomatists
+who took the initiative. Eager for their respective
+countries' share of the spoils of war, certain
+business men on both sides met,<a name="FNanchor_217_217" id="FNanchor_217_217" href="#Footnote_217_217" >[217]</a> deliberated, and worked
+out an equitable accord which gave four-fifths of the tonnage
+to Italy and the remainder to the Jugoslavs, who
+otherwise would not have obtained a single ship.<a name="FNanchor_218_218" id="FNanchor_218_218" href="#Footnote_218_218" >[218]</a> They
+next set about getting the resolution of the Economic
+Council repealed, and went on with their conversations.<a name="FNanchor_219_219" id="FNanchor_219_219" href="#Footnote_219_219" >[219]</a>
+The American delegation was friendly, promised to plead
+for the repeal, and added that &quot;if the accord could be
+extended to the Adriatic problem Mr. Wilson would be
+delighted and would take upon himself to ratify it <i>even
+without the sanction of the Conference</i>.<a name="FNanchor_220_220" id="FNanchor_220_220" href="#Footnote_220_220" >[220]</a> Encouraged by this
+promise, the delegates made the attempt, but as the
+Italian Premier had for some unavowed reason limited
+the intercourse of the negotiators to a single day, on the
+expiry of which he ordered the conversation to cease,<a name="FNanchor_221_221" id="FNanchor_221_221" href="#Footnote_221_221" >[221]</a>
+they failed. Two or three days later the delegates in
+question had quitted Paris.</p>
+
+<p>What this exchange of views seems to have demonstrated
+to open-minded Italians was that the Jugoslavs,
+whose reputation for obstinacy was a dogma among all
+their adversaries and some of their friends, have chinks
+in their panoply through which reason and suasion may
+penetrate.</p>
+
+<p>When the Italian withdrew from the Conference he
+had ample reason for believing that in his absence peace
+could not be signed, and many thought that, by departing,
+he was giving Mr. Wilson a Roland for his Oliver. But
+this supposed tactical effect formed no part of Orlando's
+deliberate plan. It was a coincidence to be utilized,
+nothing more. Mr. Wilson had left him no choice but
+to quit France and solicit the verdict of his countrymen.
+But Mr. Wilson's colleagues were aghast at the thought
+that the Pact of London, by which none of the Allies
+might conclude a separate peace, rendered it indispensable
+that Italy's recalcitrant plenipotentiaries should be co-signatories,
+or at any rate consenting parties. About
+this interpretation of the Pact there was not the slightest
+doubt. Hence every one feared that the signing of the
+Peace Treaty would be postponed indefinitely because
+of the absence of the Italian plenipotentiaries from the
+Conference. That certainly was the belief of the remaining
+delegates. There was no doubt anywhere that the
+presence or the express assent of the Italians was a <i>sine
+qua non</i> of the legality of the Treaty. It certainly was
+the conviction of the French press, and was borne out by
+the most eminent jurists throughout the world.<a name="FNanchor_222_222" id="FNanchor_222_222" href="#Footnote_222_222" >[222]</a> That
+the Italian delegates might refuse to sign, as Signor
+Orlando had threatened, until Italy's affairs were arranged
+satisfactorily was taken for granted, and the remaining
+members of the inner Council set to work to checkmate
+this potential maneuver and dispense with her co-operation.
+This aim was attained during the absence of the
+Italian delegation by the decree that the signature of any
+three of the Allied and Associated governments would be
+deemed adequate. The legality and even the morality
+of this provision were challenged by many.</p>
+
+<p>But it may be maintained that the imperative nature
+of the task which confronted the Conference demanded
+a chart of ideas and principles different from that by
+which Old World diplomacy had been guided and that respect
+for the letter of a compact should not be allowed to
+destroy its spirit. There is much to be said for this
+contention, which was, however, rejected by Italian
+jurists as destructive of the sacredness of treaties. They
+also urged that even if it were permissible to dash formal
+obstacles aside in order to clear the path for the furtherance
+of a good cause, it is also indispensable that the
+result should be compassed with the smallest feasible
+sacrifice of principle. Hopes were accordingly entertained
+by the Italian delegates that, on their return to
+Paris, at least a formal declaration might be made that
+Italy's signature was indispensable to the validity of the
+Treaty. But they were not, perhaps could not, be fulfilled
+at that conjuncture.</p>
+
+<p>Advantage was taken in other ways of the withdrawal
+of Italy's representatives from the Conference. For
+example, a clause of the Treaty with Germany dealing
+with reparations was altered to Italy's detriment. Another
+which turned upon Austro-German relations was
+likewise modified. Before the delegates left for Rome
+it had been settled that Germany should be bound over
+to respect Austria's independence. This obligation was
+either superfluous, every state being obliged to respect
+the independence of every other, or else it had a cryptic
+meaning which would only reveal itself in the application
+of the clause. As soon as the Conference was freed from
+the presence of the Italians the formula was modified,
+and Germany was plainly forbidden to unite with Austria,
+even though Austria should expressly desire amalgamation.
+As this enactment runs directly counter to the
+principle of self-determination, the Italian Minister Crespi
+raised his voice in energetic protest against this and the
+financial changes,<a name="FNanchor_223_223" id="FNanchor_223_223" href="#Footnote_223_223" >[223]</a> whereupon the Triumvirs, giving way
+on the latter point, consented to restore the primitive
+text of the financial condition.<a name="FNanchor_224_224" id="FNanchor_224_224" href="#Footnote_224_224" >[224]</a> Germany is obliged to
+supply France with seven million tons of coal every year
+by way of restitution for damage done during the war.
+At the price of fifty francs a ton, the money value of this
+tribute would be three hundred and fifty million francs,
+of which Italy would be entitled to receive 30 per cent.
+But during the absence of the Italian representatives a
+supplementary clause was inserted in the Treaty<a name="FNanchor_225_225" id="FNanchor_225_225" href="#Footnote_225_225" >[225]</a> conferring
+a special privilege on France which renders Italy's
+claim of little or no value. It provides that Germany
+shall deliver annually to France an amount of coal equal
+to the difference between the pre-war production of the
+mines of Pas de Calais and the Nord, destroyed by the
+enemy, and the production of the mines of the same
+area during each of the coming years, the maximum limit
+to be twenty million tons. As this contribution takes
+precedence of all others, and as Germany, owing to
+insufficiency of transports and other causes, will probably
+be unable to furnish it entirely, Italy's claim is considered
+practically valueless.</p>
+
+<p>The reception of the delegates in Rome was a triumph,
+their return to Paris a humiliation. For things had been
+moving fast in the meanwhile, and their trend, as we said,
+was away from Italy's goal. Public opinion in their own
+country likewise began to veer round, and people asked
+whether they had adopted the right tactics, whether, in
+fine, they were the right men to represent their country
+at that crisis of its history. There was no gainsaying
+the fact that Italy was completely isolated at the Conference.
+She had sacrificed much and had garnered in
+relatively little. The Jugoslavs had offered her an
+alliance&mdash;although this kind of partnership had originally
+been forbidden by the Wilsonian discipline; the offer
+was rejected and she was now certain of their lasting
+enmity. Venizelos had also made overtures to Baron
+Sonnino for an understanding, but they elicited no
+response, and Italy's relations with Greece lost whatever
+cordiality they might have had. Between France and
+Italy the threads of friendship which companionship in
+arms should have done much to strengthen were strained
+to the point of snapping. And worst, perhaps, of all, the
+Italian delegates had approved the clause forbidding
+Germany to unite with Austria.</p>
+
+<p>That the fault did not lie wholly in the attitude of
+the Allies is obvious. The Italian delegates' lack of
+method, one might say of unity, was unquestionably a
+contributory cause of their failure to make perceptible
+headway at the Conference. A curious and characteristic
+incident of the slipshod way in which the work
+was sometimes done occurred in connection with the
+disposal of the Palace Venezia, in Rome, which had
+belonged to Austria, but was expropriated by the Italian
+government soon after the opening of hostilities. The
+heirs of the Hapsburg Crown put forward a claim to
+proprietary rights which was traversed by the Italian
+government. As the dispute was to be laid before
+the Conference, the Roman Cabinet invited a <i>juris
+consult</i> versed in these matters to argue Italy's case.
+He duly appeared, unfolded his claim congruously with
+the views of his government, but suddenly stopped
+short on observing the looks of astonishment on the
+faces of the delegates. It appears that on the preceding
+day another delegate of the Economic Conference,
+also an Italian, had unfolded and defended the contrary
+thesis&mdash;namely, that Austria's heirs had inherited her
+right to the Palace of Venezia.<a name="FNanchor_226_226" id="FNanchor_226_226" href="#Footnote_226_226" >[226]</a></p>
+
+<p>Passing to more momentous matters, one may pertinently
+ask whether too much stress was not laid by the
+first Italian delegation upon the national and sentimental
+sides of Italy's interests, and too little on the others.
+Among the Great Powers Italy is most in need of raw
+materials. She is destitute of coal, iron, cotton, and
+naphtha. Most of them are to be had in Asia Minor.
+They are indispensable conditions of modern life and
+progress. To demand a fair share of them as guerdon
+for having saved Europe, and to put in her claim at a
+moment when Europe was being reconstituted, could not
+have been construed as imperialism. The other Allies
+had possessed most of those necessaries in abundance long
+before the war. They were adding to them now as the
+fruits of a victory which Italy's sacrifices had made
+possible. Why, then, should she be left unsatisfied?
+Bitterly though the nation was disappointed by failure
+to have its territorial claims allowed, it became still
+more deeply grieved when it came to realize that much
+more important advantages might have been secured if
+these had been placed in the forefront of the nation's
+demands. Emigration ground for Italy's surplus population,
+which is rapidly increasing, coal and iron for her
+industries might perhaps have been obtained if the
+Italian plan of campaign at the Conference had been
+rightly conceived and skilfully executed. But this realistic
+aspect of Italy's interests was almost wholly lost sight
+of during the waging of the heated and unfruitful contests
+for the possession of town and ports, which, although sacred
+symbols of Italianism, could not add anything to the
+economic resources which will play such a predominant
+part in the future struggle for material well-being among
+the new and old states. There was a marked propensity
+among Italy's leaders at home and in Paris to consider
+each of the issues that concerned their country as though
+it stood alone, instead of envisaging Italy's economic,
+financial, and military position after the war as an indivisible
+problem and proving that it behooved the Allies
+in the interests of a European peace to solve it satisfactorily,
+and to provide compensation in one direction for
+inevitable gaps in the other. This, to my thinking, was
+the fundamental error of the Italian and Allied statesmen
+for which Europe may have to suffer. That Italy's policy
+cannot in the near future return to the lines on
+which it ran ever since the establishment of her national
+unity, whatever her allies may do or say, will hardly be
+gainsaid. Interests are decisive factors of foreign policy,
+and the action of the Great Powers has determined
+Italy's orientation.</p>
+
+<p>Italy undoubtedly gained a great deal by the war, into
+which she entered mainly for the purpose of achieving her
+unity and securing strong frontiers. But she signed the
+Peace Treaty convinced that she had not succeeded in
+either purpose, and that her allies were answerable for
+her failure. It was certainly part of their policy to build
+up a strong state on her frontier out of a race which she
+regards as her adversary and to give it command of some
+of her strategic positions. And the overt bearing manner
+in which this policy was sometimes carried out left as
+much bitterness behind as the object it aimed at. It is
+alleged that the Italian delegates were treated with an
+economy of consideration which bordered on something
+much worse, while the arguments officially invoked to
+non-suit them appeared to them in the light of bitter
+sarcasms. President Wilson, they complained, ignored
+his far-resonant principle of self-determination when
+Japan presented her claim for Shantung, but refused to
+swerve from it when Italy relied on her treaty rights in
+Dalmatia. And when the inhabitants of Fiume voted for
+union with the mother country, the President abandoned
+that principle and gave judgment for Jugoslavia on other
+grounds. He was right, but disappointing, they observed,
+when he told his fellow-citizens that his presence
+in Europe was indispensable in order to interpret his conceptions,
+for no other rational being could have construed
+them thus.</p>
+
+<p>The withdrawal of the Italian delegates was construed
+as an act of insubordination, and punished as such. The
+Marquis de Viti de Varche has since disclosed the fact
+that the Allied governments forthwith reduced the credits
+accorded to Italy during hostilities, whereupon hardships
+and distress were aggravated and the peasantry over a
+large area of the country suffered intensely.<a name="FNanchor_227_227" id="FNanchor_227_227" href="#Footnote_227_227" >[227]</a> For Italy
+is more dependent on her allies than ever, owing to the
+sacrifices which she offered up during the war, and she
+was made to feel her dependence painfully. The military
+assistance which they had received from her was fraught
+with financial and economic consequences which have not
+yet been realized by the unfortunate people who must
+endure them. Italy at the close of hostilities was burdened
+with a foreign debt of twenty milliards of lire, an
+internal debt of fifty millards, and a paper circulation four
+times more than what it was in pre-war days.<a name="FNanchor_228_228" id="FNanchor_228_228" href="#Footnote_228_228" >[228]</a> Raw
+materials were exhausted, traffic and production were
+stagnant, navigation had almost ceased, and the expenditure
+of the state had risen to eleven milliards a
+year.<a name="FNanchor_229_229" id="FNanchor_229_229" href="#Footnote_229_229" >[229]</a></p>
+
+<p>According to the figures published by the Statistical
+Society of Berne, the general rise in prices attributed to
+the war hit Italy much harder than any of her allies.<a name="FNanchor_230_230" id="FNanchor_230_230" href="#Footnote_230_230" >[230]</a>
+The consequences of this and other perturbations were
+sinister and immediate. The nation, bereft of what it
+had been taught to regard as its right, humiliated in the
+persons of its chiefs, subjected to foreign guidance, insufficiently
+clad, underfed, and with no tangible grounds
+for expecting speedy improvement, was seething with
+discontent. Frequent strikes merely aggravated the general
+suffering, which finally led to riots, risings, and the
+shedding of blood. The economic, political, and moral
+crisis was unprecedented. The men who drew Italy into
+the war were held up to public opprobrium because in
+the imagination of the people the victory had cost them
+more and brought them in less than neutrality would
+have done. One of the principal orators of the Opposition,
+in a trenchant discourse in the Italian Parliament,
+said, &quot;The Salandra-Sonnino Cabinet led Italy into the
+war blindfolded.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_231_231" id="FNanchor_231_231" href="#Footnote_231_231" >[231]</a></p>
+
+<p>After the return of the Italian delegation to Paris various
+fresh combinations were devised for the purpose of
+grappling with the Adriatic problem. One commended
+itself to the Italians as a possible basis for discussion. In
+principle it was accepted. A declaration to this effect
+was made by Signor Orlando and taken cognizance of by
+M. Clemenceau, who undertook to lay the matter before
+Mr. Wilson, the sole arbitrator in Italian affairs. He
+played the part of Fate throughout. Days went by after
+this without bringing any token that the Triumvirate
+was interested in the Adriatic. At last the Italian Premier
+reminded his French colleague that the latest proposal
+had been accepted in principle, and the Italian plenipotentiaries
+were awaiting Mr. Wilson's pleasure in the
+matter. Accordingly, M. Clemenceau undertook to broach
+the matter to the American statesman without delay.
+The reply, which was promptly given, dismayed the Italians.
+It was in the form of one of those interpretations
+which, becoming associated with Mr. Wilson's name,
+shook public confidence in certain of the statesman-like
+qualities with which he had at first been credited. The
+construction which he now put upon the mode of voting
+to be applied to Fiume, including this city&mdash;in a large district
+inhabited by a majority of Jugoslavs&mdash;imparted to
+the project as the Italians had understood it a wholly new
+aspect. They accordingly declared it inacceptable. As
+after that there seemed to be nothing more for the Italian
+Premier to do in Paris, he left, was soon afterward defeated
+in the Chamber, and resigned together with his
+Cabinet. The vote of the Italian Parliament, which appeared
+to the continental press in the light of a protest
+of the nation against the aims and the methods of the
+Conference, closed for the time being the chapter of Italy's
+endeavor to complete her unity, secure strong frontiers,
+and perpetuate her political partnership with France and
+her intimate relations with the Entente. Thenceforward
+the English-speaking states might influence her overt acts,
+compel submission to their behests, and generally exercise
+a sort of guardianship over her, because they are the dispensers
+of economic boons, but the union of hearts, the
+mutual trust, the cement supplied by common aims are
+lacking.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most telling arguments employed by President
+Wilson to dissuade various states from claiming
+strategic positions, and in particular Italy from insisting
+on the annexation of Fiume and the Dalmatian coast,
+was the effective protection which the League of Nations
+would confer on them.<a name="FNanchor_232_232" id="FNanchor_232_232" href="#Footnote_232_232" >[232]</a> Strategical considerations would,
+it was urged, lose all their value in the new era, and territorial
+guaranties become meaningless and cumbersome
+survivals of a dead epoch. That was the principal
+weapon with which he had striven to parry the thrusts
+of M. Clemenceau and the touchstone by which he tested
+the sincerity of all professions of faith in his cherished
+project of compacting the nations of the world in a vast
+league of peace-loving, law-abiding communities. But
+the faith of France's leaders differed little from unbelief.
+Guaranties first and the protection of the League afterward
+was the French formula, around which many fierce
+battles royal were fought. In the end Mr. Wilson, having
+obtained the withdrawal of the demand for the Rhine
+frontier, gave in, and the Covenant was reinforced by a
+compact which in the last analysis is a military undertaking,
+a unilateral Triple Alliance, Great Britain and the
+United States undertaking to hasten to France's assistance
+should her territory be wantonly invaded by Germany.
+The case thus provided for is extremely improbable.
+The expansion of Germany, when the auspicious
+hour strikes, will presumably be inaugurated on wholly
+new lines, against which armies, even if they can be mobilized
+in time, will be of little avail. But if force were
+resorted to, it is almost certain to be used in the direction
+where the resistance is least&mdash;against France's ally, Poland.
+This, however, is by the way. The point made
+by the Italians was that the League of Nations being thus
+admittedly powerless to discharge the functions which
+alone could render strategic frontiers unnecessary, can
+consequently no longer be relied upon as an adequate
+protection against the dangers which the possession of
+the strongholds she claimed on the Adriatic would effectively
+displace. Either the League, it was argued, can,
+as asserted, protect the countries which give up commanding
+positions to potential enemies, or it cannot. In the
+former hypothesis France's insistence on a military convention
+is mischievous and immoral&mdash;in the latter Italy
+stands in as much need of the precautions devised as her
+neighbor. But her spokesmen were still plied with the
+threadbare arguments and bereft of the countervailing
+corrective. And faith in the efficacy of the League was
+sapped by the very men who were professedly seeking to
+spread it.</p>
+
+<p>The press of Rome, Turin, and Milan pointed to the
+loyalty of the Italian people, brought out, they said, in
+sharp relief by the discontent which the exclusive character
+of that triple military accord engendered among
+them. As kinsmen of the French it was natural for
+Italians to expect that they would be invited to become
+a party to this league within the League. As loyal allies
+of Britain and France they felt desirous of being admitted
+to the alliance. But they were excluded. Nor was their
+exasperation allayed by the assurance of their press that
+this was no alliance, but a state of tutelage. An alliance,
+it was explained, is a compact by which two or more
+parties agree to render one another certain services under
+given conditions, whereas the convention in question is a
+one-sided undertaking on the part of Britain and the
+United States to protect France if wantonly attacked,
+because she is unable efficaciously to protect herself.
+It is a benefaction. But this casuistry fell upon deaf
+ears. What the people felt was the disesteem&mdash;the term
+in vogue was stronger&mdash;in which they were held by the
+Allies, whom they had saved perhaps from ruin.</p>
+
+<p>By slow degrees the sentiments of the Italian nation
+underwent a disquieting change. All parties and classes
+united in stigmatizing the behavior of the Allies in terms
+which even the literary eminence of the poet d'Annunzio
+could not induce the censors to let pass. &quot;The Peace
+Treaty,&quot; wrote Italy's most influential journal, &quot;and
+its correlate forbode for the near future the Continental
+hegemony of France countersigned by the Anglo-American
+alliance.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_233_233" id="FNanchor_233_233" href="#Footnote_233_233" >[233]</a> Another widely circulated and respected
+organ described the policy of the Entente as a solvent of
+the social fabric, constructive in words, corrosive in acts,
+&quot;mischievous if ever there was a mischievous policy.
+For while raising hopes and whetting appetites, it does
+nothing to satisfy them; on the contrary, it does much to
+disappoint them. In words&mdash;a struggle for liberty, for
+nations, for the equality of peoples and classes, for the
+well-being of all; in acts&mdash;the suppression of the most
+elementary and constitutional liberty, the overlordship
+of certain nations based on the humiliation of others, the
+division of peoples into exploiters and exploited&mdash;the
+sharpening of social differences&mdash;the destruction of collective
+wealth, and its accumulation in a few blood-stained
+hands, universal misery, and hunger.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_234_234" id="FNanchor_234_234" href="#Footnote_234_234" >[234]</a></p>
+
+<p>Although it is well understood that Italy's defeat at the
+Conference was largely the handiwork of President Wilson,
+the resentment of the Italian nation chose for its
+immediate objects the representatives of France and
+Britain. The American &quot;associates&quot; were strangers, here
+to-day and gone to-morrow, but the Allies remain, and
+if their attitude toward Italy, it was argued, had been
+different, if their loyalty had been real, she would have
+fared proportionately as well as they, whatever the
+American statesmen might have said or done.</p>
+
+<p>The Italian press breathed fiery wrath against its
+French ally, who so often at the Conference had met
+Italy's solicitations with the odious word &quot;impossible.&quot;
+Even moderate organs of public opinion gave free vent
+to estimates of France's policy and anticipations of its
+consequences which disturbed the equanimity of European
+statesmen. &quot;It is impossible,&quot; one of these journals
+wrote, &quot;for France to become the absolute despot of
+Europe without Italy, much less against Italy. What
+transcended the powers of Richelieu, who was a lion and
+fox combined, and was beyond the reach of Bonaparte,
+who was both an eagle and a serpent, cannot be achieved
+by &quot;Tiger&quot; Clemenceau in circumstances so much less
+favorable than those of yore. We, it is true, are isolated,
+but then France is not precisely embarrassed by the choice
+of friends.&quot; The peace was described as &quot;Franco-Slav
+domination with its headquarters in Prague, and a
+branch office in Agram.&quot; M. Clemenceau was openly
+charged with striving after the hegemony of the Continent
+for his country by separating Germany from Austria and
+surrounding her with a ring of Slav states&mdash;Poland,
+Jugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and perhaps the non-Slav
+kingdom of Rumania. All these states would be in the
+leading-strings of the French Republic, and Austria would
+be linked to it in a different guise. And in order to
+effect this resuscitation of the Hapsburg state under the
+name of &quot;Danubian federation,&quot; Mr. Wilson, it was
+asserted, had authorized a deliberate violation of his own
+principle of self-determination, and refused to Austria the
+right of adopting the r&eacute;gime which she preferred. It
+was, in truth, an odd compromise, these critics continued,
+for an idealist of the President's caliber, on whose
+every political action the scrutinizing gaze of the world
+was fixed. One could not account for it as a sacrifice
+made for a high ethical aim&mdash;one of those ends which,
+according to the old maxim, hallows the means. It
+seemed an open response to a secret instigation or impulse
+which was unconnected with any recognized or avowable
+principle. Even the Socialist organs swelled the chorus
+of the accusers. <i>Avanti</i> wrote, &quot;We are Socialists, yet
+we have never believed that the American President with
+his Fourteen Points entered into the war for the highest
+aims of humanity and for the rights of peoples, any more
+than we believe at present that his opposition to the
+aspirations of the Italian state on the Adriatic are inspired
+by motives of idealism.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_235_235" id="FNanchor_235_235" href="#Footnote_235_235" >[235]</a></p>
+
+<p>The fate of the disputed territories on the Adriatic was
+to be the outcome of self-determination. Poland's claims
+were to be left to the self-determination of the Silesian
+and Ruthenian populations. Rumania was told that her
+suit must remain in abeyance until it could be tested by
+the same principle, which would be applied in the form
+of a plebiscite. For self-determination was the cornerstone
+of the League of Nations, the holiest boon for which
+the progressive peoples of the world had been pouring
+out their life-blood and substance for nearly five years.
+But when Italy invoked self-determination, she was
+promptly non-suited. When Austria appealed to it she
+was put out of court. And to crown all, the world was
+assured that the Fourteen Points had been triumphantly
+upheld. This depravation of principles by the triumph
+of the little prudences of the hour spurred some of the
+more impulsive critics to ascribe it to influences less
+respectable than those to which it may fairly be attributed.</p>
+
+<p>The directing Powers were hypersensitive to the oft-repeated
+charge of meddling in the internal affairs
+of other nations. They were never tired of protesting
+their abhorrence of anything that smacked of interference.
+Among the numerous facts, however, which they could
+neither deny nor reconcile with their professions, the following
+was brought forward by the Italians, who had a
+special interest to draw public attention to it. It had to
+do with the abortive attempt to restore the Hapsburg
+monarchy in Hungary as the first step toward the formation
+of a Danubian federation. &quot;It is certain,&quot; wrote
+the principal Italian journal, &quot;that the Archduke Joseph's
+<i>coup d'&eacute;tat</i> did not take place, indeed (given the conditions
+in Budapest) could not take place, without the Entente's
+connivance. The official <i>communiqu&eacute;s</i> of Budapest and
+Vienna, dated August 9th, recount on this point precise
+details which no one has hitherto troubled to deny. The
+Peidl government was scarcely three days in power, and,
+therefore, was not in a position to deserve either trust or
+distrust, when the heads of the 'order-loving organizations'
+put forward, to justify the need of a new crisis, the
+complaints of the heads of the Entente Missions as to the
+anarchy prevailing in Hungary and the urgency of finding
+'some one' who could save the country from the abyss.
+Then a commission repaired to Alscuth, where it easily
+persuaded the Archduke to come to Budapest. Here he
+at once visited all the heads of missions and spent the
+whole day in negotiations. '<i>As a result of negotiations
+with Entente representatives, the Archduke Joseph undertook
+a solution of the crisis</i>.' He then called together the old
+state police and a volunteer army of eight thousand men.
+The Rumanian garrison was kept ready. The Peidl government
+naturally did not resist at all. At 10 P.M. on
+August 7th all the Entente Missions held a meeting, <i>to
+which the Archduke Joseph and the new Premier were invited</i>.
+General Gorton presided. <i>The Conference lasted
+two hours and reached an agreement on all questions. All
+the heads of Missions assured the new government of their
+warmest support</i>.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_236_236" id="FNanchor_236_236" href="#Footnote_236_236" >[236]</a></p>
+
+<p>Another case of unwarranted interference which stirred
+the Italians to bitter resentment turned upon the obligation
+imposed on Austria to renounce her right to unite
+with Germany. &quot;It is difficult to discern in the policy of
+the Entente toward Austria anything more respectable
+than obstinacy coupled with stupidity,&quot; wrote the same
+journal. &quot;But there is something still worse. It is impossible
+not to feel indignant with a coalition which, after
+having triumphed in the name of the loftiest ideas ...
+treats German-Austria no better than the Holy Alliance
+treated the petty states of Italy. But the Congress of
+Vienna acted in harmony with the principle of legitimism
+which it avowed and professed, whereas the Paris Conference
+violates without scruple the canons by which it
+claims to be guided.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not a whit more decorous is the intervention of the
+Supreme Council in the internal affairs of Germany&mdash;a
+state which, according to the spirit and the letter of the
+Versailles Treaty, is sovereign and not a protectorate.
+The Conference was qualified to dictate peace terms to
+Germany, but it wanders beyond the bounds of its competency
+when it construes those terms and arrogates to
+itself&mdash;on the strength of forced and equivocal interpretations&mdash;the
+right of imposing upon a nation which is neither
+militarily nor juridically an enemy a constitutional reform.
+Whether Germany violates the Treaty by her Constitution
+is a question which only a judicial finding of the League of
+Nations can fairly determine.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_237_237" id="FNanchor_237_237" href="#Footnote_237_237" >[237]</a></p>
+
+<p>It would be impolitic to overlook and insincere to belittle
+the effects of this incoherency upon the relations
+between France and Italy. Public opinion in the Peninsula
+characterized the attitude of Prance as deliberately
+hostile. The Italians at the Conference eagerly scrutinized
+every act and word of their French colleagues, with
+a view to discovering grounds for dispelling this view.
+But the search is reported to have been worse than vain.
+It revealed data which, although susceptible of satisfactory
+explanations, would, if disclosed at that moment, have
+aggravated the feeling of bitterness against France, which
+was fast gathering. Signor Orlando had recourse to the
+censor to prevent indiscretions, but the intuition of the
+masses triumphed over repression, and the existing tenseness
+merged into resentment. The way in which Italians
+accounted for M. Clemenceau's attitude was this. Although
+Italy has ceased to be the important political
+factor she once was when the Triple Alliance was in being,
+she is still a strong continental Power, capable of placing
+a more numerous army in the field than her republican
+sister, and her population continues to increase at a high
+rate. In a few years she will have outstripped her rival.
+France, too, has perhaps lost those elements of her power
+and prestige which she derived from her alliance with
+Russia. Again, the Slav ex-ally, Russia, may become the
+enemy of to-morrow. In view of these contingencies
+France must create a substitute for the Rumanian and
+Italian allies. And as these have been found in the new
+Slav states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Jugoslavia, she
+can afford to dispense with making painful sacrifices to
+keep Italy in countenance.</p>
+
+<p>A trivial incident which affords a glimpse of the spirit
+prevailing between the two kindred peoples occurred
+at St.-Germain-en-Laye, where the Austrian delegates
+were staying. They had been made much of in Vienna
+by the Envoy of the French Republic there, M. Alliz&eacute;,
+whose mission it was to hinder Austria from uniting
+with the Reich. Italy's policy was, on the contrary, to
+apply Mr. Wilson's principle of self-determination and
+allow the Austrians to do as they pleased in that respect.
+A fervent advocate of the French orthodox doctrine&mdash;a
+publicist&mdash;repaired to the Austrian headquarters at St.-Germain
+for the purpose, it is supposed, of discussing
+the subject. Now intercourse of any kind between private
+individuals and the enemy delegates was strictly
+forbidden, and when M. X. presented himself, the Italian
+officer on duty refused him admission. He insisted.
+The officer was inexorable. Then he produced a written
+permit signed by the Secretary of the Conference, M.
+Dutasta. How and why this exception was made in his
+favor when the rule was supposed to admit of no exceptions
+was not disclosed. But the Italian officer, equal
+to the occasion, took the ground that a military prohibition
+cannot be canceled by a civilian, and excluded the
+would-be visitor.</p>
+
+<p>The general trend of France's European policy was
+repugnant to Italy. She looked on it as a well-laid
+scheme to assume a predominant r&ocirc;le on the Continent.
+That, she believed, was the ultimate purpose of the veto
+on the union of Austria and Germany, of the military
+arrangements with Britain and the United States, and of
+much else that was obnoxious to Italy. Austria was to
+be reconstituted according to the federative plans of the
+late Archduke Franz Ferdinand, to be made stronger
+than before as a counterpoise to Italy, and to be at the
+beck and call of France. Thus the friend, ally, sister of
+yesterday became the potential enemy of to-morrow.
+That was the refrain of most of the Italian journals, and
+none intoned it more fervently than those which had been
+foremost in bringing their country into the war. One
+of these, a Conservative organ of Lombardy, wrote:
+&quot;Until yesterday, we might have considered that two
+paths lay open before us, that of an alliance with France
+and that of an independent policy. But we can think
+so no longer. To offer our friendship to-day to the people
+who have already chosen their own road and established
+their solidarity with our enemies of yesterday and
+to-morrow would not be to strike out a policy, but to
+decide on an unseemly surrender. It would be tantamount
+to reproducing in an aggravated form the situation
+we occupied in the alliance with Germany. Once again
+we should be engaged in a partnership of which one of the
+partners was in reality our enemy. France taking the
+place of Germany, and Jugoslavia that of Austria, the
+situation of the old Triple Alliance would be not merely
+reproduced, but made worse in the reproduction, because
+the <i>Triplice</i> at least guaranteed us against a conflict which
+we had grounds for apprehending, whereas the new alliance
+would tie our hands for the sake of a little Balkan state
+which, single-handed, we are well able to keep in its place.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We have had enough of a policy which has hitherto
+saddled us with all the burdens of the alliance without
+bestowing on us any advantage&mdash;which has constrained
+us to favor all the peoples whose expansion dovetailed
+with French schemes and to combat or neglect those
+others whose consolidation corresponded to our interests&mdash;which
+has led us to support a great Poland and a great
+Bohemia and to combat the Ukraine, Hungary, Bulgaria,
+Rumania, Spain, to whose destinies the French, but not
+we, were indifferent.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_238_238" id="FNanchor_238_238" href="#Footnote_238_238" >[238]</a> A press organ of Bologna denounced
+the atrocious and ignominious sacrifice &quot;which
+her allies imposed on Italy by means of economic blackmailing
+and violence with a whip in one hand and a
+chunk of bread in the other.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_239_239" id="FNanchor_239_239" href="#Footnote_239_239" >[239]</a></p>
+
+<p>Sharp comments were provoked by the heavy tax on
+strangers in Tunisia imposed by the French government,<a name="FNanchor_240_240" id="FNanchor_240_240" href="#Footnote_240_240" >[240]</a>
+on strangers, mostly Italians, who theretofore had enjoyed
+the same rights as the French and Tunisians. &quot;Suddenly,&quot;
+writes the principal Italian journal, &quot;and just
+when it was hoped that the common sacrifices they had
+made had strengthened the ties between the two nations,
+the governor of Tunisia issued certain orders which
+endangered the interests of foreigners and the effects of
+which will be felt mainly by Italians, of whom there are
+one hundred and twenty thousand in Tunisia.<a name="FNanchor_241_241" id="FNanchor_241_241" href="#Footnote_241_241" >[241]</a> First
+there came an order forbidding the use of any language
+but French in the schools. Now the tax referred to in
+the House of Lords gives the Tunisian government power
+to levy an impost on the buying and selling of property
+in Tunisia. The new tax, which is to be levied over and
+above pre-existing taxes, ranged from 59 per cent. of the
+value when it is not assessed at a higher sum than one
+hundred thousand lire to 80 per cent. when its estimated
+value is more than five hundred thousand lire.&quot; The
+article terminates with the remark that boycotting is
+hardly a suitable epilogue to a war waged for common
+ideals and interests.</p>
+
+<p>These manifestations irritated the French and were
+taken to indicate Italy's defection. It was to no purpose
+that a few level-headed men pointed out that the French
+government was largely answerable for the state of mind
+complained of. &quot;Pertinax,&quot; in the <i>Echo de Paris</i>, wrote
+&quot;that the alliance, in order to subsist and flourish, should
+have retained its character as an Anti-German League,
+whereas it fell into the error of masking itself as a Society
+of Nations and arrogated to itself the right of bringing
+before its tribunal all the quarrels of the planet.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_242_242" id="FNanchor_242_242" href="#Footnote_242_242" >[242]</a> Italy's
+allies undoubtedly did much to forfeit her sympathies
+and turn her from the alliance. It was pointed out that
+when the French troops arrived in Italy the Bulletin of
+the Italian command eulogized their efforts almost daily,
+but when the Italian troops went to France, the <i>communiqu&eacute;s</i>
+of the French command were most chary of
+allusions to their exploits, yet the Italian army contributed
+more dead to the French front than did the
+French army to the Italian front.<a name="FNanchor_243_243" id="FNanchor_243_243" href="#Footnote_243_243" >[243]</a> At the Peace Conference,
+as we saw, when the terms with Germany were
+being drafted, Italy's problems were set aside on the
+grounds that there was no nexus between them. The
+Allies' interests, which were dealt with as a whole during
+the war, were divided after the armistice into essential
+and secondary interests, and those of Italy were relegated
+to the latter class. Subsequently France, Britain, and
+the United States, without the co-operation or foreknowledge
+of their Italian friends, struck up an alliance
+from which they excluded Italy, thereby vitiating the
+only arguments that could be invoked in favor of such a
+coalition. When peace was about to be signed they one-sidedly
+revoked the treaty which they had concluded in
+London, rendering the consent of all Allies necessary to
+the validity of the document, and decreed that Italy's
+abstention would make no difference. When the instrument
+was finally signed, Mr. Wilson returned to the
+United States, Mr. Lloyd George to England, and the
+Marquis of Saionji to Japan, without having settled any
+of Italy's problems. Italy, her needs, her claims, and her
+policy thus appear as matters of little account to the
+Great Powers. Naturally, the Italian people were disappointed,
+and desirous of seeking new friends, the old
+ones having forsaken them.</p>
+
+<p>It would be difficult to exaggerate the consequences
+which this attitude of the Allies toward Italy may have
+on European politics generally. Her most eminent
+statesman, Signor Tittoni, who succeeded Baron Sonnino,
+transcending his country's mortifications, exerted himself
+tactfully and not unsuccessfully to lubricate the
+mechanism of the alliance, to ease the dangerous friction
+and to restore the tone. And he seems to have accomplished
+in these respects everything which a sagacious
+statesman could do. But to arrest the operation of
+psychological laws is beyond the power of any individual.
+In order to appreciate the Italian point of view, it is nowise
+necessary to approve the exaggerated claims put
+forward by her press in the spring of 1919. It is enough
+to admit that in the light of the Wilsonian doctrine they
+were not more incompatible with that doctrine than the
+claims made by other Powers and accorded by the
+Supreme Council.</p>
+
+<p>To sum up, Italy acquired the impression that association
+with her recent allies means for her not only sacrifices
+in their hour of need, but also further sacrifices in their
+hour of triumph. She became reluctantly convinced
+that they regard interests which she deems vital to herself
+as unconnected with their own. And that was unfortunate.
+If at some fateful conjuncture in the future her
+allies on their part should gather the impression that
+she has adjusted her policy to those interests which are so
+far removed from theirs, they will have themselves to
+blame.</p>
+
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_194_194" id="Footnote_194_194" href="#FNanchor_194_194"> [194]</a> This clause, which figured in the draft Treaty, as presented to the
+Germans, provoked such emphatic protests from all sides that it was struck
+out in the revised version.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_195_195" id="Footnote_195_195" href="#FNanchor_195_195"> [195]</a> In an interview given to the Correspondenz Bureau of Vienna by Conrad
+von Hoetzendorff. Cf. <i>Le Temps</i>, July 19, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_196_196" id="Footnote_196_196" href="#FNanchor_196_196"> [196]</a> The Prime Minister, Salandra, declared that to have made neutrality
+a matter of bargaining would have been to dishonor Italy.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_197_197" id="Footnote_197_197" href="#FNanchor_197_197"> [197]</a> King Carol was holding a crown council at the time. Bratiano had
+spoken against the King's proposal to throw in the country's lot with Germany.
+Carp was strongly for carrying out Rumania's treaty obligations.
+Some others hesitated, but before it could be put to the vote a telegram
+was brought in announcing Italy's resolve to maintain neutrality. The
+upshot was Rumania's refusal to follow her allies.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_198_198" id="Footnote_198_198" href="#FNanchor_198_198"> [198]</a> On the eastern Adriatic, the Treaty of London allotted to Italy the
+peninsula of Istria, without Fiume, most of Dalmatia, exclusive of Spalato,
+the chief Dalmatian islands and the Dodecannesus.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_199_199" id="Footnote_199_199" href="#FNanchor_199_199"> [199]</a> The present population of Fiume is computed at 45,227 souls, of whom
+33,000 are Italians, 10,927 Slavs, and 1,300 Magyars.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_200_200" id="Footnote_200_200" href="#FNanchor_200_200"> [200]</a> Another delegate is reported to have answered: &quot;As we need Italy's
+friendship, we should pay the moderate price asked and back her claim to
+have the moon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_201_201" id="Footnote_201_201" href="#FNanchor_201_201"> [201]</a> A number of orders of the day eulogizing individual Slav officers and
+collective military entities were quoted by the advocates of Italy's cause
+at the Conference.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_202_202" id="Footnote_202_202" href="#FNanchor_202_202"> [202]</a> Official <i>communiqu&eacute;</i> of June 17, 1918.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_203_203" id="Footnote_203_203" href="#FNanchor_203_203"> [203]</a> <i>Journal de Gen&egrave;ve</i>, April 25, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_204_204" id="Footnote_204_204" href="#FNanchor_204_204"> [204]</a> Cf. <i>Il Corriere della Sera</i> and <i>Il Secolo</i> of May 26, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_205_205" id="Footnote_205_205" href="#FNanchor_205_205"> [205]</a> In the Senate he defended this attitude on March 4,1919, and expressed
+a desire to dispel the misunderstanding between the two peoples.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_206_206" id="Footnote_206_206" href="#FNanchor_206_206"> [206]</a> In April, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_207_207" id="Footnote_207_207" href="#FNanchor_207_207"> [207]</a> This fact has since been made public by Enrico Ferri in a remarkable
+discourse pronounced in the parliament at Rome (July 9, 1919). It was
+Baron Sonnino who deprecated the publication of any statement on the
+subject by President Wilson. Cf. <i>La Stampa</i>, July 10, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_208_208" id="Footnote_208_208" href="#FNanchor_208_208"> [208]</a> On January 10, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_209_209" id="Footnote_209_209" href="#FNanchor_209_209"> [209]</a> It gave eastern Friuli to Italy, including Gorizia, split Istria into two
+parts, and assigned Trieste and Pola also to Italy, but under such territorial
+conditions that they would be exposed to enemy projectiles in case
+of war.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_210_210" id="Footnote_210_210" href="#FNanchor_210_210"> [210]</a> The National Council of Fiume issued its proclamation before it had
+become known that the battle of Vittorio Veneto was begun&mdash;<i>i.e.</i>, October
+30, 1918.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_211_211" id="Footnote_211_211" href="#FNanchor_211_211"> [211]</a> Speech delivered at Mount Vernon on July 4, 1918.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_212_212" id="Footnote_212_212" href="#FNanchor_212_212"> [212]</a> Of the United States, France, and Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_213_213" id="Footnote_213_213" href="#FNanchor_213_213"> [213]</a> Between April 5th and 12th.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_214_214" id="Footnote_214_214" href="#FNanchor_214_214"> [214]</a> In his address to the representatives of organized labor in January, 1918.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_215_215" id="Footnote_215_215" href="#FNanchor_215_215"> [215]</a> <i>L'Echo de Paris</i>, April 29, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_216_216" id="Footnote_216_216" href="#FNanchor_216_216"> [216]</a> <i>Le Gaulois</i>, April 29, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_217_217" id="Footnote_217_217" href="#FNanchor_217_217"> [217]</a> These meetings were held from March 28 till April 23, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_218_218" id="Footnote_218_218" href="#FNanchor_218_218"> [218]</a> See Marco Borsa's article in <i>Il Secolo</i>, June 18, 1919; also <i>Corriere
+della Sera</i>, June 19, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_219_219" id="Footnote_219_219" href="#FNanchor_219_219"> [219]</a> From May 5 to 16, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_220_220" id="Footnote_220_220" href="#FNanchor_220_220"> [220]</a> <i>Il Secolo</i>, June 19, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_221_221" id="Footnote_221_221" href="#FNanchor_221_221"> [221]</a> On April 23, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_222_222" id="Footnote_222_222" href="#FNanchor_222_222"> [222]</a> &quot;Can and will our allies treat our absence as a matter of no moment?
+Can and will they violate the formal undertaking which forbids the belligerents
+to conclude a diplomatic peace?... The London Declaration prohibits
+categorically the conclusion of any separate peace with any enemy
+state. France and England cannot sign peace with Germany if Italy does
+not sign it.... The situation is grave and abnormal, for our allies it is
+also grave and abnormal. Italy is isolated, and nations, especially those
+of continental Europe, which are not overrich, flee solitude as nature
+abhors a vacuum.&quot;&mdash;<i>Corriere della Sera</i>, April 26, 1919. Again: &quot;'The
+Treaty of London' restrains France and England from concluding peace
+without Italy. And Italy is minded not to conclude peace with Germany
+before she herself has received satisfaction.&quot;&mdash;<i>Journal de Gen&egrave;ve</i>, April 25,
+1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_223_223" id="Footnote_223_223" href="#FNanchor_223_223"> [223]</a> On May 6, 1919, at Versailles.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_224_224" id="Footnote_224_224" href="#FNanchor_224_224"> [224]</a> Cf. <i>Corriere della Sera</i>, May 10, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_225_225" id="Footnote_225_225" href="#FNanchor_225_225"> [225]</a> Annex W of the Revised Treaty.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_226_226" id="Footnote_226_226" href="#FNanchor_226_226"> [226]</a> This incident was revealed by Enrico Ferri, in his remarkable speech
+in the Italian Parliament on July 9, 1919. Cf. <i>La Stampa</i>, July 10, 1919,
+page 2.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_227_227" id="Footnote_227_227" href="#FNanchor_227_227"> [227]</a> Cf. <i>The Morning Post</i>, July 9, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_228_228" id="Footnote_228_228" href="#FNanchor_228_228"> [228]</a> On July 10th the Italian Finance Minister, in his financial statement, announced
+that the total cost of the war to Italy would amount to one hundred
+milliard lire. He added, however, that her share of the German indemnity
+would wipe out her foreign debt, while a progressive tax on all
+but small fortunes would meet her internal obligations. Cf. <i>Corriere della
+Sera</i>, July 11 and 12, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_229_229" id="Footnote_229_229" href="#FNanchor_229_229"> [229]</a> Cf. <i>Avanti</i>, July 19, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_230_230" id="Footnote_230_230" href="#FNanchor_230_230"> [230]</a> Shown in percentages, the rise in the cost of living was: United States,
+220 per cent.; England, 240 per cent.; Switzerland, 257 per cent.; France,
+368 per cent.; Italy, 481 per cent.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_231_231" id="Footnote_231_231" href="#FNanchor_231_231"> [231]</a> Enrico Ferri, on July 9, 1919. Cf. <i>La Stampa</i>, July 10, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_232_232" id="Footnote_232_232" href="#FNanchor_232_232"> [232]</a> At a later date the President reiterated the grounds of his decision. In
+his Columbus speech (September 4, 1919) he asserted that &quot;Italy desired
+Fiume for strategic military reasons, which the League of Nations would
+make unnecessary.&quot; (<i>The New York Herald</i> (Paris edition), September 6,
+1919.) But the League did not render strategic precautions unnecessary
+to France.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_233_233" id="Footnote_233_233" href="#FNanchor_233_233"> [233]</a> <i>Corriere della Sera</i>, May 11, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_234_234" id="Footnote_234_234" href="#FNanchor_234_234"> [234]</a> <i>La Stampa</i>, July 16, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_235_235" id="Footnote_235_235" href="#FNanchor_235_235"> [235]</a> <i>Avanti</i>, April 27, 1919. Cf. <i>Le Temps</i>, April 28, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_236_236" id="Footnote_236_236" href="#FNanchor_236_236"> [236]</a> <i>Corriere della Sera</i>, August 9, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_237_237" id="Footnote_237_237" href="#FNanchor_237_237"> [237]</a> <i>Corriere della Sera</i>, September 3, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_238_238" id="Footnote_238_238" href="#FNanchor_238_238"> [238]</a> Quoted in <i>La Stampa</i> of July 20, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_239_239" id="Footnote_239_239" href="#FNanchor_239_239"> [239]</a> <i>Ibidem</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_240_240" id="Footnote_240_240" href="#FNanchor_240_240"> [240]</a> <i>Corriere d' Italia</i>, June 29, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_241_241" id="Footnote_241_241" href="#FNanchor_241_241"> [241]</a> Cf. <i>Modern Italy</i>, July 12, 1919 (page 298).</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_242_242" id="Footnote_242_242" href="#FNanchor_242_242"> [242]</a> <i>Echo de Paris</i>, July 7, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_243_243" id="Footnote_243_243" href="#FNanchor_243_243"> [243]</a> Cf. &quot;An Italian Expos&eacute;,&quot; published by <i>The Morning Post</i>, July 5, 1919.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX" />IX</h3>
+
+<h3>JAPAN</h3>
+
+
+<p>Among the solutions of the burning questions which
+exercised the ingenuity and tested the good faith of
+the leading Powers at the Peace Conference, none was
+more rapidly reached there, or more bitterly assailed outside,
+than those in which Japan was specially interested.
+The storm that began to rage as soon as the Supreme
+Council's decision on the Shantung issue became known
+did not soon subside. Far from that, it threatened for
+a time to swell into a veritable hurricane. This problem,
+like most of those which were submitted to the forum of
+the Conference, may be envisaged from either of two
+opposite angles of survey; from that of the future society
+of justice-loving nations, whose members are to forswear
+territorial aggrandizement, special economic privileges,
+and political sway in, or at the expense of, other countries;
+or from the traditional point of view, which has always
+prevailed in international politics and which cannot be
+better described than by Signor Salandra's well-known
+phrase &quot;sacred egotism.&quot; Viewed in the former light,
+Japan's demand for Shantung was undoubtedly as much
+a stride backward as were those of the United States and
+France for the Monroe Doctrine and the Saar Valley respectively.
+But as the three Great Powers had set the
+example, Japan was resolved from the outset to rebel
+against any decree relegating her to the second-or third-class
+nations. The position of equality occupied by her
+government among the governments of other Great
+Powers did not extend to the Japanese nation among the
+other nations. But her statesmen refused to admit this
+artificial inferiority as a reason for descending another
+step in the international hierarchy and they invoked the
+principle of which Britain, France, and America had
+already taken advantage.</p>
+
+<p>The Supreme Council, like Janus of old, possessed two
+faces, one altruistic and the other egotistic, and, also like
+that son of Apollo, held a key in its right hand and a rod
+in its left. It applied to the various states, according to
+its own interest or convenience, the principles of the old
+or the new Covenant, and would fain have dispossessed
+Japan of the fruits of the campaign, and allotted to her
+the r&ocirc;le of working without reward in the vineyard of
+the millennium, were it not that this policy was excluded
+by reasons of present expediency and previous commitments.
+The expediency was represented by President
+Wilson's determination to obtain, before returning to
+Washington, some kind of a compact that might be described
+as the constitution of the future society of nations,
+and by his belief that this instrument could not be obtained
+without Japan's adherence, which was dependent
+on her demand for Shantung being allowed. And the previous
+commitments were the secret compacts concluded
+by Japan with Britain, France, Russia, and Italy before
+the United States entered the war.</p>
+
+<p>Nippon's r&ocirc;le in the war and the circumstances that
+shaped it are scarcely realized by the general public. They
+have been purposely thrust in the background. And yet
+a knowledge of them is essential to those who wish to
+understand the significance of the dispute about Shantung,
+which at bottom was the problem of Japan's international
+status. Before attempting to analyze them,
+however, it may not be amiss to remark that during the
+French press campaign conducted in the years 1915-16,
+with the object of determining the Tokio Cabinet to take
+part in the military operations in Europe, the question
+of motive was discussed with a degree of tactlessness which
+it is difficult to account for. It was affirmed, for example,
+that the Mikado's people would be overjoyed if the
+Allied governments vouchsafed them the honor of participating
+in the great civilizing crusade against the Central
+Empires. That was proclaimed to be such an enviable
+privilege that to pay for it no sacrifice of men or
+money would be exorbitant. Again, the degree to which
+Germany is a menace to Japan was another of the texts
+on which Entente publicists relied to scare Nippon into
+drastic action, as though she needed to be told by Europeans
+where her vital interests lay, from what quarters
+they were jeopardized, and how they might be safeguarded
+most successfully. So much for the question of
+tact and form. Japan has never accepted the doctrine
+of altruism in politics which her Western allies have so
+zealously preached. Until means have been devised and
+adopted for substituting moral for military force in the
+relations of state with state, the only reconstruction of
+the world in which the Japanese can believe is that which
+is based upon treaties and the pledged word. That is
+the principle which underlies the general policy and the
+present strivings of our Far Eastern ally.</p>
+
+<p>One of the characteristic traits of all Nippon's dealings
+with her neighbors is loyalty and trustworthiness. Her
+intercourse with Russia before and after the Manchurian
+campaign offers a shining example of all the qualities
+which one would postulate in a true-hearted neighbor
+and a stanch and chivalrous ally. I had an opportunity
+of watching the development of the relations between the
+two governments for many years before they quarreled,
+and subsequently down to 1914, and I can state that the
+praise lavished by the Tsar's Ministers on their Japanese
+colleagues was well deserved. And for that reason it
+may be taken as an axiom that whatever developments
+the present situation may bring forth, the Empire of Nippon
+will carry out all its engagements with scrupulous
+exactitude, in the spirit as well as the letter.</p>
+
+<p>To be quite frank, then, the Japanese are what we should
+term realists. Consequently their foreign policy is inspired
+by the maxims which actuated all nations down
+to the year 1914, and still move nearly all of them to-day.
+In fact, the only Powers that have fully and authoritatively
+repudiated them as yet are Bolshevist Russia, and
+to a large extent the United States. Holding thus to the
+old dispensation, Japan entered the war in response to a
+definite demand made by the British government. The
+day before Britain declared war against Germany the
+British Ambassador at Tokio officially inquired whether
+his government could count upon the active co-operation
+of the Mikado's forces in the campaign about to begin.
+On August 4th Baron Kato, having in the meanwhile
+consulted his colleagues, answered in the affirmative.
+Three days later another communication reached Tokio
+from London, requesting the <i>immediate</i> co-operation of
+Japan, and on the following day it was promised. The
+motive for this haste was credibly asserted to be Britain's
+apprehension lest Germany should transfer Kiaochow to
+China, and reserve to herself, in virtue of Article V of
+the Convention of 1898, the right of securing after the
+war &quot;a more suitable territory&quot; in the Middle Empire
+or Republic. Thereupon they began operations which
+were at first restricted to the China seas, but were
+afterward extended to the Pacific and Indian Oceans,
+and finally to the Mediterranean. The only task that
+fell to their lot on land was that of capturing Kiaochow.
+But whatever they set their hands to they carried out
+thoroughly, and to the complete satisfaction of their
+European allies.</p>
+
+<p>For many years the people of Nippon have been wending
+slowly, but with tireless perseverance and unerring
+instinct, toward their far-off goal, which to the unbiased
+historian will seem not merely legitimate but praiseworthy.
+Their intercourse with Russia was the story of
+one long laborious endeavor to found a common concern
+which should enable Japan to make headway on her mission.
+Russia was just the kind of partner whose co-operation
+was especially welcome, seeing that it could
+be had without the hitches and set-backs attached to
+that of most other Great Powers. The Russians were
+never really intolerant in racial matters, nor dangerous
+in commercial rivalry. They intermarried freely with all
+the so-called inferior races and tribes in the Tsardom, and
+put all on an equal footing before the law. Twenty-three
+years ago I paid a visit to my friend General Tomitch,
+the military governor of Kars, and I found myself sitting
+at his table beside the Prefect of the city, who was a
+Mohammedan. The individual Russian is generally free
+from racial prejudices; he has no sense of the &quot;yellow
+peril,&quot; and no objection to receive the Japanese as a comrade,
+a colleague, or a son-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>And the advances made by Ito and others would have
+been reciprocated by Witte and Lamsdorff were it not
+that the Tsar, interested in Bezobrazoff's Yalu venture,
+subordinated his policy to those vested interests, and compelled
+Japan to fight. The master-idea of the policy of
+Ito, with whom I had two interesting conversations on
+the subject, was to strike up a close friendship with the
+Tsardom, based on community of durable interests, and
+to bespeak Russia's help for the hour of storm and stress
+which one day might strike. The Tsar's government was
+inspired by analogous motives. Before the war was terminated
+I repaired to London on behalf of Russia, in
+order to propose to the Japanese government, in addition
+to the treaty of peace which was about to be discussed at
+Portsmouth, an offensive and defensive alliance, and to
+ask that Prince Ito be sent as first plenipotentiary, invested
+with full powers to conclude such a treaty.</p>
+
+<p>M. Izvolsky's policy toward Japan, frank and statesman-like,
+had an offensive and a defensive alliance for
+its intended culmination, and the treaties and conventions
+which he actually concluded with Viscount Motono,
+in drafting which I played a modest part, amounted
+almost to this. The Tsar's opposition to the concessions
+which represented Russia's share of the compromise
+was a tremendous obstacle, which only the threat of the
+Minister's resignation finally overcame. And Izvolsky's
+energy and insistence hastened the conclusion of a treaty
+between them to maintain and respect the <i>status quo</i> in
+Manchuria, and, in case it was menaced, to concert
+with each other the measures they might deem necessary
+for the maintenance of the <i>status quo</i>. And it was no
+longer stipulated, as it had been before, that these measures
+must have a pacific character. They were prepared
+to go farther. And I may now reveal the fact
+that the treaty had a secret clause, providing for the
+action which Russia afterward took in Mongolia.</p>
+
+<p>These transactions one might term the first act of the
+international drama which is still proceeding. They
+indicate, if they did not shape, the mold in which the
+bronze of Japan's political program was cast. It necessarily
+differed from other politics, although the maxims
+underlying it were the same. Japan, having become a
+Great Power after her war with China, was slowly developing
+into a world Power, and hoped to establish her claim
+to that position one day. It was against that day that
+she would fain have acquired a puissant and trustworthy
+ally, and she left nothing undone to deserve the whole-hearted
+support of Russia. In the historic year of 1914,
+many months before the storm-cloud broke, the War
+Minister Sukhomlinoff transferred nearly all the garrisons
+from Siberia to Europe, because he had had assurances
+from Japan which warranted him in thus denuding the
+eastern border of troops. During the campaign, when
+the Russian offensive broke down and the armies of the
+enemy were driving the Tsar's troops like sheep before
+them, Japan hastened to the assistance of her neighbor,
+to whom she threw open her military arsenals, and many
+private establishments as well. And when the Petrograd
+Cabinet was no longer able to meet the financial liabilities
+incurred, the Mikado's advisers devised a generous
+arrangement on lines which brought both countries into
+still closer and more friendly relations.</p>
+
+<p>The most influential daily press organ in the Tsardom,
+the <i>Novoye Vremya</i>, wrote: &quot;The war with Germany
+has supplied our Asiatic neighbor with an opportunity
+of proving the sincerity of her friendly assurances. She
+behaves not merely like a good friend, but like a stanch
+military ally.... In the interests of the future tranquil
+development of Japan a more active participation of the
+Japanese is requisite in the war of the nations against
+the world-beast of prey. An alliance with Russia for
+the attainment of this object would be an act of immense
+historic significance.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_244_244" id="FNanchor_244_244" href="#Footnote_244_244" >[244]</a></p>
+
+<p>Ever since her entry into the community of progressive
+nations, Japan's main aspiration and striving has been to
+play a leading and a civilizing part in the Far East, and
+in especial to determine China by advice and organization
+to move into line with herself, adopt Western methods
+and apply them to Far-Eastern aims. And this might
+well seem a legitimate as well as a profitable policy,
+and a task as noble as most or those to which the world
+is wont to pay a tribute of high praise. It appeared all
+the more licit that the Powers of Europe, with the exception
+of Russia, had denied full political rights to the
+colored alien. He was placed in a category apart&mdash;an
+inferior class member of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In Japan, and as yet in Japan alone, do we find the
+Asiatic welcoming European culture, in which, if a tree
+may fairly be judged by its fruit, is to be found the best
+prospect for the human personal liberty, in due combination
+with restraints of law sufficient to, but not in excess
+of, the requirements of the general welfare. In this particular
+distinctiveness of characteristic, which has thus differentiated
+the receptivity of the Japanese from that of
+the continental Asiatic, we may perhaps see the influence
+of the insular environment that has permitted and favored
+the evolution of a strong national personality; and in the
+same condition we may not err in finding a promise of
+power to preserve and to propagate, by example and by
+influence, among those akin to her, the new policy which
+she has adopted, and by which she has profited, affording
+to them the example which she herself has found in the
+development of Eastern peoples.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_245_245" id="FNanchor_245_245" href="#Footnote_245_245" >[245]</a></p>
+
+<p>Now that is exactly what the Japanese aimed at accomplishing.
+They were desirous of contributing to the intellectual
+and moral advance of the Chinese and other backward
+peoples of the Far East, in the same way as France
+is laudably desirous of aiding the Syrians, or Great Britain
+the Persians. And what is more, Japan undertook to
+uphold the principle of the open door, and generally to
+respect the legitimate interests of European peoples in
+the Far East.</p>
+
+<p>But the white races had economic designs of their own
+on China, and one of the preliminary conditions of their
+execution was that Japan's aspirations should be foiled.
+Witte opened the campaign by inaugurating the process
+of peaceful penetration, but his remarkable efforts were
+neutralized and defeated by his own sovereign. The
+Japanese, after the Manchurian campaign, which they
+had done everything possible to avoid, contrived wholly
+to eliminate Russian aggression from the Far East. The
+feat was arduous and the masterly way in which it was
+tackled and achieved sheds a luster on Japanese statesmanship
+as personified by Viscount Motono. The Tsardom,
+in lieu of a potential enemy, was transformed into a
+stanch and powerful friend and ally, on whom Nippon
+could, as she believed, rely against future aggressors.
+Russia came to stand toward her in the same political
+relationship as toward France. Japanese statesmen took
+the alliance with the Tsardom as a solid and durable
+postulate of their foreign policy.</p>
+
+<p>All at once the Tsardom fell to pieces like a house of
+cards, and the fragments that emerged from the ruins
+possessed neither the will nor the power to stand by their
+Far Eastern neighbors. The fruits of twelve years'
+statesmanship and heavy sacrifices were swept away
+by the Russian revolution, and Japan's diplomatic position
+was therefore worse beyond compare than that
+of the French Republic in July, 1917, because the latter
+was forthwith sustained by Great Britain and the United
+States, with such abundance of military and economic
+resources as made up in the long run for that of Russia.
+Japan, on the other hand, has as yet no substitute for
+her prostrate ally. She is still alone among Powers some
+of whom decline to recognize her equality, while others
+are ready to thwart her policy and disable her for the
+coming race.</p>
+
+<p>The Japanese are firm believers in the law of causality.
+Where they desire to reap, there they first sow. They
+invariably strive to deal with a situation while there is
+still time to modify it, and they take pains to render the
+means adequate to the end. Unlike the peoples of
+western Europe and the United States, the Japanese
+show a profound respect for the principles of authority
+and inequality, and reserve the higher functions in the
+community for men of the greatest ability and attainments.
+It is a fact, however, that individual liberty
+has made perceptible progress in the population, and is
+still growing, owing to the increase of economic well-being
+and the spread of general and technical education.
+But although socialism is likewise spreading fast, I feel
+inclined to think that in Japan a high grade of instruction
+and of social development on latter-day lines will be
+found compatible with that extraordinary cohesiveness
+to which the race owes the position which it occupies
+among the communities of the world. The soul of the
+individual Japanese may be said to float in an atmosphere
+of collectivity, which, while leaving his intellect intact,
+sways his sentiments and modifies his character by rendering
+him impressible to motives of an order which has
+the weal of the race for its object.</p>
+
+<p>Japan has borrowed what seemed to her leaders to
+be the best of everything in foreign countries. They
+analyzed the military, political, and industrial successes
+of their friends and enemies, satisfactorily explained and
+duly fructified them. They use the school as the seed-plot
+of the state, and inculcate conceptions there which the
+entire community endeavors later on to embody in acts
+and institutions. And what the elementary school has
+begun, the intermediate, the technical, and the high
+schools develop and perfect, aided by the press, which is
+encouraged by the state.</p>
+
+<p>Japan's ideal cannot be offhandedly condemned as
+immoral, pernicious, or illegitimate. Its partizans pertinently
+invoke every principle which their Allies applied
+to their own aims and strivings. And men of deeper
+insight than those who preside over the fortunes of the
+Entente to-day recognize that Europeans of high principles
+and discerning minds, who perceive the central
+issues, would, were they in the position of the Japanese
+statesmen, likewise bend their energies to the achievement
+of the same aims.</p>
+
+<p>The Japanese argue their case somewhat as follows:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We are determined to help China to put herself in
+line with ourselves, and to keep her from falling into
+anarchy. And no one can honestly deny our qualifications.
+We and they have very much in common, and
+we understand them as no Anglo-Saxon or other foreign
+people can. On the one hand our own past experience
+resembles that of the Middle Kingdom, and on the
+other our method of adapting ourselves to the new international
+conditions challenged and received the ungrudging
+admiration of a world disposed to be critical. The
+Peking treaties of May, 1915, between China and Japan,
+and the pristine drafts of them which were modified
+before signature, enable the outsider to form a fairly
+accurate opinion of Japan's economic and political program,
+which amounts to the application of a Far Eastern
+Monroe Doctrine.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What we seek to obtain in the Far East is what the
+Western Powers have secured throughout the remainder
+of the globe: the right to contribute to the moral and
+intellectual progress of our backward neighbors, and to
+profit by our exertions. China needs the help which we
+are admittedly able to bestow. To our mission no
+cogent objection has ever been offered. No Cabinet in
+Tokio has ever looked upon the Middle Realm as a
+possible colony for the Japanese. The notion is preposterous,
+seeing that China is already over-populated.
+What Japan sorely needs are sources whence to draw
+coal and iron for industrial enterprise. She also needs
+cotton and leather.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In truth, the ever-ready command of these raw materials
+at their sources, which must be neither remote nor
+subject to potential enemies, is indispensable to the
+success of Japan's development. But for the moment the
+English-speaking nations have a veto upon them, in virtue
+of possession, and the embargo put by the United States
+government upon the export of steel during the war
+caused a profound emotion in Nippon. For the shipbuilding
+works there had increased in number from nine
+before the war to twelve in 1917, and to twenty-eight at
+the beginning of 1918, with one hundred slips capable
+of producing six hundred thousand tons of net register.
+The effect of that embargo was to shut down between
+70 and 80 per cent. of the shipbuilding works of the
+country, and to menace with extinction an industry which
+was bringing in immense profits.</p>
+
+<p>It was with these antecedents and aims that Japan
+appeared before the Conference in Paris and asked, not
+for something which she lacked before, but merely for
+the confirmation of what she already possessed by treaty.
+It must be admitted that she had damaged her cause by
+the manner in which that treaty had been obtained. To
+say that she had intimidated the Chinese, instead of
+coaxing them or bargaining with them, would be a
+truism. The fall of Tsingtao gave her a favorable opportunity,
+and she used and misused it unjustifiably. The
+demands in themselves were open to discussion and, if
+one weighs all the circumstances, would not deserve a
+classification different from some of those&mdash;the protection
+of minorities or the transit proviso, for example&mdash;imposed
+by the greater on the lesser nations at the Conference.
+But the mode in which they were pressed irritated the
+susceptible Chinese and belied the professions made
+by the Mikado's Ministers. The secrecy, too, with which
+the Tokio Cabinet endeavored to surround them warranted
+the worst construction. Yuan Shi Kai<a name="FNanchor_246_246" id="FNanchor_246_246" href="#Footnote_246_246" >[246]</a> regarded
+the procedure as a deadly insult to himself and his country.
+And the circumstance that the Japanese government
+failed either to foresee or to avoid this amazing psychological
+blunder lent color to the objections of those who
+questioned Japan's qualifications for the mission she had
+set herself. The wound inflicted on China by that exhibition
+of insolence will not soon heal. How it reacted
+may be inferred from the strenuous and well-calculated
+opposition of the Chinese delegation at the Conference.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was that all. In the summer of 1916 a free fight
+occurred between Chinese and Japanese soldiers in Cheng-cha-tun,
+the rights and wrongs of which were, as is
+usual in such cases, obscure. But the Okuma Cabinet,
+assuming that the Chinese were to blame, pounced upon
+the incident and made it the base of fresh demands to
+China,<a name="FNanchor_247_247" id="FNanchor_247_247" href="#Footnote_247_247" >[247]</a> two of which were manifestly excessive. That
+China would be better off than she is or is otherwise
+likely to become under Japanese guidance is in the highest
+degree probable. But in order that that guidance should
+be effective it must be accepted, and this can only be the
+consequence of such a policy of cordiality, patience, and
+magnanimity as was outlined by my friend, the late
+Viscount Motono.<a name="FNanchor_248_248" id="FNanchor_248_248" href="#Footnote_248_248" >[248]</a></p>
+
+<p>At the Conference the policy of the Japanese delegates
+was clear-cut and coherent. It may be summarized as
+follows: the Japanese delegation decided to give its
+entire support to the Allies in all matters concerning the
+future relations of Germany and Russia, western Europe,
+the Balkans, the African colonies, as well as financial
+indemnities and reparations. The fate of the Samoan
+Archipelago must be determined in accord with Britain
+and the United States. New Guinea should be allotted to
+Australia. As the Marshall, Caroline, and Ladrone
+Islands, although of no intrinsic value, would constitute a
+danger in Germany's hands, they should be taken over by
+Japan. Tsingtao and the port of Kiaochow should belong
+to Japan, as well as the Tainan railway. Japan would
+co-operate with the Allies in maintaining order in Siberia,
+but no Power should arrogate to itself a preponderant
+voice in the matter of obtaining concessions or other
+interests there. Lastly, the principle of the open door was
+to be upheld in China, Japan being admittedly the Power
+which is the most interested in the establishment and
+maintenance of peace in the Far East.</p>
+
+<p>At the Conference, when the Kiaochow dispute came
+up for discussion, the Japanese attitude, according to their
+Anglo-Saxon and French colleagues, was calm and dignified,
+their language courteous, their arguments were put
+with studied moderation, and their resolve to have their
+treaty rights recognized was inflexible. Their case was
+simple enough, and under the old ordering unanswerable.
+The only question was whether it would be invalidated by
+the new dispensation. But as the United States had
+obtained recognition for its Monroe Doctrine, Britain
+for the supremacy of the sea, and France for the occupation
+of the Saar Valley and the suspension of the right
+of self-determination in the case of Austria, it was obvious
+that Japan had abundant and cogent arguments for her
+demands, which were that the Chinese territory once
+held by Germany, and since wrested from that Power
+by Japan, be formally retroceded to Japan, whose claim
+to it rested upon the right of conquest and also upon the
+faith of treaties which she had concluded with China.
+At the same time she expressly and spontaneously disclaimed
+the intention of keeping that territory for herself.
+Baron Makino said at the Peace Table:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The acquisition of territory belonging to one nation
+which it is the intention of the country acquiring it to
+exploit to its sole advantage is not conducive to amity
+or good-will.&quot; Japan, although by the fortune of war
+Germany's heir to Kiaochow, did not purpose retaining it
+for the remaining term of the lease; she had, in fact,
+already promised to restore it to China. She maintained,
+however, that the conditions of retrocession should form
+the subject of a general settlement between Tokio and
+Peking.</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese delegation, which worked vigorously and
+indefatigably and won over a considerable number of
+backers, argued that Kiaochow had ceased to belong to
+Germany on the day when China declared war on that
+state, inasmuch as all their treaties, including the lease
+of Kiaochow, were abrogated by that declaration, and
+the ownership of every rood of Chinese territory held
+by Germany reverted in law to China, and should therefore
+be handed over to her, and not to Japan. To this
+plea Baron Makino returned the answer that with the
+surrender of Tsingtao to Japan in 1914<a name="FNanchor_249_249" id="FNanchor_249_249" href="#Footnote_249_249" >[249]</a> the whole imperial
+German protectorates of Shantung had passed to
+that Power, China being still a neutral. Consequently the
+entry of China into the war in 1917 could not affect the
+status of the province which already belonged to Nippon
+by right of conquest. As a matter of alleged fact, this
+capture of the protectorates by the Japanese had been
+specially desired by the British government, in order to
+prevent Germany from ceding it to China. If that move
+meant anything, therefore, it meant that neither China
+nor Germany had or could have any hold on the territory
+once it was captured by Japan. Further, this conquest
+was effected at the cost of vast sums of money and two
+thousand Japanese lives.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was that all. In the year 1915<a name="FNanchor_250_250" id="FNanchor_250_250" href="#Footnote_250_250" >[250]</a> China signed an
+agreement with Japan, undertaking &quot;to recognize all matters
+that may be agreed upon between the Japanese government
+and the German government respecting the disposition
+of all the rights, interests, and concessions which,
+in virtue of treaties or otherwise, Germany possesses
+<i>vis-&agrave;-vis</i> China, in relation to the province of Shantung.&quot;
+This treaty, the Chinese delegates answered, was extorted
+by force. Japan, having vainly sought to obtain it by
+negotiations that lasted nearly four months, finally presented
+an ultimatum,<a name="FNanchor_251_251" id="FNanchor_251_251" href="#Footnote_251_251" >[251]</a> giving China forty-eight hours in
+which to accept it. She had no alternative. But at least
+she made it known to the world that she was being
+coerced. It was on the day on which that document
+was signed that the Japanese representative in Peking
+sent a spontaneous declaration to the Chinese Minister of
+Foreign Affairs, promising to return the leased territory
+to China on condition that all Kiaochow be opened as a
+commercial port, that a Japanese settlement be established,
+and also an international settlement, if the Powers
+desired it, and that an arrangement be made beforehand
+between the Chinese and Japanese governments with
+regard to &quot;the disposal of German public establishments
+and populations, and with regard to other conditions and
+procedures.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Japanese further invoked another and later agreement,
+which was, they alleged, signed by the Chinese
+without demur.<a name="FNanchor_252_252" id="FNanchor_252_252" href="#Footnote_252_252" >[252]</a> This accord, coming after the entry of
+China into the war, was tantamount to the renunciation
+of any rights which China might have believed she possessed
+as a corollary of her belligerency. It also disposed,
+the Japanese argued, of her contention that the territory
+in question is indispensable and vital to her&mdash;a contention
+which Japan met with the promise to deliver it up&mdash;and
+which was invalidated by China's refusal to fight for it
+in the year 1914. This latter argument was controverted
+by the Chinese assertion that they were ready and willing
+to declare war against Germany at the outset, but that
+their co-operation was refused by the Entente, and subsequently
+by Japan. This allegation is credible, if we
+remember the eagerness exhibited by the British government
+that Japan should lose no time in co-operating with
+her allies, the representations made by the British Ambassador
+to Baron Kato on the subject,<a name="FNanchor_253_253" id="FNanchor_253_253" href="#Footnote_253_253" >[253]</a> and the alleged
+motive to prevent the retrocession of Shantung to China
+by the German government.</p>
+
+<p>The arguments of China and Japan were summarily
+put in the following questions by a delegate of each country:
+&quot;Yes or no, does Kiaochow, whose population is
+exclusively Chinese, form an integral part of the Chinese
+state? Yes or no, was Kiaochow brutally occupied by
+the Kaiser in the teeth of right and justice and to the
+detriment of the peace of the Far East, and it may be of
+the world? Yes or no, did Japan enter the war against
+the aggressive imperialism of the German Empire, and
+for the purpose of arranging a lasting peace in the Far
+East? Yes or no, was Kiaochow captured by the English
+and Japanese troops in 1914 with the sole object of destroying
+a dangerous naval base? Yes or no, was China's
+co-operation against Germany, which was advocated and
+offered by President Yuan Shi Kai in August, 1914, refused
+at the instigation of Japan?&quot;<a name="FNanchor_254_254" id="FNanchor_254_254" href="#Footnote_254_254" >[254]</a></p>
+
+<p>The Japanese catechism ran thus: &quot;Yes or no, was
+Kiaochow a German possession in the year 1914? Yes
+or no, was the world, including the United States, a consenting
+party to the occupation of that province by the
+Germans? Why did China, who to-day insists that that
+port is indispensable to her, cede it to Germany? Why
+in 1914 did she make no effort to recover it, but leave this
+task to the Japanese army? Further, who can maintain
+that juridically the last war abolished <i>ipso facto</i> all the
+cessions of territory previously effected? Turkey formerly
+ceded Cyprus to Great Britain. Will it be argued
+that this cession is abrogated and that Cyprus must return
+to Turkey directly and unconditionally? The Conference
+announced repeatedly that it took its stand on
+justice and the welfare of the peoples. It is in the name
+of the welfare of the peoples, as well as in the name of
+justice, that we assert our right to take over Kiaochow.
+The harvest to him whose hands soweth the seed.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_255_255" id="FNanchor_255_255" href="#Footnote_255_255" >[255]</a></p>
+
+<p>If we add to all these conflicting data the circumstance
+that Great Britain, France, and Russia had undertaken<a name="FNanchor_256_256" id="FNanchor_256_256" href="#Footnote_256_256" >[256]</a>
+to support Japan's demands at the Conference, and that
+Italy had promised to raise no objection, we shall have a
+tolerable notion of the various factors of the Chino-Japanese
+dispute, and of its bearings on the Peace Treaty
+and on the principles of the Covenant. It was one of the
+many illustrations of the incompatibility of the Treaty
+and the Covenant, the respective scopes of which were
+radically and irreconcilably different. The Supreme
+Council had to adjudicate upon the matter from the
+point of view either of the Treaty or of the Covenant;
+as part of a vulgar bargain of the old, unregenerate days,
+or as an example of the self-renunciation of the new ethical
+system. The majority of the Council was pledged to the
+former way of contemplating it, and, having already promulgated
+a number of decrees running counter to the
+Covenant doctrine in favor of their own peoples, could
+not logically nor politically make an exception to the
+detriment of Japan.</p>
+
+<p>What actually happened at the Peace Table is still a
+secret, and President Wilson, who knows its nature, holds
+that it is in the best interests of humanity that it should
+so remain! The little that has as yet been disclosed comes
+mainly from State-Secretary Lansing's answers to the
+questions put by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
+America's second delegate, in answer to the questions
+with which he was there plied, affirmed that &quot;President
+Wilson alone approved the Shantung decision, that
+the other members of the American delegation made no
+protest against it, and that President Wilson alone knows
+whether Japan has guaranteed to return Shantung to
+China.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_257_257" id="FNanchor_257_257" href="#Footnote_257_257" >[257]</a> Another eminent American, who claims to have
+been present when President Wilson's act was officially
+explained to the Chinese delegates, states that the President,
+disclosing to them his motives, pleaded that political
+exigencies, the menace that Japan would abandon the
+Conference, and the rumor that England herself might
+withdraw, had constrained him to accept the Shantung
+settlement in order to save the League.<a name="FNanchor_258_258" id="FNanchor_258_258" href="#Footnote_258_258" >[258]</a> Rumors appear
+to have played an undue part in the Conference, influencing
+the judgment or the decisions of the Supreme Council.
+The reader will remember that it was a rumor to the effect
+that the Italian government had already published a
+decree annexing Fiume that is alleged to have precipitated
+the quarrel between Mr. Wilson and the first Italian delegation.
+It is worth noting that the alleged menace that
+Japan would quit the Conference if her demands were
+rejected was not regarded by Secretary Lansing as serious.
+&quot;Could Japan's signature to the League have been obtained
+without the Shantung decision?&quot; he was asked.
+&quot;I think so,&quot; he answered.</p>
+
+<p>The decision caused tremendous excitement among the
+Chinese and their numerous friends. At first they professed
+skepticism and maintained that there must be some
+misunderstanding, and finally they protested and refused
+to sign the Treaty. One of the American journals published
+in Paris wrote: &quot;Shantung was at least a moral
+explosion. It blew down the front of the temple, and now
+everybody can see that behind the front there was a very
+busy market. The morals were the morals of a horse
+trade. If the muezzin were loud and constant in his calls
+to prayer, it probably was to drown the sound of the
+dickering in the market. There is no longer any obligation
+upon this nation to accept the Covenant as a moral
+document. It is not.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_259_259" id="FNanchor_259_259" href="#Footnote_259_259" >[259]</a></p>
+
+<p>All that may be perfectly true, but it sounds odd that
+the discovery should not have been made until Japan's
+claim was admitted formally to take over Shantung, after
+she had solemnly promised to restore it to China. The
+Covenant was certainly transgressed long before this,
+and much more flagrantly than by President Wilson's
+indorsement of Japan's demand for the formal retrocession
+of Shantung. But by those infractions nobody
+seemed scandalized. <i>Quod licet Jovi non licet bovi.</i> Debts
+of gratitude had to be paid at the expense of the Covenant,
+and people closed their eyes or their lips. It was not
+until the Japanese asked for something which all her
+European allies considered to be her right that an outcry
+was raised and moral principles were invoked.</p>
+
+<p>The Japanese press was nowise jubilant over the finding
+of the Supreme Council. The journals of all parties
+argued that their country was receiving no more than had
+already been guaranteed to it by China, and ratified by
+the Allies before the Peace Conference met, and to have
+obtained what was already hers by rights of conquest and
+of treaties was anything but a triumph. What Japan
+desired was to have herself recognized practically, not
+merely in theory, as the nation which is the most nearly
+interested in China, and therefore deserving of a special
+status there. In other words, she aimed at the proclamation
+of something in the nature of a Far Eastern doctrine
+analogous to that of Monroe. As priority of interest had
+been conceded to her by the Ishii-Lansing Agreement with
+the United States, it was in this sense that her press
+was fain to construe the clause respecting non-interference
+with &quot;regional understandings.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That policy is open. The principles underlying it, always
+tenable, were never more so than since the Peace
+Conference set the Great Powers to direct the lesser
+states. Moreover, Japan, it is argued, knows by experience
+that China has always been a temptation to the
+Western peoples. They sent expeditions to fight her and
+divided her territory into zones of influence, although
+China was never guilty of an aggressive attitude toward
+them, as she was toward Japan. They were actuated by
+land greed and all that that implies, and if China were
+abandoned to her own resources to-morrow she would
+surely fall a prey to her Western protectors. In this connection
+they point to an incident which took place during
+the Conference, when Signor Tittoni demanded that
+Italy should receive the Austrian concession in Tientsin,
+which adjoins the Italian concession. But Viscount
+Chinda protested and the demand was ruled out. To
+sum up, the broad maxim underlying Japan's policy as
+defined by her own representatives is that in the resettlement
+of the world the principle adopted, whether the
+old or the new, shall be applied fairly and impartially
+at least to all the Great Powers.</p>
+
+<p>Every world conflict has marked the close of one epoch
+and the opening of another. Into the melting-pot on
+the fire kindled by the war many momentous problems
+have been flung, any one of which would have sufficed
+to bring about a new political, economic, and social constellation.
+Japan's advance along the road of progress
+is one of these far-ranging innovations. She became a
+Great Power in the wars against China and Russia, and is
+qualifying for the part of a World Power to-day. And
+her statesmen affirm that in order to achieve her purpose
+she will recoil from no sacrifice except those of honor and
+of truth.</p>
+
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_244_244" id="Footnote_244_244" href="#FNanchor_244_244"> [244]</a> <i>Novoye Vremya</i>, June 13-26, 1915.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_245_245" id="Footnote_245_245" href="#FNanchor_245_245"> [245]</a> Cf. <i>The Problem of Asia</i> (Capt. A.T. Mahan), pp. 150-151.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_246_246" id="Footnote_246_246" href="#FNanchor_246_246"> [246]</a> The late President of the Chinese Republic.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_247_247" id="Footnote_247_247" href="#FNanchor_247_247"> [247]</a> These demands were (1) an apology from the Chinese authorities; (2)
+an indemnity for the killed and wounded; (3) the policing of certain districts
+of Manchuria by the Japanese; and (4) the employment of Japanese
+officers to train Chinese troops in Manchuria.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_248_248" id="Footnote_248_248" href="#FNanchor_248_248"> [248]</a> Minister of Foreign Affairs. He repudiated his predecessor's policy.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_249_249" id="Footnote_249_249" href="#FNanchor_249_249"> [249]</a> November 8th.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_250_250" id="Footnote_250_250" href="#FNanchor_250_250"> [250]</a> May 25, 1915.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_251_251" id="Footnote_251_251" href="#FNanchor_251_251"> [251]</a> On May 6, 1915.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_252_252" id="Footnote_252_252" href="#FNanchor_252_252"> [252]</a> On September 24, 1918.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_253_253" id="Footnote_253_253" href="#FNanchor_253_253"> [253]</a> On August 7, 1914.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_254_254" id="Footnote_254_254" href="#FNanchor_254_254"> [254]</a> Cf. <i>Le Matin</i>, April 25, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_255_255" id="Footnote_255_255" href="#FNanchor_255_255"> [255]</a> <i>Le Matin</i>, April 23, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_256_256" id="Footnote_256_256" href="#FNanchor_256_256"> [256]</a> &quot;His Majesty's Government accede with pleasure to the requests of the
+Japanese Government for assurances that they will support Japan's claims
+in regard to the disposal of Germany's rights in Shantung, and possessions
+in islands north of the Equator, on the occasion of a Peace Conference, it
+being understood that the Japanese Government will, in the event of a
+peace settlement, treat in the same spirit Great Britain's claims to German
+islands south of the Equator.&quot; (Signed) Conyngham Greene, British
+Ambassador, Tokio, February 16, 1917. France gave a similar assurance
+in writing on March 1, 1917, and the Russian government had made a like
+declaration on February 20, 1917.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_257_257" id="Footnote_257_257" href="#FNanchor_257_257"> [257]</a> As a matter of fact, the entire world knew and knows that she had guaranteed
+the retrocession. Baron Makino declared it at the Conference.
+Cf. <i>The</i> (London) <i>Times</i>, February 13, 1919; also on May 5, 1919; and
+Viscount Uchida confirmed it on May 17, 1919. It had also been stated
+in the Japanese ultimatum to Germany, August 15, 1914, and repeated by
+Viscount Uchida at the beginning of August, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_258_258" id="Footnote_258_258" href="#FNanchor_258_258"> [258]</a> Mr. Thomas Millard, some of whose letters were published by <i>The New
+York Times</i>. Cf. <i>Le Temps</i>, July 29, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_259_259" id="Footnote_259_259" href="#FNanchor_259_259"> [259]</a> <i>The Chicago Tribune</i> (Paris edition), August 20, 1919.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X" />X</h3>
+
+<h3>ATTITUDE TOWARD RUSSIA</h3>
+
+
+<p>In their dealings with Russia the principal plenipotentiaries
+consistently displayed the qualities and employed
+the standards, maxims, and methods which had stood
+them in good stead as parliamentary politicians. The
+betterment of the world was an idea which took a separate
+position in their minds, quite apart from the other political
+ideas with which they usually operated. Overflowing
+with verbal altruism, they first made sure of the political
+and economic interests of their own countries, safeguarding
+or extending these sources of power, after which they
+proceeded to try their novel experiment on communities
+which they could coerce into obedience. Hence the
+aversion and opposition which they encountered among
+all the nations which had to submit to the yoke, and more
+especially among the Russians.</p>
+
+<p>Russia's opposition, widespread and deep-rooted, is
+natural, and history will probably add that it was justified.
+It starts from the assumption, which there is no gainsaying,
+that the Conference was convoked to make peace between
+the belligerents and that whatever territorial changes
+it might introduce must be restricted to the countries
+of the defeated peoples. From all &quot;disannexations&quot; not
+only the Allies' territories, but those of neutrals, were to
+be exempted. Repudiate this principle and the demands
+of Ireland, Egypt, India to the benefits of self-determination
+became unanswerable. Belgium's claim to Dutch
+Limburg and other territorial oddments must likewise
+be allowed. Indeed, the plea actually put forward
+against these was that the Conference was incompetent
+to touch any territory actually possessed by either neutral
+or Allied states. Ireland, Egypt, and Dutch Limburg
+Were all domestic matters with which the Conference
+had no concern.</p>
+
+<p>Despite this fundamental principle Russia, the whilom
+Ally, without whose superhuman efforts and heroic sacrifices
+her partners would have been pulverized, was tacitly
+relegated to the category of hostile and defeated peoples,
+and many of her provinces lopped off arbitrarily and
+without appeal. None of her representatives was convoked
+or consulted on the subject, although all of them,
+Bolshevist and anti-Bolshevist, were at one in their resistance
+to foreign dictation.</p>
+
+<p>The Conference repeatedly disclaimed any intention
+of meddling in the internal affairs of any other state,
+and the Irish, the Egyptian, and several other analogous
+problems were for the purposes of the Conference included
+in this category. On what intelligible grounds, then,
+were the Finnish, the Lettish, the Esthonian, the Georgian,
+the Ukrainian problems excluded from it? One cannot
+conceive a more flagrant violation of the sovereignty of a
+state than the severance and disposal of its territorial
+possessions against its will. It is a frankly hostile act,
+and as such was rightly limited by the Conference to
+enemy countries. Why, then, was it extended to the
+ex-Ally? Is it not clear that if reconstituted Russia should
+regard the Allied states as enemies and choose the potential
+enemies of these as its friends, it will be legitimately
+applying the principles laid down by the Allies themselves?
+No expert in international law and no person of average
+common sense will seriously maintain that any of the
+decisions reached in Paris are binding on the Russia of the
+future. No problem which concerns two equal parties
+can be rightfully decided by only one of them. The
+Conference which declared itself incompetent to impose
+on Holland the cession to Belgium even of a small strip
+of territory on one of the banks of the Belgian river
+Scheldt cannot be deemed authorized to sign away vast
+provinces that belonged to Russia. Here the plea of
+the self-determination of peoples possesses just as much
+or as little cogency as in the case of Ireland and Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>President Wilson and Mr. Lloyd George had inaugurated
+their East European policy by publicly proclaiming
+that Russia was the key to the world situation, and that
+the peace would be no peace so long as her hundred and
+fifty million inhabitants were left floundering in chaotic
+confusion, under the upas shade of Bolshevism. They
+had also held out hopes to their great ex-ally of efficient
+help and practical counsel. And there ended what may
+be termed the constructive side of their conceptions.</p>
+
+<p>It was followed by no coherent action. Discourses,
+promises, maneuvers, and counter-maneuvers were continuous
+and bewildering, but of systematic policy there
+was none. Statesmanship in the higher sense of the word
+was absent from every decision the delegates took and
+from every suggestion they proffered. Nor was it only
+by omission that they sinned. Their invincible turn
+for circuitous methods, to which severer critics give a
+less sonorous name, was manifested <i>ad nauseam</i>. They
+worked out cunning little schemes which it was hard to
+distinguish from intrigues, and which, if they had not
+been foiled in time, would have made matters even worse
+than they are. From the outset the British government
+was for summoning Bolshevist delegates to the Conference.
+A note to this effect was sent by the London Foreign
+Office to the Allied governments about a fortnight before
+the delegates began their work of making peace. But
+the suggestion was withdrawn at the instance of the
+French, who doubted whether the services of systematic
+lawbreakers would materially conduce to the establishment
+of a new society of law-abiding states. Soon afterward
+another scheme cropped up, this time for the appointment
+of an Inter-Allied committee to watch over Russia's
+destinies and serve as a sort of board of Providence.
+The representatives of the anti-Bolshevist governments
+resented this notion bitterly. They remarked that they
+could not be fairly asked to respect decisions imposed on
+them exactly as though they were vanquished enemies
+like the Germans. The British and American delegates
+were swayed in their views mainly by the assumptions
+that all central Russia was in the power of Lenin; that
+his army was well disciplined and powerful; that he
+might contrive to hold the reins of government and maintain
+anarchism indefinitely, and that the so-called constructive
+elements were inclined toward reaction.</p>
+
+<p>In other words, the delegates accepted two sets of premises,
+from which they drew two wholly different sets of
+conclusions. Now they felt impelled to act on the one,
+now on the other, but they could never make up their
+minds to carry out either. They agreed that Bolshevism
+is a potent solvent of society, fraught with peril to all
+organized communities, yet they could not resolve to use
+joint action to extirpate it.<a name="FNanchor_260_260" id="FNanchor_260_260" href="#Footnote_260_260" >[260]</a> They recognized that so
+long as it lasted there was no hope of establishing a community
+of nations, but they discarded military intervention
+on grounds of their own internal policy, and because
+it ran counter to the principle of self-determination. Over
+against that principle, however, one had to set the circumstance
+that they were already intermeddling in Russian
+affairs in Archangel, Murmansk, Odessa, and elsewhere,
+and that they ended by creating a new state and
+government in northwestern Russia, against which Kolchak
+and Denikin vehemently protested.</p>
+
+<p>In mitigation of judgment it is only fair to take into
+account the tremendous difficulties that faced them; their
+unfamiliarity with the Russian problem; the want of a
+touchstone by which to test the overwhelming mass of
+conflicting information which poured in upon them; their
+constitutional lack of moral courage, and the circumstance
+that they were striving to reconcile contradictories.
+Without chart or compass they drifted into strange and
+sterile courses, beginning with the Prinkipo incident and
+ending with the written examination to which they
+na&iuml;vely subjected Kolchak in order to legalize international
+relations, which could not truly be described as
+either war or peace. Neither the causes of Bolshevism
+in its morbid manifestations nor the unformulated ideas
+underlying whatever positive aspect it may be supposed
+to possess, nor the conditions governing its slow but perceptible
+evolution, were so much as glanced at, much less
+studied, by the statesmen who blithely set about dealing
+with it now by military force, now by economic pressure,
+and fitfully by tentative forbearance and hints to its
+leaders of forthcoming recognition.</p>
+
+<p>One cannot thus play fast and loose with the destinies
+of a community composed of one hundred and fifty million
+people whose members are but slackly linked together by
+a few tenuous social bonds, without forfeiting the right to
+offer them real guidance. And a blind man is a poor
+guide to those who can see. Alone the Americans were
+equipped with carefully tabulated statistics and huge
+masses of facts which they poured out as lavishly as coal-heavers
+hurl the contents of their sacks into the cellar.
+But they put them to no practical use. Losing themselves
+in a labyrinth of details, they failed to get a comprehensive
+view of the whole. The other delegations lacked
+both data and general ideas. And all the Allies were
+destitute of a powerful army in the East, and therefore
+of the means of asserting the authority which they
+assumed.</p>
+
+<p>They one and all dealt in vague theories and deceptive
+analogies, paying little heed to the ever-shifting necessities
+of time, place, and peoples, and indeed to the only
+conditions under which any new maxims could be fruitfully
+applied. And even such rules as they laid down were
+restricted and modified in accordance with their own
+countries' interests or their unavowed aims, without specific
+warrant or explanation. No account was taken of
+the historical needs or aspirations of the people for whom
+they were legislating, as though all nations were of the
+same age, capable of the same degree of culture, and impressible
+to identical motives. It never seemed to have
+crossed their minds that races and peoples, like individuals,
+have a soul, or that what is meat to one may be
+poison to another.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most Ententophil and moderate press organs
+in France put the matter forcibly and plainly as follows:
+&quot;The governments of Washington and of London are
+aware that we are immutably attached to the alliance
+with them. But we owe them the truth. Far too often
+they make a bad choice of the agents whose business it
+is to keep them informed, and they affect too much disdain
+for friendly suggestions which emanate from any
+other source. American agents, in particular, civil as
+well as military, explore Europe much as their forebears
+'prospected' the Far West, and they look upon the most
+ancient nations of Europe as Iroquois, Comanches, or
+Aztecs. They are astounded at not finding everything
+on the old Continent as in New York or Chicago, and they
+set to work to reform Europe according to the rules in
+force in Oklahoma or Colorado. Now we venture respectfully
+to point out to them that methods differ with
+countries. In the United States the Colonists were wont
+to set fire to the forests in order to clear and fertilize the
+land. Certain American agents recommend the employment
+in Europe of an analogous procedure in political
+matters. They rejoice to behold the Russian and Hungarian
+forests burst into flame. In Lenin, Trotzky, Bela
+Kuhn, they appreciate useful pioneers of the new civilization.
+We crave their permission to view these things
+from another side. In old Europe one cannot set fire to
+the forests without at the same time burning villages and
+cities.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_261_261" id="FNanchor_261_261" href="#Footnote_261_261" >[261]</a></p>
+
+<p>Before and during the armistice I was in almost constant
+touch with all Russian parties within the country
+and without, and received detailed accounts of the changing
+conditions of the people, which, although conflicting
+in many details, enabled me to form a tolerably correct
+picture of the trend of things and to forecast what was
+coming.</p>
+
+<p>Among other communications I received proposals from
+Moscow with the request that I should present them to
+one of the British delegates, who was supposed to be then
+taking an active interest, or at any rate playing a prominent
+part, in the reconstruction of Russia, less for her
+own sake than for that of the general peace. But as it
+chanced, the eminent statesman lacked the leisure to take
+cognizance of the proposal, the object of which was to hit
+upon such a <i>modus vivendi</i> with Russia as would enable
+her united peoples to enter upon a normal course of
+national existence without further delay. Incidentally
+it would have put an end to certain conversations then
+going forward with a view to a friendly understanding
+between Russia and Germany. It would also, I had
+reason to believe, have divided the speculative Bolshevist
+group from the extreme bloodthirsty faction, produced a
+complete schism in the party, and secured an armistice
+which would have prevented the Allies' subsequent defeats
+at Murmansk, Archangel, and Odessa. Truth
+prompts me to add that these desirable by-results, although
+held out as inducements and characterized as
+readily attainable, were guaranteed only by the unofficial
+pledge of men whose good faith was notoriously doubtful.</p>
+
+<p>The document submitted to me is worth summarizing.
+It contained a lucid, many-sided, and plausible account of
+the Russian situation. Among other things, it was a
+confession of the enormity of the crimes perpetrated, on
+both sides, it said, which it ascribed largely to the brutalizing
+effects of the World War, waged under disastrous conditions
+unknown in other lands. Myriads of practically
+unarmed men had been exposed during the campaign to
+wholesale slaughter, or left to die in slow agonies where
+they fell, or were killed off by famine and disease, for the
+triumph of a cause which they never understood, but had
+recently been told was that of foreign capitalists. In the
+demoralization that ensued all restraints fell away. The
+entire social fabric, from groundwork to summit, was rent,
+and society, convulsed with bestial passions, tore its own
+members to pieces. Russia ran amuck among the nations.
+That was the height of war frenzy. Since then, the
+document went on, passion had abated sensibly and a
+number of well-intentioned men who had been swept
+onward by the current were fast coming to their senses,
+while others were already sane, eager to stem it and
+anxious for moral sympathy from outside.</p>
+
+<p>From out of the revolutionary welter, the <i>expos&eacute;</i> continued,
+certain hopeful phenomena had emerged symptomatic
+of a new spirit. Conditions conducive to equality
+existed, although real equality was still a somewhat remote
+ideal. But the tendencies over the whole sphere
+of Russian social, moral, and political life had undergone
+remarkable and invigorating changes in the direction of
+&quot;reasonable democracy.&quot; Many wholesome reforms had
+been attempted, and some were partially realized, especially
+in elementary instruction, which was being spread
+clumsily, no doubt, as yet, but extensively and equally,
+being absolutely gratuitous.<a name="FNanchor_262_262" id="FNanchor_262_262" href="#Footnote_262_262" >[262]</a></p>
+
+<p>Various other so-called ameliorations were enumerated
+in this obviously partial <i>expos&eacute;</i>, which was followed by an
+apology for certain prominent individuals, who, having
+been swept off their feet by the revolutionary floods,
+would gladly get back to firm land and help to extricate the
+nation from the Serbonian bog in which it was sinking.
+They admitted a share of the responsibility for having
+set in motion a vast juggernaut chariot, which, however,
+they had arrested, but hoped to expiate past errors by
+future zeal. At the same time they urged that it was not
+they who had demoralized the army or abolished the
+death penalty or thrown open the sluice-gates to anarchist
+floods. On the contrary, they claimed to have reorganized
+the national forces, reintroduced the severest discipline
+ever known, appointed experienced officers, and restored
+capital punishment. Nor was it they, but their predecessors,
+they added, who had ruined the transport service
+of the country and caused the food scarcity.</p>
+
+<p>These individuals would, it was said, welcome peace
+and friendship with the Entente, and give particularly
+favorable consideration to any proposal coming from the
+English-speaking peoples, in whom they were disposed
+to place confidence under certain simple conditions. The
+need for these conditions would not be gainsaid by the
+British and American governments if they recalled to
+mind the treatment which they had theretofore meted
+out to the Russian people. At that moment no Russian
+of any party regarded or could regard the Allies without
+grounded suspicions, for while repudiating interference
+in domestic affairs, the French, Americans, and British
+were striving hard to influence every party in Russia,
+and were even believed to harbor designs on certain
+provinces, such as the Caucasus and Siberia. Color was
+imparted to these misgivings by the circumstance that the
+Allied governments were openly countenancing the dismemberment
+of the country by detaching non-Russian
+and even Russian elements from the main body. It
+behooved the Allies to dissipate this mistrust by issuing
+a statement of their policy in unmistakable terms, repudiating
+schemes for territorial gains, renouncing interference
+in domestic affairs and complicity in the work of
+disintegrating the country. Russia and her affairs must
+be left to Russians, who would not grudge economic concessions
+as a reasonable <i>quid pro quo</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The proposal further insisted that the declaration of
+policy should be at once followed by the despatch of two
+or three well-known persons acquainted with Russia and
+Russian affairs, and enjoying the confidence of European
+peoples, to inquire into the conditions of the country and
+make an exhaustive report. This mission, it was added,
+need not be official, it might be intrusted to individuals
+unattached to any government.</p>
+
+<p>If a satisfactory answer to this proposal were returned
+within a fortnight, an armistice and suspension of the
+secret <i>pourparlers</i> with Germany would, I was told, have
+followed. That this compact would have led to a
+settlement of the Russian problems is more than any
+one, however well informed, could vouch for, but I had
+some grounds for believing the move to be genuine and
+the promises overdone. No reasonable motive suggested
+itself for a vulgar hoax. Moreover, the overture disclosed
+two important facts, one of which was known at the
+time only to the Bolshevist government&mdash;namely, that
+secret <i>pourparlers</i> were going forward between Berlin and
+Moscow for the purpose of arriving at a workable understanding
+between the two governments, and that the
+Allied troops at Odessa, Archangel, and Murmansk were
+in a wretched plight and in direr need of an armistice than
+the Bolsheviki.<a name="FNanchor_263_263" id="FNanchor_263_263" href="#Footnote_263_263" >[263]</a></p>
+
+<p>I mentioned the matter summarily to one of the delegates,
+who evinced a certain interest in it and promised
+to discuss it at length later on with a view to action.
+Another to whom I unfolded it later thought it would be
+well if I myself started, together with two or three others,
+for Moscow, Petrograd, Ekaterinodar, and other places,
+and reported on the situation. But weeks went by and
+nothing was done.<a name="FNanchor_264_264" id="FNanchor_264_264" href="#Footnote_264_264" >[264]</a></p>
+
+<p>I had interesting talks with some influential delegates
+on the eve of the invitation issued to all <i>de facto</i> governments
+of Russia to forgather at Prinkipo for a symposium.
+They admitted frankly at the time that they had no policy
+and were groping in the dark, and one of them held to the
+dogma that no light from outside was to be expected.
+They gave me the impression that underlying the impending
+summons was the conviction that Bolshevism, divested
+of its frenzied manifestations, was a rough and ready
+government calumniously blackened by unscrupulous enemies,
+criminal perhaps in its outbursts, but suited in its
+feasible aims to the peculiar needs of a peculiar people,
+and therefore as worthy of being recognized as any of the
+others. It was urged that it had already lasted a considerable
+time without provoking a counter-movement
+worthy of the name; that the stories circulating about the
+horrors of which it was guilty were demonstrably exaggerated;
+that many of the bloody atrocities were to be
+ascribed to crazy individuals on both sides; that the
+witnesses against Lenin were partial and untrustworthy;
+that something should be done without delay to solve a
+pressing problem, and that the Conference could think
+of nothing better, nor, in fact, of any alternative.</p>
+
+<p>To me the principal scheme seemed a sinister mistake,
+both in form and in substance. In form, because it nullified
+the motives which determined the help given to the
+Greeks, Poles, and Serbs, who were being urged to crush
+the Bolshevists, and left the Allies without good grounds
+for keeping their own troops in Archangel, Odessa, and
+northern Russia to stop the onward march of Bolshevism.
+Some governments had publicly stigmatized the Bolshevists
+as cutthroats; one had pledged itself never to
+have relations with them, but the Prinkipo invitation
+bespoke a resolve to cancel these judgments and declarations
+and change their tack as an improvement on doing
+nothing at all. The scheme was also an error in substance,
+because the sole motive that could warrant it
+was the hope of reconciling the warring parties. And
+that hope was doomed to disappointment from the outset.</p>
+
+<p>According to the Prinkipo project, which was attributed
+to President Wilson,<a name="FNanchor_265_265" id="FNanchor_265_265" href="#Footnote_265_265" >[265]</a> an invitation was to be issued to all
+organized groups exercising or attempting to exercise
+political authority or military control in Siberia and
+northern Russia, to send representatives to confer with
+the delegates of the Allied and Associated Powers on
+Prince's Islands. It is difficult to discuss the expedient
+seriously. One feels like a member of the little people
+of yore, who are reported to have consulted an oracle
+to ascertain what they must do to keep from laughing
+during certain debates on public affairs. It exposed its
+ingenuous authors to the ridicule of the world and made
+it clear to the dullest apprehension that from that quarter,
+at any rate, the Russian people, as a whole, must expect
+neither light nor leading, nor intelligent appreciation
+of their terrible plight. There is a sphere of influence
+in the human intellect between the reason and the imagination,
+the boundary line of which is shadowy. That
+sphere would seem to be the source whence some of the
+most extraordinary notions creep into the minds of men
+who have suddenly come into a position of power which
+they are not qualified to wield&mdash;the <i>nouveaux puissants</i>
+of the world of politics.</p>
+
+<p>To the credit of the Supreme Council it never let
+offended dignity stand between itself and the triumph
+of any of the various causes which it successively took in
+hand. Time and again it had been addressed by the
+Russian Bolshevist government in the most opprobrious
+terms, and accused not merely of clothing political expediency
+in the garb of spurious idealism, but of giving the
+fore place in political life to sordid interests, over which
+a cloak of humanitarianism had been deftly thrown.
+One official missive from the Bolshevist government to
+President Wilson is worth quoting from:<a name="FNanchor_266_266" id="FNanchor_266_266" href="#Footnote_266_266" >[266]</a> &quot;We should
+like to learn with more precision how you conceive the
+Society of Nations? When you insist on the independence
+of Belgium, of Serbia, of Poland, you surely mean that
+the masses of the people are everywhere to take over the
+administration of the country. But it is odd that you
+did not also require the emancipation of Ireland, of
+Egypt, of India, and of the Philippines....</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As we concluded peace with the German Kaiser, for
+whom you have no more consideration than we have for
+you, so we are minded to make peace with you. We
+propose, therefore, the discussion, in concert with our
+allies, of the following questions: (1) Are the French and
+English governments ready to give up exacting the blood
+of the Russian people if this people consent to pay them
+ransom and to compensate them in that way? (2) If
+the answer is in the affirmative, what ransom would the
+Allies want (railway concessions, gold mines, or territories)?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We also look forward to your telling us exactly
+whether the future Society of Nations will be a joint
+stock enterprise for the exploitation of Russia, and in
+particular&mdash;as your French allies require&mdash;for forcing
+Russia to refund the milliards which their bankers furnished
+to the Tsarist government, or whether the Society
+of Nations will be something different....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the Prinkipo motion was passed by the
+delegates I was informed by telephone, and I lost no time
+in communicating the tidings to Russia's official representatives
+in Paris. The plan astounded them. They
+could hardly believe that, while hopefully negotiating
+with the anti-Bolshevists, the Conference was desirous
+at the same time of opening <i>pourparlers</i> with the Leninists,
+between whom and them antagonism was not merely
+political, but personal and vindictive, like that of two
+Albanians in a blood feud. I suggested that the scheme
+should be thwarted at its inception, and that for this purpose
+I should be authorized by the representatives of the
+four<a name="FNanchor_267_267" id="FNanchor_267_267" href="#Footnote_267_267" >[267]</a> constructive governments in Russia to make known
+their decision. I was accordingly empowered to announce
+to the world that they would categorically refuse to send
+any representatives to confer with the assassins of their
+kinsmen and the destroyers of their country, and that
+under no circumstances would they swerve from that
+attitude. Having received the authorization, I cabled
+to the United States and Britain that the projected meeting
+would come to naught, owing to the refusal of all
+constructive elements to agree to any compromise with
+the Bolsheviki; that in the opinion of Russia's representatives
+in Paris the advance made by the plenipotentiaries
+would strengthen the Bolshevist movement, render the
+civil war more merciless than before, and raise up formidable
+difficulties to the establishment of the League of
+Nations.</p>
+
+<p>But the plenipotentiaries did not yet give up their cause
+as lost. By way of &quot;saving their face,&quot; they unofficially
+approached the Russian Ministers in Paris, whom they
+had not deigned to consult on the subject before making
+the plunge, and exhorted them to give at least a formal
+assent to the proposal, which would commit them to nothing
+and would enable them to withdraw without loss of
+dignity. They, on their part, undertook to smooth the
+road to the best of their ability. Thus it would be unnecessary,
+they explained, for the Ministers of the constructive
+governments or their substitutes to come into
+contact with the slayers of their kindred; they would
+occupy different wings of the hotel at Prinkipo, and never
+meet their adversaries. The delegates would see to that.
+&quot;Then why should we go there at all if discussion be
+superfluous?&quot; asked the Russians. &quot;Because the Allied
+governments desire to ascertain the condition of Russia
+and your conception of the measures that would contribute
+to ameliorate it,&quot; was the reply. &quot;Prince's Islands
+is not the right place to study the Russian situation, nor
+is it reasonable to expect us to journey thither in order to
+tell subordinates, who have no knowledge of our country,
+what we can tell them and their principals in Paris in
+greater detail and with confirmatory documents. Moreover,
+the delegates you have appointed have no qualification
+to judge of Russia's plight and potentialities. They
+know neither the country nor its language nor its people
+nor its politics, yet you want us to travel all the way to
+Turkey to tell them what we think, in order that they
+should return from Turkey to Paris and report to your
+Ministers what we said and what we could have unfolded
+directly to the Ministers themselves long ago and are
+ready to propound to them to-day or to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The project is puerile and your tactics are baleful.
+Your Ministers branded the Bolshevists as criminals, and
+the French government publicly announced that it would
+enter into no relations with them. In spite of that, all
+the Allied governments have now offered to enter into
+relations with them. Now you admit that you made a
+slip, and you promise to correct it if only we consent to
+save your face and go on a wild-goose chase to Prinkipo.
+But for us that journey would be a recantation of our
+principles. That is why we are unable to make it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Prinkipo incident, which began in the region of high
+politics, ended in comedy. A number of more or less
+witty epigrams were coined at the expense of the plenipotentiaries,
+the scheme, set in a stronger light than it was
+meant to endure, assumed a grotesque shape, and its promoters
+strove to consign it as best they could to oblivion.
+But the Sphinx question of Russia's future remained, and
+the penalties for failure to solve it aright waxed more and
+more deterrent. The supreme arbiters had cognizance of
+them, had, in fact, enumerated them when proclaiming the
+impossibility of establishing a durable peace or a solid
+League of Nations as long as Russia continued to be a
+prey to anarchy. But even with the prizes and penalties
+before their eyes to entice and spur them, they proved
+unequal to the task of devising an intelligent policy. Fitful
+and incoherent, their efforts were either incapable of
+being realized or, when feasible, were mischievous. Thus,
+by degrees, they hardened the great Slav nation against
+the Entente.</p>
+
+<p>The reader will be prepared to learn that the overtures
+made to the Bolsheviki kindled the anger of the patriotic
+Russians at home, who had been looking to the Western
+nations for salvation and making veritable holocausts in
+order to merit it. Every observer could perceive the repercussion
+of this sentiment in Paris, and I received ample
+proofs of it from Siberia. There the leaders and the population
+unhesitatingly turned for assistance to Japan. For
+this there were excellent reasons. The only government
+which throughout the war knew its own mind and pursued
+a consistent and an intelligible policy toward Russia
+was that of Tokio. This point is worth making at a time
+when Japan is regarded as a Laodicean convert to the
+invigorating ideas of the Western peoples, at heart a backslider
+and a potential schismatic. She is charged with
+making interest the mainspring of her action in her intercourse
+with other nations. The charge is true. Only a
+Candide would expect to see her moved by altruism and
+self-denial, in a company which penalizes these virtues.
+Community of interests is the link that binds Japan to
+Britain. A like bond had subsisted between her and
+Tsarist Russia. I helped to create it. Her statesmen,
+who have no taste for sonorous phraseology, did not think
+it necessary to give it a more fashionable name. This did
+not prevent the Japanese from being chivalrously loyal to
+their allies under the strain of powerful temptations, true
+to the spirit and the letter of their engagements. But
+although they made no pretense to lofty purpose, their
+political maxims differ nowise from those of the great
+European states, whose territorial, economic, and military
+interests have been religiously safeguarded by the Treaty
+of Versailles. True, the statesmen of Tokio shrink from
+the hybrid combination of two contradictions linked together
+by a sentimental fallacy. Their unpopularity
+among Anglo-Saxons is the result of speculations about
+their future intentions; in other words, they are being
+punished, as certain of the delegates at the Conference
+have been eulogized, not for what they actually did, but
+for what it is assumed they are desirous of achieving.
+Toward Russia they played the same game that their allies
+were playing there and in Europe, only more frankly and
+systematically. They applied the two principal maxims
+which lie at the root of international politics to-day&mdash;<i>do
+ut des</i>, and the nation that is capable of leading others
+has the right and the duty to lead them. And they established
+a valuable reputation for fulfilling their compacts
+conscientiously. Nippon, then, would have helped her
+Russian neighbors, and she expected to be helped by them
+in return. Have not the Allies, she asked, compelled
+Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Jugoslavia to pay them in
+cash for their emancipation?</p>
+
+<p>Russians, who have no color prejudices, hit it off with
+the Japanese, by whom they are liked in return. That
+the two peoples should feel drawn to each other politically
+is, therefore, natural, and that they will strike up economic
+agreements in the future seems to many inevitable and
+legitimate. One such agreement was on the point of
+being signed between them and the anti-Bolshevists of
+Omsk immediately after, and in consequence of, the
+Allies' ill-considered invitation to Lenin and Trotzky to
+delegate representatives to Prinkipo. This convention,
+I have reason to believe, was actually drafted, and was
+about to be signed. And the adverse influence that suddenly
+made itself felt and hindered the compact came
+not from Russia, but from western Europe. It would be
+unfruitful to dwell further on this matter here, beyond
+recording the belief of many Russians that the zeal of the
+English-speaking peoples for the well-being of Siberia,
+where they intend to maintain troops after having withdrawn
+them from Europe, is the counter-move to Japan's
+capacity and wish to co-operate with the population of
+that rich country. This assumption may be groundless,
+but it will surprise only those who fail to note how often
+the flag of principle is unfurled over economic interests.</p>
+
+<p>The delegates were not all discouraged by their discomfiture
+over the Prinkipo project. Some of them still
+hankered after an agreement with the Bolshevists which
+would warrant them in including the Russian problem
+among the tasks provisionally achieved. President Wilson
+despatched secret envoys to Moscow to strike up an
+accord with Lenin,<a name="FNanchor_268_268" id="FNanchor_268_268" href="#Footnote_268_268" >[268]</a> but although the terms which Mr.
+Bullitt obtained were those which had in advance been
+declared satisfactory, he drew back as soon as they were
+agreed to. And he assigned no reason for this change of
+attitude. Whether the brightening of the prospects of Kolchak
+and Denikin had modified his judgment on the question
+of expediency must remain a matter of conjecture.
+It is hardly necessary, however, to point out once more
+that this sudden improvisation of schemes which were
+abandoned again at the last moment tended to lower the
+not particularly high estimate set by the ethnic wards of
+the Anglo-Saxon peoples on the moral guidance of their
+self-constituted guardians.</p>
+
+<p>An ardent champion of the Allied nations in France
+wrote: &quot;We have never had a Russian policy which was
+all of one piece. We have never synthetized any but
+contradictory conceptions. This is so true that one may
+safely affirm that if Russian patriotism has been sustained
+by our velleities of action, Russian destructiveness has
+been encouraged by our velleities of desertion. We
+joined, so to say, both camps, and our velleities of desertion
+occasionally getting the upper hand of our velleities
+of action ... we carry out nothing.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_269_269" id="FNanchor_269_269" href="#Footnote_269_269" >[269]</a></p>
+
+<p>Toward Kolchak and Denikin the attitude of the Supreme
+Council varied considerably. It was currently reported
+in Paris that the Admiral had had the misfortune
+to arouse the displeasure of the two Conference chiefs
+by some casual manifestation of a frame of mind which
+was resented, perhaps a movement of independence, to
+which distance or the medium of transmission imparted a
+flavor of disrespect. Anyhow, the Russian leader was for
+some time under a cloud, which darkened the prospects of
+his cause. And as for Denikin, he appeared to the other
+great delegate as a self-advertising braggart.</p>
+
+<p>These mental portraits were retouched as the fortune of
+war favored the pair. And their cause benefited correspondingly.
+To this improvement influences at work in
+London contributed materially. For the anti-Bolshevist
+currents which made themselves felt in certain state departments
+in that capital, where there were several irreconcilable
+policies, were powerful and constant. By
+the month of May the Conference had turned half-heartedly
+from Lenin and Trotzky to Kolchak and
+Denikin, but its mode of negotiating bore the mark peculiar
+to the diplomacy of the new era of &quot;open covenants
+openly arrived at.&quot; The delegates in Paris communicated
+with the two leaders in Russia &quot;over the heads&quot; and
+without the knowledge of their authorized representatives
+in Paris, just as they had issued peremptory orders to
+&quot;the Rumanian government at Bucharest&quot; over the heads
+of its chiefs, who were actually in the French capital.</p>
+
+<p>The proximate motives that determined several important
+decisions of the Secret Council, although of no
+political moment, are of sufficient psychological interest to
+warrant mention. They shed a light on the concreteness,
+directness, and simplicity of the workings of the statesmen's
+minds when engaged in transacting international
+business. For example, the particular moment for the
+recognition of new communities as states was fixed by
+wholly extrinsical circumstances. A food-distributer, for
+instance, or the Secretary of a Treasury, wanted a receipt
+for expenditure abroad from the people that benefited by
+it. As a document of this character presupposes the existence
+of a state and a government, the official dispenser
+of food or money was loath to go to the aid of any nation
+which was not a state or which lacked a properly constituted
+government. Hence, in some cases the Conference
+had to create both on the spur of the moment.
+Thus the reason why Finland's independence received
+the hall-mark of the Powers when it did was because
+the United States government was generously preparing
+to give aid to the Finns and had to get in return proper
+receipts signed by competent authorities representing the
+state.<a name="FNanchor_270_270" id="FNanchor_270_270" href="#Footnote_270_270" >[270]</a> Had it not been for this immediate need of valid
+receipts, the act of recognition might have been postponed
+in the same way as was the marking off of the
+frontiers. And like considerations led to like results in
+other cases. Czechoslovakia's independence was formally
+recognized for the same reason, as one of its leading men
+frankly admitted.</p>
+
+<p>One of the serious worries of the Conference chiefs in
+their dealings with Russia was the lack of a recognized
+government there, qualified to sign receipts for advances
+of money and munitions. And as they could not resolve
+to accord recognition to any of the existing administrations,
+they hit upon the middle course, that of promoting
+the anti-Bolshevists to the rank of a community, not,
+indeed, sovereign or independent, but deserving of every
+kind of assistance except the despatch of Allied troops.
+Assistance was already being given liberally, but the
+necessity was felt for justifying it formally. And the two
+delegates went to work as though they were hatching
+some dark and criminal plot. Secretly despatching a
+message to Admiral Kolchak, they put a number of
+questions to him which he was not qualified to answer
+without first consulting his official advisers in Paris.
+Yet these advisers were not apprised by the Secret Council
+of what was being done. Nay, more, the French
+Foreign Office was not notified. By the merest chance I
+got wind of the matter and published the official message.<a name="FNanchor_271_271" id="FNanchor_271_271" href="#Footnote_271_271" >[271]</a>
+It summoned the Admiral to bind himself to
+convene a Constituent Assembly as soon as he arrived in
+Moscow; to hold free elections; to repudiate definitely
+the old r&eacute;gime and all that it implied; to recognize the
+independence of Poland and Finland, whose frontiers
+would be determined by the League of Nations; to
+avail himself of the advice and co-operation of the
+League in coming to an understanding with the border
+states, and to acquiesce in the decision of the Peace
+Conference respecting the future status of Bessarabia.
+Kolchak's answer was described as clear when &quot;decipherable,&quot;
+and to his credit, he frankly declined to
+forestall the will of the Constituent Assembly respecting
+those border states which owed their separate existence
+to the initiative of the victorious governments.
+But the Secret Council of the Conference accepted his
+answer, and relied upon it as an adequate reason for
+continuing the assistance which they had been giving
+him theretofore.</p>
+
+<p>About the person of Kolchak it ought to be superfluous
+to say more than that he is an upright citizen of energy
+and resolution, as patriotic as Fabricius, as disinterested
+and unambitious as Cincinnatus. To his credit account,
+which is considerable, stands his wonder-working faith
+in the recuperative forces of his country when its fortunes
+were at their lowest ebb. With buoyancy and confidence
+he set himself the task of rescuing his fellow-countrymen
+when it looked as hopeless as that of Xenophon at
+Cunaxa. He created an army out of nothing, induced
+his men by argument, suasion, and example to shake off
+the virus of indiscipline and sacrifice their individual
+judgment and will to the well-being of their fellows. He
+enjoined nothing upon others that he himself was not
+ready to undertake, and he exposed himself time and
+again to risks greater far than any general should deliberately
+incur. Whether he succeeds or fails in his
+arduous enterprise, Kolchak, by his preterhuman patience
+and sustained energy and courage, has deserved exceptionally
+well of his country, and could afford to ignore the
+current legends that depict him in the crying colors of a
+reactionary, even though they were accepted for the time
+by the most exalted among the Great Unversed in Russian
+affairs. One may dissent from his policy and object to
+some of his lieutenants and to many of his partizans, but
+from the single-minded, patriotic soldier one cannot withhold
+a large meed of praise. Kolchak's defects are mostly
+exaggerations of his qualities. His remarkable versatility
+is purchased at the price of fitfulness, his energy displays
+itself in spurts, and his impulsiveness impairs at times the
+successful execution of a plan which requires unflagging
+constancy. His judgment of men is sometimes at fault,
+but he would never hesitate to confer a high post upon
+any man who deserved it. He is democratic in the current
+sense of the word, but neither a doctrinaire nor a faddist.
+A disciplinarian and a magnetic personality withal, he
+charms as effectually as he commands his soldiers. He is
+enlightened enough, like the great Western world-menders
+in their moments of theorizing, to discountenance
+secrecy and hole-and-corner agreements, and, what is still
+more praiseworthy, he is courageous enough to practise
+the doctrine.</p>
+
+<p>When the revolution broke out Kolchak was at
+Sebastopol. The telegram conveying the sensational
+tidings of the outbreak was kept secret by all military
+commanders&mdash;except himself. He unhesitatingly summoned
+the soldiers and sailors, apprised them of what
+had taken place, gave them an insight into the true
+meaning of the violent upheaval, and asked them to join
+with him in a heroic endeavor to influence the course of
+things, in the direction of order and consolidation. He
+gaged aright the significance of the revolution and the
+impossibility of confining it within any bounds, political,
+moral, or geographical. But he reasoned that a band of
+resolute patriots might contrive to wrest something for
+the country from the hands of Fate. It was with this
+faith and hope that he set to work, and soon his valiant
+army, the reclaimed provinces, and the improved Russian
+outlook were eloquent witnesses to his worth, whose
+testimony no legendary reports, however well received in
+the West, could weaken.</p>
+
+<p>How ingrained in the plenipotentiaries was their proneness
+for what, for want of a better word, may be termed
+conspirative and circuitous action may be inferred from
+the record of their official and unofficial conversations and
+acts. When holding converse with Kolchak's authorized
+agents in Paris they would lay down hard conditions,
+which were described as immutable; and yet when communicating
+with the Admiral direct they would submit
+to him terms considerably less irksome, unknown to his
+Paris advisers, thus mystifying both and occasioning
+friction between them. In many cases the contrast between
+the two sets of demands was disconcerting, and in
+all it tended to cause misunderstandings and complicate
+the relations between Kolchak and his Paris agents. But
+he continued to give his confidence to his representatives,
+although they were denied that of the delegates. It
+would, of course, be grossly unfair to impute anything
+like disingenuousness to plenipotentiaries engaged upon
+issues of this magnitude, but it was an unfortunate coincidence
+that they were known to regard some of the
+members of the Russian Council in Paris with disfavor,
+and would have been glad to see them superseded. When
+Nansen's project to feed the starving population of Russia
+was first mooted, Kolchak's Ministers in Paris were approached
+on the subject, and the Allies' plan was propounded
+to them so defectively or vaguely as to give them
+the impression that the co-operation of the Bolshevist
+government was part of the program. They were also
+allowed to think that during the work of feeding the
+people the despatch of munitions and other military
+necessaries to Kolchak and his army would be discontinued.
+Naturally, the scheme, weighted with these two
+accompaniments, was unacceptable to Kolchak's representatives
+in Paris. But, strange to say, in the official
+notification which the plenipotentiaries telegraphed at the
+same time to the Admiral direct, neither of these obnoxious
+riders was included, so that the proposal assumed
+a different aspect.</p>
+
+<p>Another example of these singular tactics is supplied by
+their <i>pourparlers</i> with the Admiral's delegates about the
+future international status of Finland, whose help was
+then being solicited to free Petrograd from the Bolshevist
+yoke. The Finns insisted on the preliminary recognition
+of their complete independence by the Russians. Kolchak's
+representatives shrank from bartering any territories
+which had belonged to the state on their own sole
+responsibility. None the less, as the subject was being
+theoretically threshed out in all its bearings, the members
+of the Russian Council in Paris inquired of the Allies
+whether the Finns had at least renounced their pretensions
+to the province of Karelia. But the spokesmen of
+the Conference replied elusively, giving them no assurance
+that the claim had been relinquished. Thereupon they
+naturally concluded that the Finns either still maintained
+their demand or else had not yet modified their former
+decision on the matter, and they deemed it their duty to
+report in this sense to their chief. Yet the plenipotentiaries,
+in their message on the subject to Kolchak, which
+was sent about the same time, assured him that the annexation
+of Karelia was no longer insisted upon, and that
+the Finns would not again put forward the claim! One
+hardly knows what to think of tactics like these. In their
+talks with the spokesmen of certain border states of Russia
+the official representatives of the three European
+Powers at the Conference employed language that gave
+rise to misunderstandings which may have untoward consequences
+in the future. One would like to believe that
+these misunderstandings were caused by mere slips of the
+tongue, which should not have been taken literally by
+those to whom they were addressed; but in the meanwhile
+they have become not only the source of high, possibly
+delusive, hopes, but the basis of elaborate policies.
+For example, Esthonian and Lettish Ministers were given
+to understand that they would be permitted to send diplomatic
+legations to Petrograd as soon as Russia was reconstituted,
+a mode of intercourse which presupposes the
+full independence of all the countries concerned. A constitution
+was also drawn up for Esthonia by one of the
+Great Powers, which started with the postulate that each
+people was to be its own master. Consequently, the two
+nations in question were warranted in looking forward to
+receiving that complete independence. And if such was,
+indeed, the intention of the Great Powers, there is nothing
+further to be said on the score of straightforwardness or
+precision. But neither in the terms submitted to Kolchak
+nor in those to which his Paris agents were asked to give
+their assent was the independence of either country as
+much as hinted at.<a name="FNanchor_272_272" id="FNanchor_272_272" href="#Footnote_272_272" >[272]</a></p>
+
+<p>These may perhaps seem trivial details, but they enable
+us to estimate the methods and the organizing arts of the
+statesmen upon whose skill in resource and tact in dealing
+with their fellows depended the new synthesis of international
+life and ethics which they were engaged in realizing.
+It would be superfluous to investigate the effect
+upon the Russians, or, indeed, upon any of the peoples
+represented in Paris, of the Secret Council's conspirative
+deliberations and circuitous procedure, which were in
+such strong contrast to the &quot;open covenants openly
+arrived at&quot; to which in their public speeches they paid
+such high tribute.</p>
+
+<p>The main danger, which the Allies redoubted from failure
+to restore tranquillity in Russia, was that Germany
+might accomplish it and, owing to her many advantages,
+might secure a privileged position in the country and use
+it as a stepping-stone to material prosperity, military
+strength, and political ascendancy. This feat she could
+accomplish against considerable odds. She would achieve
+it easily if the Allies unwittingly helped her, as they were
+doing.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately the Allied governments had not much
+hope of succeeding. If they had been capable of elaborating
+a comprehensive plan, they no longer possessed the
+means of executing it. But they devised none. &quot;The
+fact is,&quot; one of the Conference leaders exclaimed, &quot;we
+have no policy toward Russia. Neither do we possess
+adequate data for one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They strove to make good this capital omission by
+erecting a paper wall between Germany and her great
+Slav neighbor. The plan was simple. The Teutons were
+to be compelled to disinterest themselves in the affairs of
+Russia, with whose destinies their own are so closely bound
+up. But they soon realized that such a partition is useless
+as a breakwater against the tidal wave of Teutondom,
+and Germany is still destined to play the part of Russia's
+steward and majordomo.</p>
+
+<p>How could it be otherwise? Germany and Russia are
+near neighbors. Their economic relations have been continuous
+for ages, and the Allies have made them indispensable
+in the future; Russia is ear-marked as Germany's
+best colony. The two peoples are become interdependent.
+The Teuton will recognize the Slav as an ally in economics,
+and will pay himself politically. Who will now thwart or
+check this process? Russia must live, and therefore buy
+and sell, barter and negotiate. Can a parchment treaty
+hinder or invalidate her dealings? Can it prevent an
+admixture of politics in commercial arrangements, seeing
+that they are but two aspects of one and the same transaction?
+It is worthy of note that a question which goes
+to the quick of the matter was never mooted. It is this:
+Is it an essential element of the future ordering of the world
+that Germany shall play no part whatever in its progress?
+Is it to be assumed that she will always content herself
+with being treated as the incorrigible enemy of civilization?
+And, if not, what do all these checks and barriers amount to?</p>
+
+<p>In Russia there are millions of Germans conversant
+with the language, laws, and customs of the people. Many
+of them have been settled there for generations. They
+are passionately attached to their race, and neither unfriendly
+nor useless to the country of their adoption. The
+trade, commerce, and industry of the European provinces
+are largely in their hands and in those of their forerunners
+and helpers, the Jews. The Russo-German and Jewish
+middlemen in the country have their faces ever turned
+toward the Fatherland. They are wont to buy and sell
+there. They always obtained their credit in Berlin, Dresden,
+or Frankfurt. They acted as commercial travelers,
+agents, brokers, bankers, for Russians and Germans. They
+are constantly going and coming between the two countries.
+How are these myriads to be fettered permanently
+and kept from eking out a livelihood in the future on the
+lines traced by necessity or interest in the past? The
+Russians, on their side, must live, and therefore buy and
+sell. Has the Conference or the League the right or power
+to dictate to them the persons or the people with whom
+alone they may have dealings? Can it narrow the field
+of Russia's political activities? Some people flatter themselves
+that it can. In this case the League of Nations
+must transform itself into an alliance for the suppression
+of the German race.</p>
+
+<p>Burning indignation and moral reprobation were the
+sentiments aroused among the high-minded Allies by the
+infamous Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. For that mockery of a
+peace, even coming from an enemy, transcended the
+bounds of human vengeance. It was justly anathematized
+by all Entente peoples as the loathsome creation of a
+frenzied people. But shortly afterward the Entente
+governments themselves, their turn having come, wrought
+what Russians of all parties regard as a political patchwork
+of variegated injustice more odious far, because
+its authors claimed to be considered as the devoted friends
+of their victims and the champions of right. Whereas
+the Brest-Litovsk Treaty provided for a federative Slav
+state, with provincial diets and a federal parliament, the
+system substituted by the Allies consisted in carving up
+Russia into an ever-increasing number of separate states,
+some of which cannot live by themselves, in debarring
+the inhabitants from a voice in the matter, in creating a
+permanent agency for foreign intervention, and ignoring
+Russia's right to reparation from the common enemy.
+The Russians were not asked even informally to say
+what they thought or felt about what was being done.
+This province and that were successively lopped off in a
+lordly way by statesmen who aimed at being classed as
+impartial dispensers of justice and sowers of the seeds
+of peace, but were unacquainted with the conditions and
+eschewed investigation. Here, at all events, the usual
+symptoms of hesitancy and procrastination were absent.
+Swift resolve and thoroughness marked the disintegrating
+action by which they unwittingly prepared the battlefields
+of the future.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody acquainted with Russian psychology imagines
+that the feelings of a high-souled people can be transformed
+by gifts of food, money, or munitions made to some of
+their fellow-countrymen. How little likely Russians are
+to barter ideal boons for material advantages may be
+gathered from an incident worth noting that occurred in
+the months of April and May, when the fall of the capital
+into the hands of the anti-Bolshevists was confidently
+expected.</p>
+
+<p>At that time, as it chanced, the one thing necessary
+for their success against Bolshevism was the capture of
+Petrograd. If that city, which, despite its cosmopolitan
+character, still retained its importance as the center of
+political Russia, could be wrested from the tenacious
+grasp of Lenin and Trotzky, the fall of the anarchist
+dictators was, people held, a foregone conclusion. The
+friends of Kolchak accordingly pressed every lever to set
+the machinery in motion for the march against Peter's
+city. And as, of all helpers, the Finns and Esthonians
+were admittedly the most efficacious, conversations
+were begun with their leaders. They were ready to
+drive a bargain, but it must be a hard and lucrative one.
+They would march on Petrograd for a price. The principal
+condition which they laid down was the express
+and definite recognition of their complete independence
+within frontiers which it would be unfruitful here to discuss.
+The Kolchak government was ready to treat
+with the Finnish Cabinet, as the <i>de facto</i> government,
+and to recognize Finland's present status for what it is
+in international law; but as they could not give what
+they did not possess, their recognition must, they explained,
+be like their own authority, provisional. A
+similar reply was made to the Esthonians; to this those
+peoples demurred. The Russians stood firm and the
+negotiations fell through. It is to be supposed that when
+they have recovered their former status they will prove
+more amenable to the blandishments of the Allies than
+they were to the powerful bribe dangled before their eyes
+by the Esthonians and the Finns?</p>
+
+<p>But if the improvised arrangements entailing dismemberment
+which the Great Powers imposed on Russia
+during her cataleptic trance are revised, as they may be,
+whenever she recovers consciousness and strength, what
+course will events then follow? If she seeks to regather
+under her wing some of the peoples whose complete
+independence the League of Nations was so eager to
+guarantee, will that body respond to the appeal of these
+and fly to their assistance? Russia, who has not been
+consulted, will not be as bound by the canons of the
+League, and one need not be a prophet to foretell the
+reluctance of Western armies to wage another war in
+order to prevent territories, of which some of the plenipotentiaries
+may have heard as little as of Teschen,
+becoming again integral parts of the Slav state. Europe
+may then see its political axis once more shifted and its
+outlook obscured. Thus the system of equilibrium,
+which was theoretically abolished by the Fourteen Points,
+may be re-established by the hundred and one economico-political
+changes which Russia's recovery will contribute
+to bring about.</p>
+
+<p>A decade is but a twinkling in the history of a nation.
+Within a few years Russia may once more be united.
+The army that will have achieved this feat will constitute
+a formidable weapon in the hands of the state
+that wields it. As everything, even military strength,
+is relative, and as the armies of the rest of Europe will not
+be impatient to fight in the East, and will therefore count
+for considerably less than their numbers, there will be no
+real danger of an invasion. Russia is a country easy to get
+into, but hard to get out of, and military success against
+its armies there would in verity be a victory without glory,
+annexation, indemnities, or other appreciable gains.</p>
+
+<p>It is hard to believe that the distinguished statesmen
+of the Conference took these eventualities fully into
+account before attempting to reshape amorphous Russia
+after their own vague ideal. But whether we assess their
+work by the standards of political science or of international
+ethics, or explain it as a series of well-meant
+expedients begotten by the practical logic of momentary
+convenience, we must confess that its gifted authors
+lacked a direct eye for the wayward tides of national
+and international movements; were, in fact, smitten by
+political blindness, and did the best they could in these
+distressing circumstances.</p>
+
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_260_260" id="Footnote_260_260" href="#FNanchor_260_260"> [260]</a> From whatever angle this Russian business is viewed, the policy of the
+Allies, if it can be dignified with that name, seems to be a compound of
+weakness, ineptitude, and shilly-shally.&quot;&mdash;Cf. <i>The Westminster Gazette</i>,
+July 5, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_261_261" id="Footnote_261_261" href="#FNanchor_261_261"> [261]</a> Cf. <i>Journal des D&eacute;bats</i>, August 13, 1919. Article by M. Auguste Gauvain.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_262_262" id="Footnote_262_262" href="#FNanchor_262_262"> [262]</a> There can be no doubt that the Bolshevist government under Lunatcharsky
+has made a point of furthering the arts, sciences, and elementary
+instruction. All reports from foreign travelers and from eminent Russians&mdash;one
+of these my university fellow-student, now perpetual secretary of
+the Academy&mdash;agree about this silver lining to a dark cloud.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_263_263" id="Footnote_263_263" href="#FNanchor_263_263"> [263]</a> This latter fact was doubtless known to the British government, which
+decided as early as March to recall the British troops from northern Russia.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_264_264" id="Footnote_264_264" href="#FNanchor_264_264"> [264]</a> I published the facts in <i>The Daily Telegraph</i>, April 21, and <i>The Public
+Ledger</i> of Philadelphia, April 10, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_265_265" id="Footnote_265_265" href="#FNanchor_265_265"> [265]</a> Colonel House is said to have dissociated himself from the President on
+this occasion.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_266_266" id="Footnote_266_266" href="#FNanchor_266_266"> [266]</a> It was sent at the end of October, 1918, and to my knowledge was not
+published in full.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_267_267" id="Footnote_267_267" href="#FNanchor_267_267"> [267]</a> Omsk, Ekaterinodar, Archangel, and the Crimea. The last-named disappeared
+soon afterward.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_268_268" id="Footnote_268_268" href="#FNanchor_268_268"> [268]</a> See Chapter IV &quot;Censorship and Secrecy,&quot; p. 132.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_269_269" id="Footnote_269_269" href="#FNanchor_269_269"> [269]</a> Pertinax in <i>L'Echo de Paris</i>, July 5, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_270_270" id="Footnote_270_270" href="#FNanchor_270_270"> [270]</a> This admission was made to a distinguished member of the Diplomatic
+Corps.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_271_271" id="Footnote_271_271" href="#FNanchor_271_271"> [271]</a> In <i>The Daily Telegraph</i>, June 19, 1919, and in <i>The Public Ledger</i> of
+Philadelphia.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_272_272" id="Footnote_272_272" href="#FNanchor_272_272"> [272]</a> In July M. Pichon told the Esthonian delegates that France recognized
+the independence of their country in principle. But this declaration was
+not taken seriously, either by the Russians or by the French.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI" />XI</h3>
+
+<h3>BOLSHEVISM</h3>
+
+
+<p>What is Bolshevism? A generic term that stands
+for a number of things which have little in common.
+It varies with the countries where it appears. In Russia
+it is the despotism of an organized and unscrupulous
+group of men in a disorganized community. It might also
+be termed the frenzy of a few epileptics running amuck
+among a multitude of paralytics. It is not so much a
+political doctrine or a socialist theory as a psychic disease
+of a section of the community which cannot be cured
+without leaving permanent traces and perhaps modifying
+certain organic functions of the society affected. For
+some students at a distance who make abstraction from
+its methods&mdash;as a critic appreciating the performance of
+&quot;Hamlet&quot; might make abstraction from the part of the
+Prince of Denmark&mdash;it is a modification of the theory of
+Karl Marx, the newest contribution to latter-day social
+science. In Russia, at any rate, the general condition of
+society from which it sprang was characterized not by
+the advance of social science, but by a psychic disorder the
+germs of which, after a century of incubation, were brought
+to the final phase of development by the war. In its
+origins it is a pathological phenomenon.</p>
+
+<p>Four and a half years of an unprecedented campaign
+which drained to exhaustion the financial and economic
+resources of the European belligerents upset the psychical
+equilibrium of large sections of their populations. Goaded
+by hunger and disease to lawless action, and no longer
+held back by legal deterrents or moral checks, they followed
+the instinct of self-preservation to the extent of
+criminal lawlessness. Familiarity with death and suffering
+dispelled the fear of human punishment, while
+numbness of the moral sense made them insensible to the
+less immediate restraints of a religious character. These
+phenomena are not unusual concomitants of protracted
+wars. History records numerous examples of the homecoming
+soldiery turning the weapons destined for the
+foreign foe against political parties or social classes in their
+own country. In other European communities for some
+time previously a tendency toward root-reaching and
+violent change was perceptible, but as the state retained
+its hold on the army it remained a tendency. In the
+case of Russia&mdash;the country where the state, more than
+ordinarily artificial and ill-balanced, was correspondingly
+weak&mdash;Fate had interpolated a blood-stained page of
+red and white terror in the years 1906-08. Although
+fitful, unorganized, and abortive, that wild splutter was
+one of the foretokens of the impending cataclysm, and
+was recognized as such by the writer of these pages.
+During the foregoing quarter of a century he had watched
+with interest the sowing of the dragon's teeth from which
+was one day to spring up a race of armed and frenzied
+men. Few observers, however, even in the Tsardom,
+gaged the strength or foresaw the effects of the anarchist
+propaganda which was being carried on suasively and
+perseveringly, oftentimes unwittingly, in the nursery, the
+school, the church, the university, and with eminent
+success in the army and the navy. Hence the widespread
+error that the Russian revolution was preceded by no
+such era of preparation as that of the encylopedists in
+France.</p>
+
+<p>Recently, however, publicists have gone to the other
+extreme and asserted that Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gorky,
+and a host of other Russian writers were apostles of the
+tenets which have since received the name of Bolshevism,
+and that it was they who prepared the Russian upheaval
+just as it was the authors of the &quot;Encyclopedia&quot; who
+prepared the French Revolution. In this sweeping form
+the statement is misleading. Russian literature during
+the reigns of the last three Tsars&mdash;with few exceptions,
+like the writings of Leskoff&mdash;was unquestionably a
+vehicle for the spread of revolutionary ideas. But it
+would be a gross exaggeration to assert that the end
+deliberately pursued was that form of anarchy which is
+known to-day as Bolshevism, or, indeed, genuine anarchy
+in any form. Tolstoy and Gorky may be counted among
+the forerunners of Bolshevism, but Dostoyevsky, whom I
+was privileged to know, was one of its keenest antagonists.
+Nor was it only anarchism that he combated. Like
+Leskoff, he was an inveterate enemy of political radicalism,
+and we university students bore him a grudge in consequence.
+In his masterly delineation<a name="FNanchor_273_273" id="FNanchor_273_273" href="#Footnote_273_273" >[273]</a> of a group of
+&quot;reformers,&quot; in particular of Verkhovensky&mdash;whom
+psychic tendency, intellectual anarchy, and political
+crime bring under the category of Bolshevists&mdash;he foreshadowed
+the logical conclusion, and likewise the political
+consummation, of the corrosive doctrines which in those
+days were associated with the name of Bakunin. In the
+year 1905-06, when the upshot of the conflict between
+Tsarism and the revolution was still doubtful, Count
+Witte and I often admired the marvelous intuition of the
+great novelist, whose gallery of portraits in the &quot;Devils&quot;
+seemed to have become suddenly endowed with life, and
+to be conspiring, shooting, and bomb-throwing in the
+streets of Moscow, Petersburg, Odessa, and Tiflis. The
+seeds of social revolution sown by the novelists, essayists,
+and professional guides of the nation were forced by the
+wars of 1904 and 1914 into rapid germination.</p>
+
+<p>As far back as the year 1892, in a work published over
+a pseudonym, the present writer described the rotten
+condition of the Tsardom, and ventured to foretell its
+speedy collapse.<a name="FNanchor_274_274" id="FNanchor_274_274" href="#Footnote_274_274" >[274]</a> The French historian Michelet wrote
+with intuition marred by exaggeration and acerbity:
+&quot;A barbarous force, a law-hating world, Russia sucks
+and absorbs all the poison of Europe and then gives it
+off in greater quantity and deadlier intensity. When
+we admit Russia, we admit the cholera, dissolution,
+death. That is the meaning of Russian propaganda.
+Yesterday she said to us, 'I am Christianity.' To-morrow
+she will say, 'I am socialism.' It is the revolting
+idea of a demagogy without an idea, a principle, a sentiment,
+of a people which would march toward the west
+with the gait of a blind man, having lost its soul and its
+will and killing at random, of a terrible automaton like a
+dead body which can still reach and slay.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It might commove Europe and bespatter it with blood,
+but that would not hinder it from plunging itself into
+nothingness in the abysmal ooze of definite dissolution.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Russia, then, led by domiciled aliens without a fatherland,
+may be truly said to have been wending steadily
+toward the revolutionary vortex long before the outbreak
+of hostilities. Her progress was continuous and perceptible.
+As far back as the year 1906 the late Count Witte
+and myself made a guess at the time-distance which the
+nation still had to traverse, assuming the rate of progress
+to be constant, before reaching the abyss. This, however,
+was mere guesswork, which one of the many possibilities&mdash;and
+in especial change in the speed-rate&mdash;might belie.
+In effect, events moved somewhat more quickly than we
+anticipated, and it was the World War and its appalling
+concomitants that precipitated the catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>As circumstances willed it, certain layers of the people
+of central Europe were also possessed by the revolutionary
+spirit at the close of the World War. In their case hunger,
+hardship, disease, and moral shock were the avenues along
+which it moved and reached them. This coincidence was
+fraught with results more impressive than serious. The
+governments of both these great peoples had long been
+the mainstays of monarchic tradition, military discipline,
+and the principle of authority. The Teutons, steadily
+pursuing an ideal which lay at the opposite pole to anarchy,
+had risked every worldly and well-nigh every spiritual
+possession to realize it. It was the hegemony of the
+world. This aspiration transfigured, possessed, fanaticized
+them. Teutondom became to them what Islam is
+to Mohammedans of every race, even when they shake
+off religion. They eschewed no means, however iniquitous,
+that seemed to lead to the goal. They ceased to be
+human in order to force Europe to become German.
+Offering up the elementary principles of morality on the
+altar of patriotism, they staked their all upon the single
+venture of the war. It was as the throw of a gambler
+playing for his soul with the Evil One. Yet the faith of
+these materialists waxed heroic withal, like their self-sacrifice.
+And in the fiery ardor of their enthusiasm, hard
+concrete facts were dissolved and set floating as illusions
+in the ambient mist. Their wishes became thoughts and
+their fears were dispelled as fancies. They beheld only
+what they yearned for, and when at last they dropped
+from the dizzy height of their castles in cloudland their
+whole world, era, and ideal was shattered. Unavailing
+remorse, impotent rage, spiritual and intense physical exhaustion
+completed their demoralization. The more harried
+and reckless among them became frenzied. Turning
+first against their rulers, then against one another, they
+finally started upon a work of wanton destruction relieved
+by no creative idea. It was at this time-point that they
+endeavored to join hands with their tumultuous Eastern
+neighbors, and that the one word &quot;Bolshevism&quot; connoted
+the revolutionary wave that swept over some of the Slav
+and German lands. But only for a moment. One may
+safely assert, as a general proposition, that the same
+undertaking, if the Germans and the Russians set their
+hands to it, becomes forthwith two separate enterprises,
+so different are the conceptions and methods of these two
+peoples. Bolshevism was almost emptied of its contents
+by the Germans, and little left of it but the empty shell.</p>
+
+<p>Comparisons between the orgasms of collective madness
+which accompanied the Russian welter, on the one hand,
+and the French Revolution, on the other, are unfruitful
+and often misleading. It is true that at the outset those
+spasms of delirium were in both cases violent reactions
+against abuses grown well-nigh unbearable. It is also a
+fact that the revolutionists derived their preterhuman
+force from historic events which had either denuded those
+abuses of their secular protection or inspired their victims
+with wonder-working faith in their power to sweep them
+away. But after this initial stage the likeness vanishes.
+The French Revolution, which extinguished feudalism as
+a system and the nobility as a privileged class, speedily
+ceased to be a mere dissolvent. In its latter phases it
+assumed a constructive character. Incidentally it created
+much that was helpful in substance if not beautiful in
+form, and from the beginning it adopted a positive doctrine
+as old as Christianity, but new in its application to
+the political sphere. Thus, although it uprooted quantities
+of wheat together with the tares, its general effect was
+to prepare the ground for a new harvest. It had a distinctly
+social purpose, which it partially realized. Nor
+should it be forgotten that in the psychological sphere it
+kindled a transient outburst of quasi-religious enthusiasm
+among its partizans, imbued them with apostolic zeal, inspired
+them with a marvelous spirit of self-abnegation,
+and nerved their arms to far-resonant exploits. And the
+forces which the revolution thus set free changed many of
+the forms of the European world, but without reshaping
+it after the image of the ideal.</p>
+
+<p>Has the withering blight known as Bolshevism any such
+redeeming traits to its credit account? The consensus of
+opinion down to the present moment gives an emphatic,
+if summary, answer in the negative. Every region over
+which it swept is blocked with heaps of unsightly ruins,
+It has depreciated all moral values. It passed like a tornado,
+spending its energies in demolition. Of construction
+hardly a trace has been discerned, even by indulgent
+explorers.<a name="FNanchor_275_275" id="FNanchor_275_275" href="#Footnote_275_275" >[275]</a> One might liken it to a so-called possession
+by the spirit of evil, wont of yore to use the human organs
+as his own for words of folly and deeds of iniquity. Bolshevism
+has operated uniformly as a quick solvent of the
+social organism. Doubtless European society in 1917
+sorely needed purging by drastic means, but only a fanatic
+would say that it deserved annihilation.</p>
+
+<p>It has been variously affirmed that the political leaven
+of these destructive ferments in eastern and central Europe
+was wholesome. Slavs and Germans, it is argued,
+stung by the bankruptcy of their political systems, resolved
+to alter them on the lines of universal suffrage and
+its corollaries, but were carried farther than they meant
+to go. This mild judgment is based on a very partial
+survey of the phenomena. The improvement in question
+was the work, not of the Bolshevists, but of their adversaries,
+the moderate reformers. And the political strivings
+of these had no organic nexus with the doctrine which
+emanated from the nethermost depths in which vengeful
+pariahs, outlaws, and benighted nihilists were floundering
+before suffocating in the ooze of anarchism. Neither can
+one discern any degree of kinship between Spartacists like
+Eichhorn or Lenin and moderate reformers as represented,
+say, by Theodor Wolff and Boris Savinkoff. The two
+pairs are sundered from each other by the distance that
+separates the social and the anti-social instinct. Those
+are vulgar iconoclasts, these are would-be world-builders.
+That the Russian, or, indeed, the German constitutional
+reformers should have hugged the delusion that
+while thrones were being hurled to the ground, and an
+epoch was passing away in violent convulsions, a few
+alterations in the electoral law would restore order and
+bring back normal conditions to the agonizing nations, is
+an instructive illustration of the blurred vision which characterizes
+contemporary statesmen. The Anglo-Saxon delegates
+at the Conference were under a similar delusion
+when they undertook to regenerate the world by a series
+of merely political changes.</p>
+
+<p>No one who has followed attentively the work of the
+constitution-makers in Weimar can have overlooked
+their readiness to adopt and assimilate the positive elements
+of a movement which was essentially destructive.
+In this respect they displayed a remarkable degree of open-mindedness
+and receptivity. They showed themselves
+avid of every contribution which they could glean from
+any source to the work of national reorganization, and
+even in Teutonized Bolshevism they apparently found
+helpful hints of timely innovations. One may safely
+hazard the prediction that these adaptations, however
+little they may be relished, are certain to spread to
+the Western peoples, who will be constrained to accept
+them in the long run, and Germany may end by becoming
+the economic leader of democratic Europe. The law of
+politico-social interchange and assimilation underlying
+this phenomenon, had it been understood by the statesmen
+of the Entente, might have rendered them less
+desirous of seeing the German organism tainted with the
+germs of dissolution. For what Germany borrows from
+Bolshevism to-day western Europe will borrow from
+Germany to-morrow. And foremost among the new
+institutions which the revolution will impose upon
+Europe is that of the Soviets, considerably modified in
+form and limited in functions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In the conception of the Soviet system,&quot; writes the
+most influential Jewish-German organ in Europe, &quot;there
+is assuredly something serviceable, and it behooves us to
+familiarize ourselves therewith. Psychologically, it rests
+upon the need felt by the working-man to be something
+more than a mere cog in the industrial mechanism. The
+first step would consist in conferring upon labor committees
+juridical functions consonant with latter-day
+requirements. These functions would extend beyond
+those exercised by the labor committees hitherto. How
+far they could go without rendering the industrial enterprise
+impossible is a matter for investigation.... This
+is not merely a wish of the extremists; it is a psychological
+requirement, and therefore it necessitates the establishment
+of a closer nexus between legislation and practical
+life which unhappily is become so complicated. And
+this need is not confined to the laboring class. It is
+universal. Therefore, what is good for the one is meet
+for the other.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_276_276" id="FNanchor_276_276" href="#Footnote_276_276" >[276]</a></p>
+
+<p>The Soviet system adapted to modern existence is one&mdash;and
+probably the sole&mdash;legacy of Bolshevism to the
+new age.</p>
+
+<p>During the Peace Conference Bolshevism played a
+large part in the world's affairs. By some of the eminent
+lawgivers there it was feared as a scourge; by others it
+was wielded as a weapon, and by a third set it was employed
+as a threat. Whenever a delegate of one of the
+lesser states felt that he was losing ground at the Peace
+Table, and that his country's demands were about to be
+whittled down as extravagant, he would point significantly
+to certain &quot;foretokens&quot; of an outbreak of Bolshevism
+in his country and class them as an inevitable consequence
+of the nation's disappointment. Thus the representative
+of nearly every state which had a territorial program
+declared that that program must be carried out if Bolshevism
+was to be averted there. &quot;This or else Bolshevism&quot;
+was the peroration of many a delegate's <i>expos&eacute;</i>.
+More redoubtable than political discontent was the proselytizing
+activity of the leaders of the movement in Russia.</p>
+
+<p>Of the two pillars of Bolshevism one is a Russian, the
+other a Jew, the former, Ulianoff (better known as Lenin),
+the brain; the other, Braunstein (called Trotzky), the
+arm of the sect. Trotzky is an unscrupulous despot, in
+whose veins flows the poison of malignity. His element
+is cruelty, his special gift is organizing capacity. Lenin
+is a Utopian, whose fanaticism, although extensive, has
+well-defined limits. In certain things he disagrees profoundly
+with Trotzky. He resembles a religious preacher
+in this, that he created a body of veritable disciples around
+himself. He might be likened to a pope with a college
+of international cardinals. Thus he has French, British,
+German, Austrian, Czech, Italian, Danish, Swedish,
+Japanese, Hindu, Chinese, Buryat, and many other followers,
+who are chiefs of proselytizing sections charged
+with the work of spreading the Bolshevik evangel throughout
+the globe, and are working hard to discharge their
+duties. Lenin, however, dissatisfied with the measures
+of success already attained, is constantly stimulating
+his disciples to more strenuous exertions. He shares
+with other sectarian chiefs who have played a prominent
+part in the world's history that indefinable quality which
+stirs emotional susceptibility and renders those who
+approach him more easily accessible to ideas toward
+which they began by manifesting repugnance. Lenin
+is credibly reported to have made several converts among
+his Western opponents.</p>
+
+<p>The plenipotentiaries, during the first four months,
+approached Bolshevism from a single direction, unvaried
+by the events which it generated or the modifications
+which it underwent. They tested it solely by its accidental
+bearings on the one aim which they were intent on
+securing&mdash;a formal and provisional resettlement of Europe
+capable of being presented to their respective parliaments
+as a fair achievement. With its real character, its manifold
+corollaries, its innovating tendencies over the social,
+political, and ethnical domain, they were for the time
+being unconcerned. Without the slightest reference to
+any of these considerations they were ready to find a
+place for it in the new state system with which they
+hoped to endow the world. More than once they were on
+the point of giving it official recognition. There was no
+preliminary testing, sifting, or examining by these empiricists,
+who, finding Bolshevism on their way, and discerning
+no facile means of dislodging or transforming it,
+signified their willingness under easy conditions to hallmark
+and incorporate it as one of the elements of the new
+ordering. From the crimes laid to its charge they were
+prepared to make abstraction. The barbarous methods
+to which it owed its very existence they were willing to
+consign to oblivion. And it was only a freak of circumstance
+that hindered this embodiment of despotism from
+beginning one of their accepted means of rendering the
+world safe for democracy.</p>
+
+<p>Political students outside the Conference, going farther
+into the matter, inquired whether there was any kernel
+of truth in the doctrines of Lenin, any social or political
+advantage in the practices of Braunstein (Trotzky), and
+the conclusions which they reached were negative.<a name="FNanchor_277_277" id="FNanchor_277_277" href="#Footnote_277_277" >[277]</a> But
+inquiries of this theoretical nature awakened no interest
+among the empiricists of the Supreme Council. For
+them Bolshevism meant nothing more than a group of
+politicians, who directed, or misdirected, but certainly
+represented the bulk of the Russian people, and who, if
+won over and gathered under the cloak of the Conference,
+would facilitate its task and bear witness to its triumph.
+This inference, drawn by keen observers from many
+countries and parties, is borne out by the curious admissions
+and abortive acts of the principal plenipotentiaries
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>In its milder manifestations on the social side Russian
+Bolshevism resembles communism, and may be described
+as a social revolution effected by depriving one set of
+people&mdash;the ruling and intelligent class&mdash;of power, property,
+and civil rights, putting another and less qualified
+section in their place, and maintaining the top-heavy
+structure by force ruthlessly employed. Far-reaching
+though this change undoubtedly is, it has no nexus with
+Marxism or kindred theories. Its proximate causes were
+many: such, for example, as the breakdown of a tyrannical
+system of government, state indebtedness so vast
+that it swallowed up private capital, the depreciation of
+money, and the corresponding appreciation of labor. It
+is fair, therefore, to say that a rise in the cost of production
+and the temporary substitution of one class for
+another mark the extent to which political forces revolutionized
+the social fabric. Beyond these limits they did
+not go. The notion had been widespread in most countries,
+and deep-rooted in Russia, that a political upheaval
+would effect a root-reaching and lasting alteration in the
+forces of social development. It was adopted by Lenin,
+a fanatic of the Robespierre type, but far superior to
+Robespierre in will-power, insight, resourcefulness, and
+sincerity, who, having seized the reins of power, made the
+experiment.</p>
+
+<p>It is no easy matter to analyze Lenin's economic policy,
+because of the veil of mist that conceals so much of Russian
+contemporary history. Our sources are confined to
+the untrustworthy statements of a censored press and
+travelers' tales.</p>
+
+<p>But it is common knowledge that the Bolshevist dictator
+requisitioned and &quot;nationalized&quot; the banks, took
+factories, workshops, and plants from their owners and
+handed them over to the workmen, deprived landed proprietors
+of their estates, and allowed peasants to appropriate
+them. It is in the matter of industry, however,
+that his experiment is most interesting as showing the
+practical value of Marxism as a policy and the ability
+of the Bolsheviki to deal with delicate social problems.
+The historic decree issued by the Moscow government on
+the nationalization of industry after the opening experiment
+had broken down contains data enough to enable
+one to affirm that Lenin himself judged Marxism inapplicable
+even to Russia, and left it where he had found it&mdash;among
+the ideals of a millennial future. That ukase
+ordered the gradual nationalization of all private industries
+with a capital of not less than one million rubles,
+but allowed the owners to enjoy the gratuitous usufruct
+of the concern, provided that they financed and carried
+it on as before. Consequently, although in theory the
+business was transferred to the state, in reality the
+capitalist retained his place and his profits as under the
+old system. Consequently, the principal aims of socialism,
+which are the distribution of the proceeds of
+industry among the community and the retention of a
+certain surplus by the state, were missed. In the Bolshevist
+procedure the state is wholly eliminated except for
+the purpose of upholding a fiction. It receives nothing
+from the capitalist, not even a royalty.</p>
+
+<p>The Slav is a dreamer whose sense of the real is
+often defective. He loses himself in vague generalities
+and pithless abstractions. Thus, before opening
+a school he will spin out a theory of universal education,
+and then bemoan his lack of resources to realize
+it. True, many of the chiefs of the sect&mdash;for it
+is undoubtedly a sect when it is not a criminal conspiracy,
+and very often it is both&mdash;were not Slavs,
+but Jews, who, for the behoof of their kindred, dropped
+their Semitic names and adopted sonorous Slav substitutes.
+But they were most unscrupulous peculators, incapable
+of taking an interest in the scientific aspect of
+such matters, and hypnotized by the dreams of lucre which
+the opportunity evoked. One has only to call to mind
+some of the shabby transactions in which the Semitic
+Dictator of Hungary, Kuhn, or Cohen, and Braunstein
+(Trotzky) of Petrograd, took an active part. The former
+is said to have offered for sale the historic crown of
+St. Stephen of Hungary&mdash;which to him was but a plain
+gold headgear adorned with precious stones and a jeweled
+cross&mdash;to an old curiosity dealer of Munich,<a name="FNanchor_278_278" id="FNanchor_278_278" href="#Footnote_278_278" >[278]</a> and when
+solemnly protesting that he was living only for the Soviet
+Republic and was ready to die for it, he was actively engaged
+in smuggling out of Hungary into Switzerland fifty
+million kronen bonds, thirty-five kilograms of gold, and
+thirty chests filled with objects of value.<a name="FNanchor_279_279" id="FNanchor_279_279" href="#Footnote_279_279" >[279]</a> His colleague
+Szamuelly's plunder is a matter of history.</p>
+
+<p>To such adventurers as those science is a drug. They
+are primitive beings impressible mainly to concrete motives
+of the barest kind. The dupes of Lenin were people
+of a different type. Many of them fancied that the great
+political clash must inevitably result in an equally great
+and salutary social upheaval. This assumption has not
+been borne out by events.</p>
+
+<p>Those fanatics fell into another error; they were in a
+hurry, and would fain have effected their great transformation
+as by the waving of a magician's wand. Impatient
+of gradation, they scorned to traverse the distance between
+the point of departure and that of the goal, and by
+way of setting up the new social structure without delay,
+they rolled away all hindrances regardless of consequences.
+In this spirit of absolutism they abolished the services
+of the national debt, struck out the claims of Russia's
+creditors to their capital or interest, and turned the shops
+and factories over to labor boards. That was the initial
+blunder which the ukase alluded to was subsequently
+issued to rectify. But it was too late. The equilibrium
+of the forces of production had been definitely upset and
+could no longer be righted.</p>
+
+<p>One of the basic postulates of profitable production is
+the equilibrium of all its essential factors&mdash;such as the
+laborer's wages, the cost of the machinery and the material,
+the administration. Bring discord into the harmony
+and the entire mechanism is out of gear.</p>
+
+<p>The Russian workman, who is at bottom an illiterate
+peasant with the old roots of serfdom still clinging to him,
+has seldom any bowels for his neighbor and none at all for
+his employer. &quot;God Himself commands us to despoil
+such gentry,&quot; is one of his sayings. He is in a hurry to
+enrich himself, and he cares about nothing else. Nor can
+he realize that to beggar his neighbors is to impoverish
+himself. Hence he always takes and never gives; as a
+peasant he destroys the forests, hewing trees and planting
+none, and robs the soil of its fertility. On analogous lines
+he would fain deal with the factories, exacting exorbitant
+wages that eat up all profit, and na&iuml;vely expecting the
+owner to go on paying them as though he were the trustee
+of a fund for enriching the greedy. The only people to
+profit by the system, and even they only transiently, were
+the manual laborers. The bulk of the skilled, intelligent,
+and educated artisans were held up to contempt and ostracized,
+or killed as an odious aristocracy. That, it has
+been aptly pointed out,<a name="FNanchor_280_280" id="FNanchor_280_280" href="#Footnote_280_280" >[280]</a> is far removed from Marxism.
+The Marxist doctrine postulates the adhesion of intelligent
+workers to the social revolution, whereas the Russian
+experimenters placed them in the same category as the
+capitalists, the aristocrats, and treated them accordingly.
+Another Marxist postulate not realized in Russia was that
+before the state could profitably proceed to nationalization
+the country must have been in possession of a well-organized,
+smooth-running industrial mechanism. And
+this was possible only in those lands in which capitalism
+had had a long and successful innings, not in the great
+Slav country of husbandmen.</p>
+
+<p>By way of glozing over these incongruities Lenin's ukase
+proclaimed that the measures enacted were only provisional,
+and aimed at enabling Russia to realize the great
+transformation by degrees. But the impression conveyed
+by the history of the social side of Lenin's activity is that
+Marxism, whether as understood by its author or as interpreted
+and twisted by its Russian adherents, has been
+tried and found impracticable. One is further warranted
+in saying that neither the visionary workers who are moved
+by misdirected zeal for social improvement nor the theorists
+who are constantly on the lookout for new and
+stimulating ideas are likely to discover in Russian Bolshevism
+any aspect but the one alluded to above worthy
+of their serious consideration.</p>
+
+<p>A much deeper mark was made on the history of the
+century by its methods.</p>
+
+<p>Compared with the soul-searing horrors let loose during
+the Bolshevist fit of frenzy, the worst atrocities recorded
+of Deputy Carrier and his noyades during the French
+Revolution were but the freaks of compassionate human
+beings. In Bolshevist Russia brutality assumed forms
+so monstrous that the modern man of the West shrinks
+from conjuring up a faint picture of them in imagination.
+Tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands were done to death
+in hellish ways by the orders of men and of women.
+Eyes were gouged out, ears hacked off, arms and legs torn
+from the body in presence of the victims' children or wives,
+whose agony was thus begun before their own turn came.
+Men and women and infants were burned alive. Chinese
+executioners were specially hired to inflict the awful torture
+of the &quot;thousand slices.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_281_281" id="FNanchor_281_281" href="#Footnote_281_281" >[281]</a> Officers had their limbs
+broken and were left for hours in agonies. Many victims
+are credibly reported to have been buried alive. History,
+from its earliest dawn down to the present day, has recorded
+nothing so profoundly revolting as the nameless
+cruelties in which these human fiends reveled. One gruesome
+picture of the less loathsome scenes enacted will live
+in history on a level with the <i>noyades</i> of Nantes. I have
+seen several moving descriptions of it in Russian journals.
+The following account is from the pen of a French marine
+officer:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We have two armed cruisers outside Odessa. A few
+weeks ago one of them, having an investigation to make,
+sent a diver down to the bottom. A few minutes passed
+and the alarm signal was heard. He was hauled up and
+quickly relieved of his accoutrements. He had fainted
+away. When he came to, his teeth were chattering and
+the only articulate sounds that could be got from him were
+the words: 'It is horrible! It is awful!' A second diver
+was then lowered, with the same procedure and a like result.
+Finally a third was chosen, this time a sturdy lad
+of iron nerves, and sent down to the bottom of the sea.
+After the lapse of a few minutes the same thing happened
+as before, and the man was brought up. This time, however,
+there was no fainting fit to record. On the contrary,
+although pale with terror, he was able to state that he
+had beheld the sea-bed peopled with human bodies standing
+upright, which the swaying of the water, still sensible
+at this shallow depth, softly rocked as though they were
+monstrous alg&aelig;, their hair on end bristling vertically, and
+their arms raised toward the surface.... All these corpses,
+anchored to the bottom by the weight of stones, took on
+an appearance of eerie life resembling, one might say, a
+forest of trees moved from side to side by the wind and
+eager to welcome the diver come down among them....
+There were, he added, old men, children numerous beyond
+count, so that one could but compare them to the
+trees of a forest.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_282_282" id="FNanchor_282_282" href="#Footnote_282_282" >[282]</a></p>
+
+<p>From published records it is known that the Bolshevist
+thugs, when tired of using the rifle, the machine-gun, the
+cord, and the bayonet, expedited matters by drowning
+their victims by hundreds in the Black Sea, in the Gulf of
+Finland, and in the great rivers. Submarine cemeteries
+was the name given to these last resting-places of some of
+Russia's most high-minded sons and daughters.<a name="FNanchor_283_283" id="FNanchor_283_283" href="#Footnote_283_283" >[283]</a> It is
+not in the French Revolution that those deeds of wanton
+destruction and revolting cruelty which are indissolubly
+associated with Bolshevism find a parallel, but in Chinese
+history, which offers a striking and curious prefiguration
+of the Leninist structure.<a name="FNanchor_284_284" id="FNanchor_284_284" href="#Footnote_284_284" >[284]</a> Toward the middle of the
+tenth century, when the empire was plunged in dire confusion,
+a mystical sect was formed there for the purpose
+of destroying by force every vestige of the traditional
+social fabric, and establishing a system of complete
+equality without any state organization whatever, after
+the manner advocated by Leo Tolstoy. Some of the dicta
+of these sectarians have a decidedly Bolshevist flavor.
+This, for example: &quot;Society rests upon law, property,
+religion, and force. But law is injustice and chicane;
+property is robbery and extortion; religion is untruth,
+and force is iniquity.&quot; In those days Chinese political
+parties were at strife with each other, and none of them
+scorned any means, however brutal, to worst its adversaries,
+but for a long while they were divided among themselves
+and without a capable chief.</p>
+
+<p>At last the Socialist party unexpectedly produced a
+leader, Wang Ngan Shen, a man of parts, who possessed
+the gift of drawing and swaying the multitude. Of agreeable
+presence, he was resourceful and unscrupulous, soon
+became popular, and even captivated the Emperor,
+Shen Tsung, who appointed him Minister. He then set
+about applying his tenets and realizing his dreams.
+Wang Ngan Shen began by making commerce and trade
+a state monopoly, just as Lenin had done, &quot;in order,&quot;
+he explained, &quot;to keep the poor from being devoured by
+the rich.&quot; The state was proclaimed the sole owner of
+all the wealth of the soil; agricultural overseers were
+despatched to each district to distribute the land among
+the peasants, each of these receiving as much as he and
+his family could cultivate. The peasant obtained also
+the seed, but this he was obliged to return to the state
+after the ingathering of the harvest. The power of the
+overseer went farther; it was he who determined what
+crops the husbandman might sow and who fixed day by
+day the price of every salable commodity in the district.
+As the state reserved to itself the right to buy all agricultural
+produce, it was bound in return to save up a
+part of the profits to be used for the benefit of the people
+in years of scarcity, and also at other times to be employed
+in works needed by the community. Wang Ngan Shen
+also ordained that only the wealthy should pay taxes,
+the proceeds of which were to be employed in relieving
+the wants of the poor, the old, and the unemployed.
+The theory was smooth and attractive.</p>
+
+<p>For over thirty years those laws are said to have
+remained in force, at any rate on paper. To what extent
+they were carried out is problematical. Probably a beginning
+was actually made, for during Wang's tenure of
+office confusion was worse confounded than before, and
+misery more intense and widespread. The opposition
+to his r&eacute;gime increased, spread, and finally got the upper
+hand. Wang Ngan Shen was banished, together with
+those of his partizans who refused to accept the return to
+the old system. Such would appear to have been the
+first appearance of Bolshevism recorded in history.</p>
+
+<p>Another less complete parallel, not to the Bolshevist
+theory, but to the plight of the country which it ruined,
+may be found in the Chinese rebellion organized in the year
+1850 by a peasant<a name="FNanchor_285_285" id="FNanchor_285_285" href="#Footnote_285_285" >[285]</a> who, having become a Christian,
+fancied himself called by God to regenerate his people.
+He accordingly got together a band of stout-hearted
+fellows whom he fanaticized, disciplined, and transformed
+into the nucleus of a strong army to which brigands,
+outlaws, and malcontents of every social layer afterward
+flocked. They overran the Yangtse Valley, invaded
+twelve of the richest provinces, seized six hundred cities
+and towns, and put an end to twenty million people in
+the space of twelve years by fire, sword, and famine.<a name="FNanchor_286_286" id="FNanchor_286_286" href="#Footnote_286_286" >[286]</a>
+To this bloody expedition Hung Sew Tseuen, a master
+of modern euphemism, gave the name of Crusade of the
+Great Peace. For twelve years this &quot;Crusade&quot; lasted,
+and it might have endured much longer had it not been
+for the help given by outsiders. It was there that
+&quot;Chinese&quot; Gordon won his laurels and accomplished a
+beneficent work.</p>
+
+<p>There were politicians at the Conference who argued
+that Russia, being in a position analogous to that of
+China in 1854, ought, like her, to be helped by the Great
+Powers. It was, they held, quite as much in the interests
+of Europe as in hers. But however forcible their arguments,
+they encountered an insurmountable obstacle in
+the fear entertained by the chiefs of the leading governments
+lest the extreme oppositional parties in their
+respective countries should make capital out of the move
+and turn them out of office. They invoked the interests
+of the cause of which they were the champions for declining
+to expose themselves to any such risk. It has been
+contended with warmth, and possibly with truth, that if
+at the outset the Great Powers had intervened they might
+with a comparatively small army have crushed Bolshevism
+and re-established order in Russia. On the other hand,
+it was objected that even heavy guns will not destroy
+ideas, and that the main ideas which supplied the revolutionary
+movement with vital force were too deeply
+rooted to have been extirpated by the most formidable
+foreign army. That is true. But these ideas were not
+especially characteristic of Bolshevism. Far from that,
+they were incompatible with it: the bestowal of land
+on the peasants, an equitable reform of the relations
+between workmen and employers, and the abolition of
+the hereditary principle in the distribution of everything
+that confers an unfair advantage on the individual or
+the class are certainly not postulates of Lenin's party.
+It is a tenable proposition that timely military assistance
+would have enabled the constructive elements of Russia
+to restore conditions of normal life, but the worth of
+timeliness was never realized by the heads of the governments
+who undertook to make laws for the world. They
+ignored the maxim that a statesman, when applying
+measures, must keep his eye on the clock, inasmuch as the
+remedy which would save a nation at one moment may
+hasten its ruin at another.</p>
+
+<p>The expedients and counter-expedients to which the
+Conference had recourse in their fitful struggles with
+Bolshevism were so many surprises to every one concerned,
+and were at times redolent of comedy. But
+what was levity and ignorance on the part of the delegates
+meant death, and worse than death, to tens of thousands of
+their prot&eacute;g&eacute;es. In Russia their agents zealously egged
+on the order-loving population to rise up against the
+Bolsheviki and attack their strong positions, promising
+them immediate military help if they succeeded. But
+when, these exploits having been duly achieved, the agents
+were asked how soon the foreign reinforcements might
+be expected, they replied, calling for patience. After
+a time the Bolsheviki assailed the temporary victors,
+generally defeated them, and then put a multitude of
+defenseless people to the sword. Deplorable incidents
+of this nature, which are said to have occurred several
+times during the spring of 1919, shook the credit of the
+Allies, and kindled a feeling of just resentment among
+all classes of Russians.</p>
+
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_273_273" id="Footnote_273_273" href="#FNanchor_273_273"> [273]</a> In the <i>Biessy</i> (Devils).</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_274_274" id="Footnote_274_274" href="#FNanchor_274_274"> [274]</a> <i>Russian Characteristics</i>, by E.B. Lanin (Eblanin, a Russian word
+which means native of Dublin, Eblana).</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_275_275" id="Footnote_275_275" href="#FNanchor_275_275"> [275]</a> Educational reforms have been mentioned among its achievements and
+attributed to Lunatcharsky. That he exerted himself to spread elementary
+instruction must be admitted. But this progress and the effective protection
+and encouragement which he has undoubtedly extended to arts and
+sciences would seem to exhaust the list of items in the credit account of the
+Bolshevist r&eacute;gime.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_276_276" id="Footnote_276_276" href="#FNanchor_276_276"> [276]</a> <i>Frankfurter Zeitung</i>, February 28, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_277_277" id="Footnote_277_277" href="#FNanchor_277_277"> [277]</a> A succinct but interesting study of this question appeared in the <i>Handels-Zeitung</i>
+of the <i>Berliner Tageblatt</i>, over the signature of Dr. Felix
+Pinner, July 20, 1918.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_278_278" id="Footnote_278_278" href="#FNanchor_278_278"> [278]</a> Cf. <i>Bonsoir</i>, July 29, 1919. The price was not fixed, but the minimum
+was specified. It was one hundred thousand kronen.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_279_279" id="Footnote_279_279" href="#FNanchor_279_279"> [279]</a> Cf. <i>Der Tag</i>, Vienna, August 13, 1919. <i>L'Echo de Paris</i>, August 15, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_280_280" id="Footnote_280_280" href="#FNanchor_280_280"> [280]</a> By Dr. F. Pinner, H. Vorst, and others.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_281_281" id="Footnote_281_281" href="#FNanchor_281_281"> [281]</a> The condemned man is tied to a post or a cross, his mouth gagged, and
+the execution is made to last several hours. It usually begins with a slit
+on the forehead and the pulling down of the skin toward the chin. After
+the lapse of a certain time the nose is severed from the face. An interval
+follows, then an ear is lopped off, and so the devilish work goes on with
+long pauses. The skill of the executioner is displayed in the length of time
+during which the victim remains conscious.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_282_282" id="Footnote_282_282" href="#FNanchor_282_282"> [282]</a> Cf. <i>Le Figaro</i>, February 18, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_283_283" id="Footnote_283_283" href="#FNanchor_283_283"> [283]</a> I do not suggest that these crimes were ordered by Lenin. But it will
+not be gainsaid that neither he nor his colleagues punished the mass murderers
+or even protested against their crimes. Neither can it be maintained
+that massacres were confined to any one party.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_284_284" id="Footnote_284_284" href="#FNanchor_284_284"> [284]</a> This pre-Bolshevist movement is described in an interesting study on
+the socialist movement and systems, down to the year 1848, by El. Luzatto.
+Cf. <i>Der Bund</i>, August 16, 1918.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_285_285" id="Footnote_285_285" href="#FNanchor_285_285"> [285]</a> Hung Sew Tseuen. The rebellion lasted from 1850 to 1864.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_286_286" id="Footnote_286_286" href="#FNanchor_286_286"> [286]</a> The superb city of Nankin, with its temples and porcelain towers, was
+destroyed.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII" />XII</h3>
+
+<h3>HOW BOLSHEVISM WAS FOSTERED</h3>
+
+
+<p>The Allies, then, might have solved the Bolshevist
+problem by making up their minds which of the two
+alternative politics&mdash;war against, or tolerance of, Bolshevism&mdash;they
+preferred, and by taking suitable action in
+good time. If they had handled the Russian tangle with
+skill and repaid a great sacrifice with a small one before
+it was yet too late, they might have hoped to harvest in
+abundant fruits in the fullness of time. But they belonged
+to the class of the undecided, whose members continually
+suffer from the absence of a middle word between yes and
+no, connoting what is neither positive nor negative.
+They let the opportunity slip. Not only did they withhold
+timely succor to either side, but they visited some of
+the most loyal Russians in western Europe with the utmost
+rigor of coercion laws. They hounded them down as
+enemies. They cooped them up in cages as though they
+were Teuton enemies. They encircled them with barbed
+wire. They kept many of them hungry and thirsty,
+deprived them of life's necessaries for days, and in some
+cases reduced the discontented&mdash;and who in their place
+would not be discontented?&mdash;to pick their food in dustbins
+among garbage and refuse. I have seen officers and
+men in France who had shed their blood joyfully for the
+Entente cause gradually converted to Bolshevism by the
+misdeeds of the Allied authorities. In whose interests?
+With what helpful results?</p>
+
+<p>I watched the development of anti-Ententism among
+those Russians with painful interest, and in favorable
+conditions for observation, and I say without hesitation
+that rancor against the Allies burns as vehemently and
+intensely among the anti-Bolshevists as among their adversaries.
+&quot;My country as a whole is bitterly hostile
+to her former allies,&quot; exclaimed an eminent Russian,
+&quot;for as soon as she had rendered them inestimable services,
+at the cost of her political existence, they turned
+their backs upon her as though her agony were no affair
+of theirs. To-day the nation is divided on many issues.
+Dissensions and quarrels have riven and shattered it into
+shreds. But in one respect Russia is still united&mdash;in the
+vehemence of her sentiment toward the Allies, who first
+drained her life-blood and then abandoned her prostrate
+body to beasts of prey. Some part of the hatred engendered
+might have been mitigated if representatives of the
+provisional Russian government had been admitted to
+the Conference. A statesman would have insisted upon
+opening at least this little safety-valve. It would have
+helped and could not have harmed the Allies. It would
+have bound the Russians to them. For Russia's delegates,
+the men sent or empowered by Kolchak and his
+colleagues to represent them, would have been the exponents
+of a helpless community hovering between life
+and death. They could and would have gone far toward
+conciliating the world-dictators, to whose least palatable
+decisions they might have hesitated to offer unbending
+opposition. And this acquiescence, however provisional,
+would have tended to relieve the Allies of a sensible part
+of their load of responsibility. It would also have linked
+the Russians, loosely, perhaps, but perceptibly, to the
+Western Powers. It would have imparted a settled
+Ententophil direction to Kolchak's policy, and communicated
+it to the nation. In short, it might have dispelled
+some of the storm-clouds that are gathering in the
+east of Europe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the Allies, true to their wont of drifting, put off
+all decisive action, and let things slip and slide, for the
+Germans to put in order. There were no Russians,
+therefore, at the Conference, and there lies no obligation
+on any political group or party in the anarchist Slav state
+to hold to the Allies. But it would be an error to imagine
+that they have a white sheet of paper on which to trace
+their line of action and write the names of France and
+Britain as their future friends. They are filled with
+angry disgust against these two ex-Allies, and of the two
+the feeling against France is especially intense.<a name="FNanchor_287_287" id="FNanchor_287_287" href="#Footnote_287_287" >[287]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is a truism to repeat in a different form what Messrs.
+Lloyd George and Wilson repeatedly affirmed, but apparently
+without realizing what they said: that the peace
+which they regard as the crowning work of their lives
+deserves such value as it may possess from the assumption
+that Russia, when she recovers from her cataleptic fit,
+will be the ally of the Powers that have dismembered her.
+If this postulate should prove erroneous, Germany may
+form an anti-Allied league of a large number of nations
+which it would be invidious to enumerate here. But it is
+manifest that this consummation would imperil Poland,
+Czechoslovakia, and Jugoslavia, and sweep away the last
+vestiges of the peace settlement. And although it would
+be rash to make a forecast of the policy which new Russia
+will strike out, it would be impolitic to blink the conclusions
+toward which recent events significantly point.</p>
+
+<p>In April a Russian statesman said to me: &quot;The Allied
+delegates are unconsciously thrusting from them the only
+means by which they can still render peace durable and a
+fellowship of the nations possible. Unwittingly they are
+augmenting the forces of Bolshevism and raising political
+enemies against themselves. Consider how they are behaving
+toward us. Recently a number of Russian prisoners
+escaped from Germany to Holland, whereupon the
+Allied representatives packed them off by force and against
+their will to Dantzig, to be conveyed thence to Libau,
+where they have become recruits of the Bolshevist Red
+Guards. Those men might have been usefully employed
+in the Allied countries, to whose cause they were devoted,
+but so exasperated were they at their forcible removal to
+Libau that many of them declared that they would join
+the Bolshevist forces.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Even our official representatives are seemingly included
+in the category of suspects. Our Minister in
+Peking was refused the right of sending ciphered telegrams
+and our charg&eacute; d'affaires in a European capital suffered
+the same deprivation, while the Bolshevist envoy enjoyed
+this diplomatic privilege. A councilor of embassy in one
+Allied country was refused a passport visa for another
+until he declared that if the refusal were upheld he would
+return a high order which for extraordinary services
+he had received from the government whose embassy
+was vetoing his visa. On the national festival of a certain
+Allied country the charg&eacute; d'affaires of Russia was the
+only member of the diplomatic corps who received no
+official invitation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>One day in January, when a crowd had gathered on the
+Quai d'Orsay, watching the delegates from the various
+countries&mdash;British, American, Italian, Japanese, Rumanian,
+etc.&mdash;enter the stately palace to safeguard the
+interests of their respective countries and legislate for
+the human race, a Russian officer passed, accompanied
+by an illiterate soldier who had seen hard service first
+under the Grand Duke Nicholas, and then in a Russian
+brigade in France. The soldier gazed wistfully at the
+palace, then, turning to the officer, asked, &quot;Are they
+letting any of our people in there?&quot; The officer answered,
+evasively: &quot;They are thinking it over. Perhaps they
+will.&quot; Whereupon his attendant blurted out: &quot;Thinking
+it over! What thinking is wanted? Did we not fight
+for them till we were mowed down like grass? Did not
+millions of Russian bodies cover the fields, the roads, and
+the camps? Did we not face the German great guns with
+only bayonets and sticks? Have we done too little for
+them? What more could we have done to be allowed in
+there with the others? I fought since the war began, and
+was twice wounded. My five brothers were called up at
+the same time as myself, and all five have been killed, and
+now the Russians are not wanted! The door is shut in
+our faces....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sooner or later Russian anarchy, like that of China,
+will come to an end, and the leaders charged with the
+reconstitution of the country, if men of knowledge, patriotism,
+and character, will adopt a program conducive
+to the well-being of the nation. To what extent, one
+may ask, is its welfare compatible with the <i>status quo</i>
+in eastern Europe, which the Allies, distracted by conflicting
+principles and fitful impulse, left or created
+and hope to perpetuate by means of a parchment instrument?</p>
+
+<p>The zeal with which the French authorities went to
+work to prevent the growth of Bolshevism in their country,
+especially among the Russians there, is beyond dispute.
+Unhappily it proved inefficacious. Indeed, it is
+no exaggeration to say that it defeated its object and
+produced the contrary effect. For attention was so completely
+absorbed by the aim that no consideration remained
+over for the means of attaining it. A few concrete
+examples will bring this home to the reader. The
+following narratives emanate from an eminent Russian,
+who is devoted to the Allies.</p>
+
+<p>There were scores of thousands of Russian troops in
+France. Most of them fought valiantly, others half-heartedly,
+and a few refused to fight at all. But instead
+of making distinctions the French authorities, moved
+by the instinct of self-preservation, and preferring prevention
+to cure, tarred them all with the same brush.
+&quot;Give a dog a bad name and hang him,&quot; says the proverb,
+and it was exemplified in the case of the Russians, who
+soon came to be regarded as a <i>tertium quid</i> between enemies
+of public order and suspicious neutrals. They were profoundly
+mistrusted. Their officers were deprived of their
+authority over their own men and placed under the command
+of excellent French officers, who cannot be blamed
+for not understanding the temper of the Slavs nor for
+rubbing them against the grain. The privates, seeing
+their superiors virtually degraded, concluded that they
+had forfeited their claim to respect, and treated them
+accordingly. That gave the death-blow to discipline.
+The officers, most of whom were devoted heart and soul
+to the cause of the Allies, with which they had fondly
+identified their own, lost heart. After various attempts
+to get themselves reinstated, their feelings toward the
+nation, which was nowise to blame for the excessive zeal
+of its public servants, underwent a radical change.
+Blazing indignation consumed whatever affection they
+had originally nurtured for the French, and in many
+cases also for the other Allies, and they went home to communicate
+their animus to their countrymen. The soldiers,
+who now began to be taunted and vilipended as Boches,
+threw all discipline to the winds and, feeling every hand
+raised against them, resolved to raise their hands against
+every man. These were the beginnings of the process of
+&quot;bolshevization.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This anti-Russian spirit grew intenser as time lapsed.
+Thousands of Russian soldiers were sent out to work for
+private employers, not by the War Ministry, but by
+the Ministry of Agriculture, under whom they were
+placed. They were fed and paid a wage which under
+normal circumstances should have contented them, for
+it was more than they used to receive in pre-war days in
+their own country. But the circumstances were not
+normal. Side by side with them worked Frenchmen,
+many of whom were unable physically to compete with
+the sturdy peasants from Perm and Vyatka. And when
+propagandists pointed out to them that the French worker
+was paid 100 per cent. more, they brooded over the
+inequality and labeled it as they were told. For overwork,
+too, the rate of pay was still more unequal. One
+result of this differential treatment was the estrangement
+of the two races as represented by the two classes of workmen,
+and the growth of mutual dislike. But there was
+another. When they learned, as they did in time, that
+the employer was selling the produce of their labor at a
+profit of 400 and 500 per cent., they had no hesitation
+about repeating the formulas suggested to them by
+socialist propagandists: &quot;We are working for bloodsuckers.
+The bourgeois must be exterminated.&quot; In
+this way bitterness against the Allies and hatred of the
+capitalists were inculcated in tens of thousands of Russians
+who a few months before were honest, simple-minded
+peasants and well-disciplined soldiers. Many of
+these men, when they returned to their country, joined
+the Red Guards of Bolshevism with spontaneous ardor.
+They needed no pressing.</p>
+
+<p>There was one young officer of the Guards, in particular,
+named G&mdash;&mdash;, who belonged to a very good family and
+was an exceptionally cultured gentleman. Music was his
+recreation, and he was a virtuoso on the violin. In the
+war he had distinguished himself first on the Russian
+front and then on the French. He had given of his best,
+for he was grievously wounded, had his left hand paralyzed,
+and lost his power of playing the violin forever.
+He received a high decoration from the French government.
+For the English nation he professed and displayed
+great affection, and in particular he revered King George,
+perhaps because of his physical resemblance to the Tsar.
+And when King George was to visit Paris he rejoiced
+exceedingly at the prospect of seeing him. Orders were
+issued for the troops to come out and line the principal
+routes along which the monarch would pass. The French
+naturally had the best places, but the Place de l'&Eacute;toile
+was reserved for the Allied forces. G&mdash;&mdash;, delighted,
+went to his superior officer and inquired where the Russians
+were to stand. The general did not know, but
+promised to ascertain. Accordingly he put the question
+to the French commander, who replied: &quot;Russian troops?
+There is no place for any Russian troops.&quot; With tears
+in his eyes G&mdash;&mdash; recounted this episode, adding: &quot;We,
+who fought and bled, and lost our lives or were crippled,
+had to swallow this humiliation, while Poles and Czechoslovaks,
+who had only just arrived from America in their
+brand-new uniforms, and had never been under fire, had
+places allotted to them in the pageant. Is that fair to
+the troops without whose exploits there would have been
+no Polish or Czechoslovak officers, no French victory, no
+triumphal entry of King George V into Paris?&quot;</p>
+
+
+<p>FOOTNOTE:</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_287_287" id="Footnote_287_287" href="#FNanchor_287_287"> [287]</a> It is right to say that during the summer months a considerable section
+of the anti-Bolshevists modified their view of Britain's policy, and expressed
+gratitude for the aid bestowed on Kolchak, Denikin, and Yudenitch, without
+which their armies would have collapsed.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII" />XIII</h3>
+
+<h3>SIDELIGHTS ON THE TREATY</h3>
+
+
+<p>From the opening of the Conference fundamental
+differences sprang up which split the delegates into
+two main parties, of which one was solicitous mainly
+about the resettlement of the world and its future mainstay,
+the League of Nations, and the other about the
+furtherance of national interests, which, it maintained,
+was equally indispensable to an enduring peace. The
+latter were ready to welcome the League on condition
+that it was utilized in the service of their national purposes,
+but not if it countered them. To bridge the chasm
+between the two was the task to which President Wilson
+courageously set his hand. Unluckily, by way of qualifying
+for the experiment, he receded from his own strong
+position, and having cut his moorings from one shove,
+failed to reach the other. His pristine idea was worthy
+of a world-leader; had, in fact, been entertained and advocated
+by some of the foremost spirits of modern times.
+He purposed bringing about conditions under which the
+pacific progress of the world might be safeguarded in a
+very large measure and for an indefinite time. But being
+very imperfectly acquainted with the concrete conditions
+of European and Asiatic peoples&mdash;he had never before
+felt the pulsation of international life&mdash;his ideas about the
+ways and means were hazy, and his calculations bore no
+real reference to the elements of the problem. Consequently,
+with what seemed a wide horizon and a generous
+ambition, his grasp was neither firm nor comprehensive
+enough for such a revolutionary undertaking. In no case
+could he make headway without the voluntary co-operation
+of the nations themselves, who in their own best
+interests might have submitted to heavy sacrifices, to
+which their leaders, whom he treated as true exponents
+of their will, refused their consent. But he scouted the
+notion of a world-parliament. Whenever, therefore, contemplating
+a particular issue, not as an independent question
+in itself, but as an integral part of a larger problem,
+he made a suggestion seemingly tending toward the ultimate
+goal, his motion encountered resolute opposition in
+the face of which he frequently retreated.</p>
+
+<p>At the outset, on which so much depended, the peoples
+as distinguished from the governments appeared to be
+in general sympathy with his principal aim, and it seemed
+at the time that if appealed to on a clear issue they would
+have given him their whole-hearted support, provided
+always that, true to his own principles, he pressed these
+to the fullest extent and admitted no such invidious distinctions
+as privileged and unprivileged nations. This
+belief was confirmed by what I heard from men of mark,
+leaders of the labor people, and three Prime Ministers.
+They assured me that such an appeal would have evoked
+an enthusiastic response in their respective countries.
+Convinced that the principles laid down by the President
+during the last phases of the war would go far to meet the
+exigencies of the conjuncture, I ventured to write on one
+of the occasions, when neither party would yield to the
+other: &quot;The very least that Mr. Wilson might now do,
+if the deadlock continues, is to publish to the world the
+desirable objects which the United States are disinterestedly,
+if not always wisely, striving for, and leave the
+judgment to the peoples concerned.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_288_288" id="FNanchor_288_288" href="#Footnote_288_288" >[288]</a></p>
+
+<p>But he recoiled from the venture. Perhaps it was
+already too late. In the judgment of many, his assent to
+the suppression of the problem of the freedom of the seas,
+however unavoidable as a tactical expedient, knelled the
+political world back to the unregenerate days of strategical
+frontiers, secret alliances, military preparations, financial
+burdens, and the balance of power. On that day, his
+grasp on the banner relaxing, it fell, to be raised, it may be,
+at some future time by the peoples whom he had aspired
+to lead. The contests which he waged after that first
+defeat had little prospect of success, and soon the pith
+and marrow of the issue completely disappeared. The
+utmost he could still hope for was a paper covenant&mdash;- which
+is a different thing from a genuine accord&mdash;to take
+home with him to Washington. And this his colleagues
+did not grudge him. They were operating with a different
+cast of mind upon a wholly different set of ideas. Their
+aims, which they pursued with no less energy and with
+greater perseverance than Mr. Wilson displayed, were
+national. Some of them implicitly took the ground that
+Germany, having plunged the world in war, would persist
+indefinitely in her nefarious machinations, and must,
+therefore, in the interests of general peace, be crippled
+militarily, financially, economically, and politically, for
+as long a time as possible, while her potential enemies
+must for the same reason be strengthened to the utmost
+at her expense, and that this condition of things must be
+upheld through the beneficent instrumentality of the
+League of Nations.</p>
+
+<p>On these conflicting issues ceaseless contention went
+on from the start, yet for lack of a strong personality of
+sound, over-ruling judgment the contest dragged on
+without result. For months the demon of procrastination
+seemed to have possessed the souls of the principal
+delegates, and frustrated their professed intentions to
+get through the work expeditiously. Even unforeseen
+incidents led to dangerous delay. Every passing episode
+became a ground for postponing the vital issue, although
+each day lost increased the difficulties of achieving the
+principal object, which was the conclusion of peace. For
+example, the committee dealing with the question of
+reparations would reach a decision, say, that Germany
+must pay a certain sum, which would entail a century of
+strenuous effort, accompanied with stringent thrift and
+self-denial; while the Economic Committee decided that
+her supply of raw material should be restricted within
+such narrow limits as to put such payment wholly out
+of her power. And this difference of view necessitated a
+postponement of the whole issue. Mr. Hughes, the
+Premier of Australia, commenting on this shilly-shallying,
+said with truth:<a name="FNanchor_289_289" id="FNanchor_289_289" href="#Footnote_289_289" >[289]</a> &quot;The minds of the people are grievously
+perturbed. The long delay, coupled with fears lest that
+the Peace Treaty, when it does come, should prove to be a
+peace unworthy, unsatisfactory, unenduring, has made
+the hearts of the people sick. We were told that the
+Peace Treaty would be ready in the coming week, but
+we look round and see half a world engaged in war, or
+preparation for war. Bolshevism is spreading with the
+rapidity of a prairie fire. The Allies have been forced
+to retreat from some of the most fertile parts of southern
+Russia, and Allied troops, mostly British, at Murmansk
+and Archangel are in grave danger of destruction. Yet
+we were told that peace was at hand, and that the world
+was safe for liberty and democracy. It is not fine phrases
+about peace, liberty, and making the world safe for
+democracy that the world wants, but deeds. The peoples
+of the Allied countries justifiably desire to be reassured
+by plain, comprehensible statements, instead of
+long-drawn-out negotiations and the thick veil of secrecy
+in which these were shrouded.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It requires an effort to believe that procrastination
+was raised to the level of a theory by men whose experience
+of political affairs was regarded as a guarantee of the
+soundness of their judgment. Yet it is an incontrovertible
+fact that dilatory tactics were seriously suggested
+as a policy at the Conference. It was maintained that,
+far from running risks by postponing a settlement, the
+Entente nations were, on the contrary, certain to find
+the ground better prepared the longer the day of reckoning
+was put off. Germany, they contended, had recovered
+temporarily from the Bolshevik fever, but the improvement
+was fleeting. The process of decomposition
+was becoming intenser day by day, although the symptoms
+were not always manifest. Lack of industrial production,
+of foreign trade and sound finances, was gnawing
+at the vitals of the Teuton Republic. The army of
+unemployed and discontented was swelling. Soon the
+sinister consequences of this stagnation would take the
+form of rebellions and revolts, followed by disintegration.
+And this conjunction would be the opportunity of the
+Entente Powers, who could then step in, present their
+bills, impose their restrictions, and knead the Teuton
+dough into any shape they relished. Then it would
+be feasible to prohibit the Austrian-Germans from ever
+entering the Republic as a federated state. In a word,
+the Allied governments need only command, and the
+Teutons would hasten to obey. It is hardly credible
+that men of experience in foreign politics should build
+upon such insecure foundations as these. It is but fair
+to say the Conference rejected this singular program
+in theory while unintentionally carrying it out.</p>
+
+<p>Although everybody admitted that the liquidation
+of the world conflict followed by a return to normal
+conditions was the one thing that pressed for settlement,
+so intent were the plenipotentiaries on preventing wars
+among unborn generations that they continued to overlook
+the pressing needs of their contemporaries. It is
+at the beginning and end of an enterprise that the danger
+of failure is greatest, and it was the opening moves of
+the Allies that proved baleful to their subsequent undertakings.
+Germany, one would think, might have been
+deprived summarily of everything which was to be
+ultimately and justly taken from her, irrespective of its
+final destination. The first and most important operation
+being the severance of the provinces allotted to
+other peoples, their redistribution might safely have been
+left until afterward. And hardly less important was the
+despatch of an army to eastern Europe. Then Germany,
+broken in spirit, with Allied troops on both her fronts,
+between the two jaws of a vise, could not have said nay
+to the conditions. But this method presupposed a plan
+which unluckily did not exist. It assumed that the peace
+terms had been carefully considered in advance, whereas
+the Allies prepared for war during hostilities, and for
+peace during the negotiations. And they went about this
+in a leisurely, lackadaisical way, whereas expedition
+was the key to success.</p>
+
+<p>As for a durable peace, involving general disarmament,
+it should have been outlined in a comprehensive program,
+which the delegates had not drawn up, and it would have
+become feasible only if the will to pursue it proceeded
+from principle, not from circumstances. In no case
+could it be accomplished without the knowledge and
+co-operation of the peoples themselves, nor within the
+time-limits fixed for the work of the Conference. For
+the abolition of war and the creation of a new ordering,
+like human progress, is a long process. It admits of a
+variety of beginnings, but one can never be sure of the
+end, seeing that it presupposes a radical change in the
+temper of the peoples, one might almost say a remodeling
+of human nature. It can only be the effect of a variety
+of causes, mainly moral, operating over a long period of
+time. Peace with Germany was a matter for the governments
+concerned; the elimination of war could only be
+accomplished by the peoples. The one was in the main
+a political problem, the other social, economical, and
+ethical.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Balfour asserted optimistically<a name="FNanchor_290_290" id="FNanchor_290_290" href="#Footnote_290_290" >[290]</a> that the work
+of concluding peace with Germany was a very simple
+matter. None the less it took the Conference over five
+months to arrange it. So desperately slow was the
+progress of the Supreme Council that on the 213th day
+of the Peace Conference,<a name="FNanchor_291_291" id="FNanchor_291_291" href="#Footnote_291_291" >[291]</a> two months after the Germans
+had signed the conditions, not one additional treaty had
+been concluded, nay, none was even ready for signature.
+The Italian plenipotentiary, Signor Tittoni, thereupon
+addressed his colleagues frankly on the subject and asked
+them whether they were not neglecting their primary
+duty, which was to conclude treaties with the various
+enemies who had ceased to fight in November of the
+previous year and were already waiting for over nine
+months to resume normal life, and whether the delegates
+were justified in seeking to discharge the functions of a
+supreme board for the government of all Europe. He
+pointed out that nobody could hope to profit by the state
+of disorder and paralysis for which this procrastination
+was answerable, the economic effects making themselves
+felt sooner or later in every country. He added that the
+cost of the war had been calculated for every month,
+every week, every day, and that the total impressed every
+one profoundly; but that nobody had thought it worth
+his while to count up the atrocious cost of this incredibly
+slow peace and of the waste of wealth caused every week
+and month that it dragged on. Italy, he lamented, felt
+this loss more keenly than her partners because her peace
+had not yet been concluded. He felt moved, therefore,
+he said, to tell them that the business of governing
+Europe to which the Conference had been attending all
+those months was not precisely the work for which it was
+convoked.<a name="FNanchor_292_292" id="FNanchor_292_292" href="#Footnote_292_292" >[292]</a></p>
+
+<p>This sharp and timely admonition was the preamble of a
+motion. The Conference was just then about to separate
+for a &quot;well-earned holiday,&quot; during which its members
+might renew their spent energies and return in October
+to resume their labors, the peoples in the meanwhile
+bearing the cost in blood and substance. The Italian
+delegate objected to any such break and adjured them to
+remain at their posts. Why, he asked, should ill-starred
+Italy, which had already sustained so many and such painful
+losses, be condemned to sacrifice further enormous
+sums in order that the delegates who had been frittering
+away their time tackling irrelevant issues, and endeavoring
+to rule all Europe, might have a rest? Why should
+they interrupt the sessions before making peace with
+Austria, with Hungary, with Bulgaria, with Turkey, and
+enabling Italy to return to normal life? Why should
+time and opportunity be given to the Turks and Kurds
+for the massacre of Armenian men, women, and children?
+This candid reminder is said to have had a sobering
+effect on the versatile delegates yearning for a holiday.
+The situation that evoked it will arouse the passing wonder
+of level-headed men.</p>
+
+<p>It is worth recording that such was the atmosphere of
+suspicion among the delegates that the motives for this
+holiday were believed by some to be less the need of
+repose than an unavowable desire to give time to the
+Hapsburgs to recover the Crown of St. Stephen as the
+first step toward seizing that of Austria.<a name="FNanchor_293_293" id="FNanchor_293_293" href="#Footnote_293_293" >[293]</a> The Austrians
+desired exemption from the obligation to make reparations
+and pay crushing taxes, and one of the delegates,
+with a leaning for that country, was not averse to the idea.
+As the states that arose on the ruins of the Hapsburg
+monarchy were not considered enemies by the Conference,
+it was suggested that Austria herself should enjoy the
+same distinction. But the Italian plenipotentiaries objected
+and Signor Tittoni asked, &quot;Will it perhaps be
+asserted that there was no enemy against whom we
+Italians fought for three years and a half, losing half a
+million slain and incurring a debt of eighty thousand
+millions?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A French journal, touching on this Austrian problem,
+wrote:<a name="FNanchor_294_294" id="FNanchor_294_294" href="#Footnote_294_294" >[294]</a> &quot;Austria-Hungary has been killed and now France
+is striving to raise it to life again. But Italy is furiously
+opposed to everything that might lead to an understanding
+among the new states formed out of the old possessions
+of the Hapsburgs. That, in fact, is why our transalpine
+allies were so favorable to the union of Austria with
+Germany. France on her side, whose one overruling
+thought is to reduce her vanquished enemy to the most
+complete impotence, France who is afraid of being
+afraid, will not tolerate an Austria joined to the German
+Federation.&quot; Here the principle of self-determination
+went for nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Before the Conference had sat for a month it was
+angrily assailed by the peoples who had hoped so much
+from its love of justice&mdash;Egyptians, Koreans, Irishmen
+from Ireland and from America, Albanians, Frenchmen
+from Mauritius and Syria, Moslems from Aderbeidjan,
+Persians, Tartars, Kirghizes, and a host of others, who
+have been aptly likened to the halt and maimed among
+the nations waiting round the diplomatic Pool of Siloam
+for the miracle of the moving of the waters that never
+came.<a name="FNanchor_295_295" id="FNanchor_295_295" href="#Footnote_295_295" >[295]</a></p>
+
+<p>These peoples had heard that a great and potent world-reformer
+had arisen whose mission it was to redress
+secular grievances and confer liberty upon oppressed
+nations, tribes, and tongues, and they sent their envoys
+to plead before him. And these wandered about the
+streets of Paris seeking the intercession of delegates,
+Ministers, and journalists who might obtain for them
+admission to the presence of the new Messiah or his
+apostles. But all doors were closed to them. One of
+the petitioners whose language was vernacular English,
+as he was about to shake the dust of Paris from his boots,
+quoting Sydney Smith, remarked: &quot;They, too, are
+Pharisees. They would do the Good Samaritan, but without
+the oil and twopence. How has it come to pass that
+the Jews without an official delegate commanded the
+support&mdash;the militant support&mdash;of the Supreme Council,
+which did not hesitate to tyrannize eastern Europe for
+their sake?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Involuntarily the student of politics called to mind the
+report written to Baron Hager<a name="FNanchor_296_296" id="FNanchor_296_296" href="#Footnote_296_296" >[296]</a> by one of his secret
+agents during the Congress of Vienna: &quot;Public opinion
+continues to be unfavorable to the Congress. On all
+sides one hears it said that there is no harmony, that they
+are no longer solicitous about the re-establishment of
+order and justice, but are bent only on forcing one
+another's hands, each one grabbing as much as he can....
+It is said that the Congress will end because it must,
+but that it will leave things more entangled than it
+found them.... The peoples, who in consequence of
+the success, the sincerity, and the noble-mindedness of this
+superb coalition had conceived such esteem for their
+leaders and such attachment to them, and now perceive
+how they have forgotten what they solemnly promised&mdash;justice,
+order, peace founded on the equilibrium and
+legitimacy of their possessions&mdash;will end by losing their
+affection and withdrawing their confidence in their
+principles and their promises.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Those words, written a hundred and five years ago,
+might have been penned any day since the month of
+February, 1919.</p>
+
+<p>The leading motive of the policy pursued by the
+Supreme Council and embodied in the Treaty was aptly
+described at the time as the systematic protection of
+France against Germany. Hence the creation of the
+powerful barrier states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia,
+Greater Rumania, and Greater Greece. French
+nationalists pleaded for further precautions more comprehensive
+still. Their contention was that France's
+economic, strategic, financial, and territorial welfare
+being the cornerstone of the future European edifice,
+every measure proposed at the Conference, whether
+national or general, should be considered and shaped in
+accordance with that, and consequently that no possibility
+should be accorded to Germany of rising again to
+a commanding position because, if she once recovered her
+ascendancy in any domain whatsoever, Europe would
+inevitably be thrust anew into the horrors of war. Territorially,
+therefore, the dismemberment of Germany was
+obligatory; the annexation of the Saar Valley, together
+with its six hundred thousand Teuton inhabitants, was
+necessary to France, and either the annexation of the left
+bank of the Rhine or its transformation into a detached
+state to be occupied and administered by the French until
+Germany pays the last farthing of the indemnity. Further,
+Austria must be deprived of the right of determining her
+own mode of existence and constrained to abandon the
+idea of becoming one of the federated states of the German
+Republic, and, if possible, northern Germany should
+be kept entirely separate from southern. The Allies
+should divide the Teutons in order to sway them. All
+Germany's other frontiers should be delimitated in a like
+spirit. And at the same time the work of knitting together
+the peoples and nations of Europe and forming
+them into a friendly sodality was to go forward without
+interruption.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How to promote our interests in the Rhineland,&quot;
+wrote M. Maurice Barr&egrave;s,<a name="FNanchor_297_297" id="FNanchor_297_297" href="#Footnote_297_297" >[297]</a> &quot;is a life-and-death question
+for us. We are going to carry to the Rhine our military
+and, I hope, our economic frontier. The rest will follow
+in its own good time. The future will not fail to secure
+for us the acquiescence of the population of the Rhineland,
+who will live freely under the protection of our arms,
+their faces turned toward Paris.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Financially it was proposed that the Teutons should be
+forced to indemnify France, Belgium, and the other countries
+for all the damage they had inflicted upon them;
+to pay the entire cost of the war, as well as the pensions
+to widows, orphans, and the mutilated. And the military
+occupation of their country should be maintained until
+this huge debt is wholly wiped out.</p>
+
+<p>A Nationalist organ,<a name="FNanchor_298_298" id="FNanchor_298_298" href="#Footnote_298_298" >[298]</a> in a leading article, stated with
+brevity and clearness the prevailing view of Germany's
+obligations. Here is a characteristic passage: &quot;She is
+rich, has reserves derived from many years of former
+prosperity; she can work to produce and repair all the
+evil she has done, rebuild all the ruins she has accumulated,
+and restore all the fortunes she has destroyed, however
+irksome the burden.&quot; After analyzing Doctor
+Helfferich's report published six years ago, the article
+concluded, &quot;Germany must pay; she disposes of the
+means because she is rich; if she refuses we must compel
+her without hesitation and without ruth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As France, whose cities and towns and very soil were
+ruined, could not be asked to restore these places at her
+own expense and tax herself drastically like her allies,
+the Americans and British, the prior and privileged right
+to receive payment on her share of the indemnity should
+manifestly appertain to her. Her allies and associates
+should, it was argued, accordingly waive their money
+claims until hers were satisfied in full. Moreover, as
+France's future expenditure on her army of occupation,
+on the administration of her colonies and of the annexed
+territories, must necessarily absorb huge sums for years
+to come, which her citizens feel they ought not to be asked
+to contribute, and as her internal debt was already overwhelming,
+it is only meet and just that her wealthier
+partners should pool their war debts with hers and share
+their financial resources with her and all their other allies.
+This, it was argued, was an obvious corollary of the war
+alliance. Economically, too, the Germans, while permitted
+to resume their industrial occupations on a sufficiently
+large scale to enable them to earn the wherewithal
+to live and discharge their financial obligations, should be
+denied free scope to outstrip France, whose material prosperity
+is admittedly essential to the maintenance of general
+peace and the permanence of the new ordering. In
+this condition, it is further contended, our chivalrous ally
+was entitled to special consideration because of her low
+birth-rate, which is one of the mainsprings of her difficulties.
+This may permanently keep her population from
+rising above the level of forty million, whereas Germany,
+by the middle of the century, will have reached the formidable
+total of eighty million, so that competition between
+them would not be on a footing of equality. Hence
+the chances should be evenly balanced by the action of
+the Conference, to be continued by the League. Discriminating
+treatment was therefore a necessity. And
+it should be so introduced that France should be free to
+maintain a protective tariff, of which she had sore need
+for her foreign trade, without causing umbrage to her
+allies. For they could not gainsay that her position deserved
+special treatment.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the Anglo-Saxon delegates took other ground,
+feeling unable to countenance the postulate underlying
+those demands, namely, that the Teuton race was to be
+forever anathema. They looked far enough ahead to
+make due allowance for a future when conditions in Europe
+will be very different from what they are to-day. The
+German race, they felt, being numerous and virile, will
+not die out and cannot be suppressed. And as it is also
+enterprising and resourceful it would be a mistake to
+render it permanently hostile by the Allies overstepping
+the bounds of justice, because in this case neither national
+nor general interests would be furthered. You may hinder
+Germany, they argued, from acquiring the hegemony
+of the world, but not from becoming the principal factor
+in European evolution. If thirty years hence the German
+population totals eighty million or more, will not
+their attitude and their sentiment toward their neighbors
+constitute an all-important element of European tranquillity
+and will not the trend of these be to a large extent
+the outcome of the Allies' policy of to-day? The present,
+therefore, is the time for the delegates to deprive that
+sentiment of its venomous, anti-Allied sting, not by renouncing
+any of their countries' rights, but by respecting
+those of others.</p>
+
+<p>That was the reasoning of those who believed that
+national striving should be subordinated to the general
+good, and that the present time and its aspirations should
+be considered in strict relation to the future of the whole
+community of nations. They further contended that
+while Germany deserved to suffer condignly for the
+heinous crimes of unchaining the war and waging it
+ruthlessly, as many of her own people confessed, she
+should not be wholly crippled or enthralled in the hope
+that she would be rendered thereby impotent forever.
+Such hope was vain. With her waxing strength her desire
+of vengeance would grow, and together with it the means
+of wreaking it. She might yet knead Russia into such
+a shape as would make that Slav people a serviceable
+instrument of revenge, and her endeavors might conceivably
+extend farther than Russia. The one-sided resettlement
+of Europe charged with explosives of such incalculable
+force would frustrate the most elaborate attempts
+to create not only a real league of nations, but
+even such a rough approximation toward one as might
+in time and under favorable circumstances develop into
+a trustworthy war preventive. They concluded that a
+league of nations would be worse than useless if transformed
+into a weapon to be wielded by one group of
+nations against another, or as an artificial makeshift for
+dispensing peoples from the observance of natural laws.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time all the governments of the Allies
+were sincere and unanimous in their desire to do everything
+possible to show their appreciation of France's
+heroism, to recognize the vastness of her sacrifices, and
+to pay their debt of gratitude for her services to humanity.
+All were actuated by a resolve to contribute in the measure
+of the possible to compensate her for such losses as were
+still reparable and to safeguard her against the recurrence
+of the ordeal from which she had escaped terribly scathed.
+The only limits they admitted to this work of reparation
+were furnished by the aim itself and by the means of
+attaining it. Thus Messrs. Wilson and Lloyd George
+held that to incorporate in renovated France millions or
+even hundreds of thousands of Germans would be to
+introduce into the political organism the germs of fell
+disease, and on this ground they firmly refused to sanction
+the Rhine frontier, which the French were thus obliged
+to relinquish. The French delegates themselves admitted
+that if granted it could not be held without a powerful
+body of international troops ever at the beck and call of
+the Republic, vigilantly keeping watch and ward on the
+banks of the Rhine and with no reasonable prospect of
+a term to this servitude. For the real ground of this dependence
+upon foreign forces is the disproportion between
+the populations of Germany and France and between
+the resources of the two nations. The ratio of the former
+is at present about six to four and it is growing perceptibly
+toward seven to four. The organizing capacity in commerce
+and industry is said to be even greater. If, therefore,
+France cannot stand alone to-day, still less could
+she stand alone in ten or fifteen years, and the necessity
+of protecting her against aggression, assuming that the
+German people does not become reconciled to its status
+of forced inferiority, would be more urgent and less practicable
+with the lapse of time. For, as we saw, it is largely
+a question of the birth-rate. And as neither the British
+nor the American people, deeply though they are attached
+to their gallant comrades in arms, would consent to this
+arrangement, which to them would be a burden and to
+the Germans a standing provocation, their representatives
+were forced to the conclusion that it would be the height
+of folly to do aught that would give the Teutons a convenient
+handle for a war of revenge. Let there be no
+annexation of territory, they said, no incorporation of
+unwilling German citizens. The Americans further argued
+that an indefinite occupation of German territory by a
+large body of international troops would be a direct encouragement
+to militarism.</p>
+
+<p>The indemnities for which the French yearned, and on
+which their responsible financiers counted, were large.
+The figures employed were astronomical. Hundreds of
+milliards of francs were operated with by eminent publicists
+in an offhand manner that astonished the survivor
+of the expiring budgetary epoch and rejoiced the hearts
+of the Western taxpayers. For it was not only journalists
+who wrote as though a stream of wealth were to be
+turned into these countries to fertilize industry and commerce
+there and enable them to keep well ahead of their
+pushing competitors. Responsible Ministers likewise hall-marked
+these forecasts with their approval. Before the
+fortune of war had decided for the Allies, the finances of
+France had sorely embarrassed the Minister, M. Klotz, of
+whom his chief, M. Clemenceau, is reported to have said:
+&quot;He is the only Israelite I have ever known who is out of
+his element when dealing with money matters.&quot; Before the
+armistice, M. Klotz, when talking of the complex problem
+and sketching the outlook, exclaimed: &quot;If we win the war,
+I undertake to make both ends meet, far though they now
+seem apart. For I will make the Germans pay the entire
+cost of the war.&quot; After the armistice he repeated his
+promise and undertook not to levy fresh taxation.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, despite fitful gleams of idealism, the atmosphere of
+the Paris Conclave grew heavy with interests, passions,
+and ambitions. Only people in blinkers could miss the
+fact that the elastic formulas launched and interpreted
+by President Wilson were being stretched to the snapping-point
+so as to cover two mutually incompatible policies.
+The chasm between his original prospects and those of
+his foreign associates they both conscientiously endeavored
+to ignore, and after a time they hit upon a <i>tertium quid</i>
+between territorial equilibrium and a sterilized league
+tempered by the Monroe Doctrine and a military compact.
+This composite resultant carried with it the concentrated
+evils of one of these systems and was deprived of its redeeming
+features by the other. At a conjuncture in the
+world's affairs which postulated internationalism of the
+loftiest kind, the delegates increased and multiplied nations
+and states which they deprived of sovereignty and
+yoked to the first-class races. National ambitions took
+precedence of larger interests; racial hatred was raised
+to its highest power. In a word, the world's state system
+was so oddly pieced together that only economic exhaustion
+followed by a speedy return to militarism could insure
+for it a moderate duration.</p>
+
+<p>Territorial self-sufficiency, military strength, and advantageous
+alliances were accordingly looked to as the
+mainstays of the new ordering, even by those who paid
+lip tribute to the Wilsonian ideal. The ideal itself underwent
+a disfiguring change in the process of incarnation.
+The Italians asked how the Monroe Doctrine could be
+reconciled with the charter of the League of Nations,
+seeing that the League would be authorized to intervene
+in the domestic affairs of other member-states, and if
+necessary to despatch troops to keep Germany, Italy,
+and Poland in order; whereas if the United States were
+guilty of tyrannical aggression against Brazil, the Argentine
+Republic, or Mexico, the League, paralyzed by that
+Doctrine, must look on inactive. The Germans, alleging
+capital defects in the Wilsonian Covenant, which was
+adjusted primarily to the Allies' designs, went to Paris
+prepared with a substitute which, it must in fairness be
+admitted, was considerably superior to that of their
+adversaries, and incidentally fraught with greater promise
+to themselves.</p>
+
+<p>It is superfluous to add that the continental view prevailed,
+but Mr. Wilson imagined that, while abandoning
+his principles in favor of Britain, France, and Bulgaria,
+he could readjust the balance by applying them with
+rigor to Italy and exaggerating them when dealing with
+Greece. He afterward communicated his reasons for this
+belief in a message published in Washington.<a name="FNanchor_299_299" id="FNanchor_299_299" href="#Footnote_299_299" >[299]</a> The
+alliance&mdash;he was understood to have been opposed to all
+partial alliances on principle&mdash;which guarantees military
+succor to France, he had signed, he said, in gratitude to
+that country, for he seriously doubted whether the
+American Republic could have won its freedom against
+Britain's opposition without the gallant and friendly
+aid of France. &quot;We recently had the privilege of assisting
+in driving enemies, who also were enemies of the
+world, from her soil, but that does not pay our debt to
+her. Nothing can pay such a debt.&quot; His critics retorted
+that that is a sentimental reason which might with equal
+force have been urged by France and Britain in justification
+of their promises to Italy and Rumania, yet was
+rejected as irrelevant by Mr. Wilson in the name of a
+higher principle.</p>
+
+
+<p>The President of the United States, it was further urged,
+is a historian, and history tells him that the help given
+to his country against England neither came from the
+French people nor was actuated by sympathy for the
+American cause. It was the vindictive act of one of
+those kings whose functions Mr. Wilson is endeavoring
+to abolish. The monarch who helped the Americans
+was merely utilizing a favorable opportunity for depriving
+with a minimum of effort his adversary of lucrative
+possessions. Moreover, the debt which nothing can pay
+was already due when in the years 1914-16 France
+was in imminent danger of being crushed by a ruthless
+enemy. But at that time Mr. Wilson owed his re-election
+largely to his refusal to extricate her from that peril.
+Instead of calling to mind the debt that can never be
+repaid he merely announced that he could not understand
+what the belligerents were fighting for and that in any
+case France's grateful debtor was too proud to fight.
+The motive which finally brought the United States into
+the World War may be the noblest that ever yet actuated
+any state, but no student of history will allow that Mr.
+Wilson has correctly described it.</p>
+
+<p>The fact is that the French delegates and their supporters
+were consistent and, except in their demand for the
+Rhine frontier, unbending. They drew up a program and
+saw that it was substantially carried out. They declared
+themselves quite ready to accept Mr. Wilson's project,
+but only on condition that their own was also realized,
+heedless of the incompatibility of the two. And Mr.
+Wilson felt constrained to make their position his own,
+otherwise he could not have obtained the Covenant he
+yearned for. And yet he must have known that acquiescence
+in the demands put forward by M. Clemenceau
+would lower the practical value of his Covenant to that
+of a sheet of paper.</p>
+
+<p>A blunt American journal, commenting on the handiwork
+of the Conference, gave utterance to views which
+while making no pretense to courtly phraseology are
+symptomatic of the way in which the average man thought
+and spoke of the Covenant which emanated from the
+Supreme Council. &quot;We are convinced,&quot; it said, &quot;that
+the elder statesmen of Europe, typified by Clemenceau,
+consider it a hoax. Clemenceau never before was so
+extremely bored by anything in his life as he was by the
+necessity of making a pious pretense in the Covenant
+when what he wanted was the assurance of the Triple
+Alliance. He got that assurance, which, along with the
+French watch on the Rhine, the French in the Saar
+Valley and in Africa, with German money going into
+French coffers, makes him tolerably indulgent of the
+altruistic rhetoricians.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The English, the intelligent English, we know have
+their tongues in their cheeks. The Italians are petulant
+imperialists, and Japan doesn't care what happens to the
+League so long as Japan says what shall happen in Asia.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_300_300" id="FNanchor_300_300" href="#Footnote_300_300" >[300]</a></p>
+
+<p>Peace was at last signed, not on the basis of the Fourteen
+Points nor yet entirely on the lines of territorial equilibrium,
+but on those of a compromise which, missing the
+advantages of each, combined many of the evils of both
+and of others which were generated by their conjunction,
+and laid the foundations of the new state fabric on quick-sands.
+That was at bottom the view to which Italy,
+Rumania, and Greece gave utterance when complaining
+that their claims were being dealt with on the principle
+of self-denial, whereas those of France had been settled
+on the traditional basis of territorial guaranties and
+military alliances. Further, the Treaty failed to lay an
+ax to the roots of war, did, in fact, increase their number
+while purporting to destroy them. Far from that: germs
+of future conflicts not only between the late belligerents,
+but also between the recent Allies, were plentifully scattered
+and may sprout up in the fullness of time.</p>
+
+
+<p>The Paris press expressed its satisfaction with France's
+share of the fruits of victory. For the provisions of the
+Treaty went as far as any merely political arrangement
+could go to check the natural inequality, numerical,
+economical, industrial, and financial, between the
+Teuton and French peoples. To many this problem
+seemed wholly insoluble, because its solution involved
+a suspension or a corrective of a law of nature. Take
+the birth-rate in France, for example. Before the war it
+had long been declining at a rate which alarmed thoughtful
+French patriots. And, according to official statistics,
+it is falling off still more rapidly to-day, whereas the increase
+in other countries is greater than ever before.<a name="FNanchor_301_301" id="FNanchor_301_301" href="#Footnote_301_301" >[301]</a>
+Thus, whereas in the year 1911 there were 73,599 births
+in the Seine Department, there were only 47,480 in 1918.
+Wet nurses, too, are disappearing. Of these, in the year
+1911, in the same territory there were 1,363, but in 1918
+only 65. The mortality among foundlings rose from 5
+per cent. before the war to 40 per cent. in the year 1918.<a name="FNanchor_302_302" id="FNanchor_302_302" href="#Footnote_302_302" >[302]</a>
+M. Bertillon calculates that for France to increase merely
+at the same rate as other nations&mdash;not to recover the
+place among them which she has already lost, but only
+to keep her present one&mdash;she needs five hundred thousand
+more births than are registered at present. A statistical
+table which he drew up of the birth-rate of four
+European nations during five decades, beginning with the
+year 1861, is unpleasant reading<a name="FNanchor_303_303" id="FNanchor_303_303" href="#Footnote_303_303" >[303]</a> for the friends of that
+heroic and artistic people. France, containing in round
+numbers 40,000,000 inhabitants, ought to increase annually
+by 500,000. Before the war the total number of
+births in Germany was computed at one million nine
+hundred and fifty thousand, but hardly more than one
+million of the children born were viable.<a name="FNanchor_304_304" id="FNanchor_304_304" href="#Footnote_304_304" >[304]</a> The general
+conclusion to be drawn from these figures and
+from the circumstances that the falling off in the French
+population still goes on unchecked, is disquieting for
+those who desire to see the French race continue to play
+the leading part in continental Europe. One of the
+shrewdest observers in contemporary Germany&mdash;himself
+a distinguished Semite&mdash;commented on this decisive
+fact as follows:<a name="FNanchor_305_305" id="FNanchor_305_305" href="#Footnote_305_305" >[305]</a> &quot;Within ten years Germany will contain
+seventy million inhabitants, and in the torrent of
+her fecundity will drown anemic and exhausted France....
+The French nation is dying of exhaustion. There is
+no reason, however, for the world to get alarmed ...
+for before the French will have vanished from the earth,
+other races, virile and healthy, will have come to their
+country to take their place.&quot; That is what is actually
+happening, and it is impressively borne in upon the visitor
+to various French cities by the vast number of exotic
+names over houses of business and in other ways.</p>
+
+<p>With this formidable obstacle, then, the three members
+of the Supreme Council strenuously coped by exercising
+to the fullest extent the power conferred on the victors
+over the vanquished. And the result of their combinations
+challenged and received the unstinted approval of
+all those numerous enemies of Teutondom who believe
+the Germans to be incapable of contributing materially
+to human progress, unless they are kept in leading-strings
+by one of the superior races. The Treaty represents
+the potential realization of France's dream, achieved
+semi-miraculously by the very statesmen on whom the
+Teutons were relying to dispel it. Defeated, disarmed,
+incapable of military resistance, and devoid of friends,
+Germany thought she could discern her sheet-anchor of
+salvation in the Wilsonian gospel, and it was the preacher
+of this gospel himself who implicitly characterized her
+salvation as more difficult than the passage of a camel
+through the eye of a needle. The crimes perpetrated by
+the Teutons were unquestionably heinous beyond words,
+and no punishment permitted by the human conscience
+is too drastic to atone for them. How long this punishment
+should endure, whether it should be inflicted on
+the entire people as well as on their leaders, and what
+form should be given to it, were among the questions
+confronting the Secret Council, and they implicitly answered
+them in the way we have seen.</p>
+
+<p>People who consider the answer adequate and justified
+give as their reason that it presupposes and attains a
+single object&mdash;the efficacious protection of France as the
+sentinel of civilization against an incorrigible arch-enemy.
+And in this they may be right. But if you enlarge
+the problem till it covers the moral fellowship of
+nations, and if you postulate that as a safeguard of future
+peace and neighborliness in the world, then the outcome
+of the Treaty takes on a different coloring. Between
+France and Germany it creates a sea of bitterness which
+no rapturous exultation over the new ethical ordering
+can sweeten. The latter nation is assumed to be smitten
+with a fell moral disease, to which, however, the physicians
+of the Conference have applied no moral remedy,
+but only measures of coercion, mostly powerful irritants.
+The reformed state of Europe is consequently a state of
+latent war between two groups of nations, of which one
+is temporarily prostrate and both are na&iuml;vely exhorted
+to join hands and play a helpful part in an idyllic society
+of nations. This expectation is the delight of cynics
+and the despair of those serious reformers who are not
+interested politicians. Heretofore the most inveterate
+optimists in politics were the revolutionaries. But they
+have since been outdone by the Paris world-reformers,
+who tempt Providence by calling on it to accomplish
+by a miracle an object which they have striven hard and
+successfully to render impossible by the ordinary operation
+of cause and effect. Thus the Covenant mars the
+Treaty, and the Treaty the Covenant.</p>
+
+<p>In Weimar and Berlin the Treaty was termed the death-sentence
+of Germany, not only as an empire, but as an
+independent political community. Henceforward her
+economic efforts, beyond a certain limit, will be struck with
+barrenness, her industry will be hindered from outstripping
+or overtaking that of the neighboring countries,
+and her population will be indirectly kept within definite
+bounds. For, instead of exporting manufactures, she
+will be obliged to export human beings, whose intellect
+and skill will be utilized by such rivals of her own race
+as vouchsafe to admit them. Already before the Conference
+was over they began to emigrate eastward. And
+those who remain at home will not be masters in their own
+house, for the doors will be open to various foreign
+commissions.</p>
+
+<p>The assumption upon which the Treaty-framers proceeded
+is that the abominations committed by the German
+military and civil authorities were constructively
+the work of the entire nation, for whose reformation
+within a measurable period hope is vain. This view predominated
+among the ruling classes of the Entente
+peoples with few exceptions. If it be correct, it seems
+superfluous to constrain the enemy to enter the league of
+law-abiding nations, which is to be cemented only by
+voluntary adherence and by genuine attachment to liberty,
+right, and justice. Hence the Covenant, by being
+inserted in the Peace Treaty, necessarily lost its value
+as an eirenicon, and became subsequent to that instrument,
+and seems likely to be used as an anti-German
+safeguard. But even then its efficacy is doubtful, and
+manifestly so; otherwise the reformers, who at the start
+set out to abolish alliances as recognized causes of war,
+would not have ended by setting up a new Triple Alliance,
+which involves military, naval, and aerial establishments,
+and the corresponding financial burdens inseparable from
+these. An alliance of this character, whatever one may
+think of its economic and financial aspects, runs counter
+to the spirit of the Covenant, but was an obvious corollary
+of the Allies' attitude as mirrored in the Treaty.
+And the spirit of the Treaty destroys the letter of the
+Covenant. For the world is there implicitly divided
+into two camps&mdash;the friends and the enemies of liberty,
+right, and justice; and the main functions of the League
+as narrowed by the Treaty will be to hinder or defeat the
+machinations of the enemies. Moreover, the deliberate
+concessions made by the Conference to such agencies of
+the old ordering as the grouping of two or three Powers
+into defensive alliances bids fair to be extended in time.
+For the stress of circumstance is stronger than the will of
+man. At this rate the last state may be worse than the first.</p>
+
+<p>The world situation, thus formally modified, remained
+essentially unchanged, and will so endure until other forces
+are released. The League of Nations forfeited its ideal
+character under the pressure of national interests, and
+became a coalition of victors against the vanquished.
+By the insertion of the Covenant in the Treaty the former
+became a means for the execution of the latter. For even
+Mr. Wilson, faced with realities and called to practical
+counsel, affectionately dismissed the high-souled speculative
+projects in which he delighted during his hours of
+contemplation. Although the German delegates signed
+the Treaty, no one can honestly say that he expects them
+to observe it longer than constraint presses, however
+solemn the obligations imposed.</p>
+
+<p>In the press organ of the most numerous and powerful
+political party in Germany one might read in an article
+on the Germans in Bohemia annexed by Czechoslovakia:
+&quot;Assuredly their destiny will not be determined for all
+time by the Versailles peace of violence. It behooves
+the German nation to cherish its affection for its oppressed
+brethren, even though it be powerless to succor
+them immediately. What then can it do? Italy has given
+it a marvelous lesson in the policy of irredentism, which
+she pursued in respect of the Trentino and Trieste.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_306_306" id="FNanchor_306_306" href="#Footnote_306_306" >[306]</a></p>
+
+<p>With the Treaty as it stands, nationalist France of this
+generation has reason to be satisfied. One of its framers,
+himself a shrewd business man and politician, publicly
+set forth the grounds for this satisfaction.<a name="FNanchor_307_307" id="FNanchor_307_307" href="#Footnote_307_307" >[307]</a> Alsace and
+Lorraine reunited to the metropolis, he explained, will
+assist France materially with an industrious population
+and enormous resources in the shape of mineral wealth
+and a fruitful soil. Germany's former colonies, Kamerun
+and Togoland, are become French, and will doubtless
+offer a vast and attractive field for the expansion and
+prosperity of the French population. Morocco, freed
+from German enterprise, can henceforth be developed
+by the French population alone and without let or hindrance,
+for the benefit of the natives and in the true sense
+of Mr. Wilson's humanitarian ordinances. The potash
+deposits, to which German agriculture largely owed its
+prosperity, will henceforward be utilized in the service
+of French agriculture. &quot;In iron ore the wealth of France
+is doubled, and her productive capacity as regards pig-iron
+and steel immensely increased. Her production of
+textiles is greater than before the war by about a third.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_308_308" id="FNanchor_308_308" href="#Footnote_308_308" >[308]</a>
+In a word, a vast area of the planet inhabited by various
+peoples will look to the French people for everything
+that makes their collective life worth living.</p>
+
+<p>The sole arrangement which for a time caused heart-burnings
+in France was that respecting the sums of money
+which Germany should have been made to pay to her
+victorious enemies. For the opinions on that subject
+held by the average man, and connived at or approved
+by the authorities, were wholly fantastic, just as were
+some of the expectations of other Allied states. The
+French people differ from their neighbors in many respects&mdash;and
+in a marked way in money matters. They will
+sacrifice their lives rather than their substance. They
+will leave a national debt for their children and their
+children's children, instead of making a resolute effort
+to wipe it out or lessen it by amortization. In this respect
+the British, the Americans, and also the Germans differ
+from them. These peoples tax themselves freely, create
+sinking funds, and make heavy sacrifices to pay off their
+money obligations. This habit is ingrained. The contrary
+system is become second nature to the French,
+and one cannot change a nation's habits overnight. The
+education of the people might, however, have been
+undertaken during the war with considerable chances
+of satisfactory results. The government might have
+preached the necessity of relinquishing a percentage of
+the war gains to the state. It was done in Britain and
+Germany. The amount of money earned by individuals
+during the hostilities was enormous. A considerable percentage
+of it should have been requisitioned by the
+state, in view of the peace requirements and of the huge
+indebtedness which victory or defeat must inevitably
+bring in its train. But no Minister had the courage necessary
+to brave the multitude and risk his share of popularity
+or tolerance. And so things were allowed to slide.
+The people were assured that victory would recompense
+their efforts, not only by positive territorial gains, but
+by relieving them of their new financial obligations.</p>
+
+<p>That was a sinister mistake. The truth is that the
+French nation, if defeated, would have paid any sum
+demanded. That was almost an axiom. It would and
+could have expected no ruth. But, victorious, it looked
+to the enemy for the means of refunding the cost of the
+war. The Finance Minister&mdash;M. Klotz&mdash;often declared
+to private individuals that if the Allies were victorious
+he would have all the new national debt wiped out by
+the enemy, and he assured the nation that milliards
+enough would be extracted from Germany to balance
+the credit and debit accounts of the Republic. And the
+people naturally believed its professional expert. Thus
+it became a dogma that the Teuton state was to provide
+all the cost of the war. In that illusion the nation lived
+and worked and spent money freely, nay, wasted it woefully.</p>
+
+<p>And yet M. Klotz should have known better. For he
+was supplied with definite data to go upon. In October,
+1918, the French government, in doubt about the full
+significance of that one of Mr. Wilson's Fourteen Points
+which dealt with reparations, asked officially for explanations,
+and received from Mr. Lansing the answer by
+telegraph that it involved the making good by the enemy
+of all losses inflicted directly and lawlessly upon civilians,
+but none other. That surely was a plain answer and a
+just principle. But, in accordance with the practice of
+secrecy in vogue among Allied European governments,
+the nation was not informed of these restrictive conditions,
+but was allowed to hug dangerous delusions.</p>
+
+<p>But the Ministers knew them, and M. Klotz was a
+Minister. Not only, however, did he not reveal what he
+knew, but he behaved as though his information was of
+a directly contrary tenor, and he also stated that Germany
+must also refund the war indemnities of 1870, capitalized
+down to November, 1918, and he set down the sum at
+fifty milliards of francs. This procedure was not what
+reasonably might have been expected from the leader of
+a heroic nation stout-hearted enough to face unpleasant
+facts. Some of the leading spirits in the country, despite
+the intensity of their feelings toward Germany, disapproved
+this kind of bookkeeping, but M. Klotz did not
+relinquish his method of keeping accounts. He drew up
+a bill against the Teutons for one thousand and eighty-six
+milliards of francs.</p>
+
+<p>The Germans at the Conference maintained that if the
+wealth of their nation were realized and liquid, it would
+amount at most to four hundred milliards, but that to
+realize it would involve the stripping of the population of
+everything&mdash;of its forests, its mines, its railways, its factories,
+its cattle, its houses, its furniture, and its ready
+money. They further pleaded that the territorial clauses
+of the Treaty deprived them of important resources,
+which would reduce their solvency to a greater degree
+than the Allies realized. These clauses dispossessed the
+nation of 21 per cent. of the total crops of cereals and
+potatoes. A further falling off in the quantities of food
+produced would result from the restrictions on the importation
+of raw materials for the manufacture of fertilizers.
+Of her coal, Germany was forfeiting about one-third;
+three-fourths of her iron ore was also being taken
+away from her; her total zinc production would be cut
+down by over three-fifths. Add to this the enormous
+shortage of tonnage, machinery, and man-power, the total
+loss of her colonies, the shrinkage of available raw stuffs,
+and the depreciation of the mark.</p>
+
+<p>At the Conference the Americans maintained their
+ground. Invoking the principle laid down by Mr. Wilson
+and clearly formulated by Mr. Lansing, they insisted
+that reparations should be claimed only for damage done
+to civilians directly and lawlessly. After a good deal of
+fencing, rendered necessary by the pledges given by
+European statesmen to their electors, it was decided
+that the criteria provided by that principle should be
+applied. But even with that limitation the sums claimed
+were huge. It was alleged by the Germans that some of
+the demands were for amounts that exceeded the total
+national wealth of the country filing the claim. And as
+no formula could be devised that would satisfy all the
+claimants, it was resolved in principle that, although
+Germany should be obliged to make good only certain
+classes of losses, the Conference would set no limits to
+the sums for which she would thus be liable.</p>
+
+<p>At this juncture M. Loucheur suggested that a minimum
+sum should be demanded of the enemy, leaving the details
+to be settled by a commission. And this was the solution
+which was finally adopted.<a name="FNanchor_309_309" id="FNanchor_309_309" href="#Footnote_309_309" >[309]</a> It was received with
+protests and lamentations, which, however, soon made
+place for self-congratulations, official and private.</p>
+
+<p>The French Minister of Finances, for example, drew a
+bright picture in the Chamber of the financial side of the
+Treaty, so far as it affected his country: &quot;Within two
+years,&quot; he announced, &quot;independently of the railway
+rolling stock, of agricultural materials and restitutions,
+we receive a part, still to be fixed, of the payment of
+twenty milliards of marks in gold; another share, also to
+be determined, of an emission of bonds amounting to
+forty milliard gold marks, bearing interest at the rate of
+2 per cent.; a third part, to be fixed, of German shipping
+and dyes; seven million tons of coal annually for a period
+of ten years, followed by diminishing quantities during
+the following years; the repayment of the expenses of
+occupation; the right of taking over a part of Germany's
+interests in Russia, in particular that of obtaining the
+payment of pre-war debts at the pre-war rate of exchange,
+likewise the maintenance of such contracts as we may
+desire to maintain in force and the return of Alsace-Lorraine
+free from all incumbrances. Nor is that all.
+In Morocco we have the right to liquidate German property,
+to transfer the shares that represent Germany's
+interests in the Bank of Morocco, and finally the allotment
+under a French mandate of a portion of the German
+colonies free from incumbrances of any kind.... We shall
+receive four hundred and sixty-three milliard francs,
+payable in thirty-six years, without counting the restitutions
+which will have been effected. Nor should it be
+forgotten that already we have received eight milliards'
+worth of securities stolen from French bearers. So do not
+consider the Treaty as a misfortune for France.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_310_310" id="FNanchor_310_310" href="#Footnote_310_310" >[310]</a></p>
+
+<p>Soon after the outburst of joy with which the ingathering
+of the fruits of France's victory was celebrated, clouds
+unexpectedly drifted athwart the cerulean blue of the
+political horizon, and dark shadows were flung across the
+Allied countries. The second-and third-class nations fell
+out with the first-class Powers. Italy, for example, whose
+population is almost equal to that of her French sister,
+demanded compensation for the vast additions that were
+being made to France's extensive possessions. The
+grounds alleged were many. Compensation had been
+promised by the secret treaty. The need for it was reinforced
+by the rejection of Italy's claims in the Adriatic.
+The Italian people required, desired, and deserved a fair
+and fitting field for legitimate expansion. They are as
+numerous as the French, and have a large annual surplus
+population, which has to hew wood and draw water for
+foreign peoples. They are enterprising, industrious,
+thrifty, and hard workers. Their country lacks some of
+the necessaries of material prosperity, such as coal, iron,
+and cotton. Why should it not receive a territory rich
+in some of these products? Why should a large contingent
+of Italy's population have to go to the colonies of Spain,
+France, and Britain or to South American republics for
+a livelihood? The Italian press asked whether the Supreme
+Council was bent on fulfilling the Gospel dictum,
+&quot;Whosoever hath, to him shall be given....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>One of the first demands made by Italy was for the
+port and town of Djibouti, which is under French sway.
+It was rejected, curtly and emphatically. Other requests
+elicited plausible explanations why they could not be
+complied with. In a word, Italy was treated as a poor
+and importunate relation, and was asked to console herself
+with the reflection that she was working in the vineyard
+of idealism. In vain eminent publicists in Rome,
+Turin, and Milan pleaded their country's cause. Adopting
+the principle which Mr. Wilson had applied to France
+and Britain, they affirmed that even before the war
+France, with a larger population and fewer possessions,
+had shown that she was incapable of discharging the
+functions which she had voluntarily taken upon herself.
+Tunis, they alleged, owed its growth and thriving condition
+to Italian emigrants. With all the fresh additions
+to her territories, the population of the Republic would be
+utterly inadequate to the task. To the Supreme Council
+this line of reasoning was distinctly unpalatable. Nor
+did the Italians further their cause when, by way of
+giving emphatic point to their reasoning, their press
+quoted that eminent Frenchman, M. d'Estournelles de
+Constant, who wrote at that very moment: &quot;France
+has too many colonies already&mdash;far more in Asia, in
+Africa, in America, in Oceania than she can fructify.
+In this way she is immobilizing territories, continents,
+peoples, which nominally she takes over. And it is
+childish and imprudent to take barren possession of them,
+when other states allege their power to utilize them in
+the general interest. By acting in this manner, France,
+do what she may, is placing herself in opposition to the
+world's interests, and to those of the League of Nations.
+In the long run it is a serious business. Spain, Portugal,
+and Holland know this to their cost. Do what she
+would, France was not able before the war to utilize all
+her immense colonial domain ... for lack of population.
+She will be still less able after the war....&quot;<a name="FNanchor_311_311" id="FNanchor_311_311" href="#Footnote_311_311" >[311]</a></p>
+
+<p>The discussion grew dangerously animated. Epigrams
+were coined and sent floating in the heavily charged air.
+A tactless comparison was made between the French
+nation and a <i>bon vivant</i> of sixty-five who flatters himself
+that he can enjoy life's pleasures on the same scale as
+when he was only thirty. Little arrows thus barbed
+with biting acid often make more enduring mischief
+than sledge-hammer blows. Soon the estrangement
+between the two sister nations unhappily became wider
+and led to marked divergences in their respective policies,
+which seem fraught with grave consequences in the
+future.</p>
+
+<p>The Italy of to-day is not the Italy of May, 1915.
+She now knows exactly where she stands. When she
+unsheathed her sword to fight against the allies of the
+state that declared a treaty to be but a scrap of paper,
+she was heartened by a solemn promise given in writing
+by her comrades in arms. But when she had accomplished
+her part of the contract, that document turned
+out to be little more than another scrap of paper. Thus
+it was one of the piquant ironies of Fate, Italian publicists
+said, that the people who had mostly clamored against
+that doctrine were indirectly helping it to triumph. Mr.
+Wilson, unwittingly sapping public faith in written
+treaties, was held up as one of the many pictures in which
+the Conference abounded of the delegates refuting their
+words by acts. The unbiased historian will readily
+admit that the secret treaties were profoundly immoral
+from the Wilsonian angle of vision, but that the only
+way of canceling them was by a general principle rigidly
+upheld and impartially applied. And this the Supreme
+Council would not entertain.</p>
+
+<p>With her British ally, too, France had an unpleasant
+falling out about Eastern affairs, and in especial about
+Syria and Persia. There was also a demand for the
+retrocession by Britain of the island of Mauritius, but
+it was not made officially, nor is it a subject for two
+such nations to quarrel over. The first rift in the lute
+was caused by the deposition of Emir Faisal respecting
+the desires of the Arab population. This picturesque
+chief, the French press complained, had been too readily
+admitted to the Conference and too respectfully listened
+to there, whereas the Persian delegation tramped for
+months over the Paris streets without once obtaining a
+hearing. The Hedjaz, which had been independent
+from time immemorial, was formally recognized as a
+separate kingdom during the war, and the Grand Sheriff
+of Mecca was suddenly raised to the throne in the European
+sense by France and Britain. Since then he was
+formally recognized by the five Powers. His representatives
+in Paris demanded the annexation of all the countries
+of Arabic speech which were under Turkish domination.
+These included not only Mesopotamia, but also Syria,
+on which France had long looked with loving eyes and
+respecting which there existed an accord between her and
+Britain. The project community would represent a
+Pan-Arab federation of about eleven million souls, over
+which France would have no guardianship. And yet the
+written accord had never been annulled. Palestine was
+excluded from this Pan-Arabian federation, and Syria
+was to be consulted, and instead of being handed over to
+France, as M. Clemenceau demanded, was to be allowed
+to declare its own wishes without any injunctions from
+the Conference. Mesopotamia would be autonomous
+under the League of Nations, but a single mandatory was
+asked for by the king of the Hedjaz for the entire eleven
+million inhabitants.</p>
+
+<p>The comments of the French press on Britain's attitude,
+despite their studied reserve and conventional phraseology,
+bordered on recrimination and hinted at a possible cooling
+of friendship between the two nations, and in the course
+of the controversy the evil-omened word &quot;Fashoda&quot;
+was pronounced. The French <i>Temps's</i> arguments were
+briefly these: The populations claimed occupy such a
+vast stretch of territory that the sovereignty of the
+Hedjaz could hardly be more than nominal and symbolical.
+In fact, they cover an area of one-half of the Ottoman
+Empire. These different provinces would, in
+reality, be under the domination of the Great Power
+which was the real creator of this new kingdom, and the
+monarch of the Hedjaz would be a mere stalking-horse
+of Britain. This, it was urged, would not be independence,
+but a masked protectorate, and in the name of the higher
+principles must be prevented. Syria must be handed
+over to France without consulting the population. The
+financial resources of the Hedjaz are utterly inadequate
+for the administration of such a vast state as was being
+compacted. Who, then, it was asked, would supply the
+indispensable funds? Obviously Britain, who had been
+providing the Emir Faisal with funds ever since his father
+donned the crown. If this political entity came into
+existence, it would generate continuous friction between
+France and Britain, separate comrades in arms, delight
+a vigilant enemy, and violate a written compact which
+should be sacred. For these reasons it should be rejected
+and Syria placed under the guardianship of France.</p>
+
+<p>The Americans took the position that congruously with
+the high ethical principles which had guided the labors
+of the Conference throughout, it was incumbent on its
+members, instead of bartering civilized peoples like chattels,
+to consult them as to their own aspirations. If it
+were true that the Syrians were yearning to become the
+wards of France, there could be no reasonable objection
+on the part of the French delegates to agree to a plebiscite.
+But the French delegates declined to entertain the suggestion
+on the ground that Syria's longing for French
+guidance was a notorious fact.</p>
+
+<p>After much discussion and vehement opposition on the
+part of the French delegates an Inter-Allied commission
+under Mr. Charles Crane was sent to visit the countries
+in dispute and to report on the leanings of their populations.
+After having visited forty cities and towns and
+more than three hundred villages, and received over
+fifteen hundred delegations of natives, the commission
+reported that the majority of the people &quot;prefer to maintain
+their independence,&quot; but do not object to live under
+the mandatory system for fifty years <i>provided the United
+States accepts</i> the mandate. &quot;Syria desires to become a
+sovereign kingdom, and most of the population supports
+the Emir Faisal as king.<a name="FNanchor_312_312" id="FNanchor_312_312" href="#Footnote_312_312" >[312]</a> The commission further ascertained
+that the Syrians, &quot;who are singularly enlightened
+as to the policies of the United States,&quot; invoked and relied
+upon a Franco-British statement of policy<a name="FNanchor_313_313" id="FNanchor_313_313" href="#Footnote_313_313" >[313]</a> which had
+been distributed broadcast throughout their country,
+&quot;promising complete liberation from the Turks and the
+establishment of free governments among the native population
+and recognition of these governments by France
+and Britain.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_314_314" id="FNanchor_314_314" href="#Footnote_314_314" >[314]</a></p>
+
+<p>The result of the investigation by the Inter-Allied
+commission reminds one of the story of the two anglers
+who were discussing the merits of two different sauces
+for the trout which one of them had caught. As they
+were unable to agree they decided to refer the matter to
+the trout, who answered: &quot;Gentlemen, I do not wish to
+be eaten with any sauce. I desire to live and be free in my
+own element.&quot; &quot;Ah, now you are wandering from the
+question,&quot; exclaimed the two, who thereupon struck up
+a compromise on the subject of the sauce.</p>
+
+<p>The tone of this long-drawn-out controversy, especially
+in the press, was distinctly acrimonious. It became
+dangerously bitter when the French political world was
+apprised one day of the conclusion of a treaty between
+Britain and Persia as the outcome of secret negotiations
+between London and Teheran. And excitement grew
+intenser when shortly afterward the authentic text of
+this agreement was disclosed. In France, Italy, Germany,
+Russia, and the United States the press unanimously declared
+that Persia's international status as determined by
+the new diplomatic instrument could best be described by
+the evil-sounding words &quot;protectorate&quot; and the violation
+of the mandatory system adopted by the Conference.</p>
+
+<p>This startling development shed a strong light upon the
+new ordering of the world and its relation to the Wilsonian
+gospel, complicated with secret negotiations, protectorates
+without mandates, and the one-sided abrogation of
+compacts.</p>
+
+<p>Persia is one of the original members of the League
+of Nations,<a name="FNanchor_315_315" id="FNanchor_315_315" href="#Footnote_315_315" >[315]</a> and as such was entitled, the French argued,
+to a hearing at the Conference. She had grievances that
+called for redress: her neutrality had been violated,
+many of her subjects had been put to death, and her titles
+to reparation were undeniable. President Wilson, the
+comforter of small states and oppressed nationalities,
+having proclaimed that the weakest communities would
+command the same friendly treatment as the greatest,
+the Persian delegates repaired to Paris in the belief that
+this treatment would be accorded them. But there they
+were disillusioned. For them there was no admission.
+Whether, if they had been heard and helped by the
+Supreme Council, they would have contrived to exist as an
+independent state is a question which cannot be discussed
+here. The point made by the French was that on its own
+showing the Conference was morally bound to receive the
+Persian delegation. The utmost it obtained was that the
+Persian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Monalek, who was
+head of the delegation, had a private talk with President
+Wilson, Colonel House, and Mr. Lansing. These statesmen
+unhesitatingly promised to help Persia to secure full
+sovereign rights, or at any rate to enable her delegates
+to unfold their country's case and file their protests
+before the Conference. The delegates were comforted
+and felt sure of the success of their mission. They told the
+American plenipotentiaries that the United States would
+be Persia's creditor for this help and that she would invite
+American financiers to put her money matters in order,
+American engineers to develop her mining industries, and
+the American oil firms to examine and exploit her petrol
+deposits.<a name="FNanchor_316_316" id="FNanchor_316_316" href="#Footnote_316_316" >[316]</a> In a word, Persia would be Americanized.
+This na&iuml;ve announcement of the r&ocirc;le reserved for American
+benefactors in the land of the Shah might have impressed
+certain commercial and financial interests in the United
+States, but was wholly alien to the only order of motives
+that could properly move the American plenipotentiaries
+to interpose in favor of their would-be wards.</p>
+
+<p>The promises made by Messrs. Wilson, House, and
+Lansing came to nothing. For months the Persian envoys
+lived in hope which was strengthened by the assurances of
+various members of the Conference that the intervention
+of Mr. Wilson would infallibly prove successful. But
+events belied this forecast, whereupon the head of the
+Persian delegation, after several months of hopes deferred,
+quitted France for Constantinople, and his
+country's position among the nations was settled in
+detail by the new agreement.</p>
+
+<p>That position does undoubtedly resemble very closely
+Egypt's status before the outbreak of the World War.
+And Egypt's status could hardly be termed independence.
+Henceforward Great Britain has a strong hold on the
+Persian customs, the control of the waterways and carriage
+routes, the rights of railway construction, the oil-fields&mdash;these
+were ours before&mdash;the right to organize the
+army and direct the foreign policy of the kingdom. And
+it may fairly be argued that this arrangement may prove
+a greater blessing to the Persians than the realization of
+their own ambitions. That, at any rate, is my own
+personal belief, which for many years I have held and
+expressed. None the less it runs diametrically counter
+to the letter and the spirit of Wilsonianism, which is now
+seen to be a wall high enough to keep out the dwarf
+states, but which the giants can easily clear at a bound.</p>
+
+<p>Against this violation of the new humanitarian doctrine
+French publicists flared up. The glaring character of the
+transgression revolted them, the plight of the Persians
+touched them, and the right of self-determination strongly
+appealed to them. Was it not largely for the assertion
+of that right that all the Allied peoples had for five years
+been making unheard-of sacrifices? What would become
+of the League of Nations if such secret and selfish doings
+were connived at? In a word, French sympathy for the
+victims of British hegemony waxed as strong as the British
+fellow-feeling for the Syrians, who objected to be
+drawn into the orbit of the French. Those sharp protests
+and earnest appeals, it may be noted, were the principal,
+perhaps the only, symptoms of tenderness for unprotected
+peoples which were evoked by the great ethical
+movement headed by the Conference.</p>
+
+<p>The French further pointed out that the system of
+Mandates had been specially created for countries as
+backward and helpless as Persia was assumed to be, and
+that the only agency qualified to apply it was either the
+Supreme Council or the League of Nations. The British
+press answered that no such humiliating assumption about
+the Shah's people was being made, that the Foreign Office
+had distinctly disclaimed the intention of establishing a
+protectorate over Persia, who is, and will remain, a sovereign
+and independent state. But these explanations
+failed to convince our indignant Allies. They argued,
+from experience, that no trust was to be placed in those
+official assurances and euphemistic phrases which are
+generally belied by subsequent acts.<a name="FNanchor_317_317" id="FNanchor_317_317" href="#Footnote_317_317" >[317]</a> They further
+lamented that the long and secret negotiations which were
+going forward in Teheran while the Persian delegation
+was wearily and vainly waiting in Paris to be allowed to
+plead its country's cause before the great world-dictators
+was not a good example of loyalty to the new cosmic legislation.
+Had not Mr. Wilson proclaimed that peoples
+were no longer to be bartered and swapped as chattels?
+Here the Italians and Rumanians chimed in, reminding
+their kinsmen that it was the same American statesmen
+who in the peace conditions first presented to Count
+Brockdorff-Rantzau made over the German population of
+the Saar Valley to France at the end of fifteen years as
+the fair equivalent of a sum of money payable in gold,
+and that France at any rate had raised no objection to the
+barter nor to the principle at the root of it. They reasoned
+that if the principle might be applied to one case
+it should be deemed equally applicable to the other, and
+that the only persons or states that could with propriety
+demur to the Anglo-Persian arrangements were those who
+themselves were not benefiting by similar transactions.</p>
+
+<p>At last the Paris press, laying due weight on the alliance
+with Britain, struck a new note. &quot;It seems that these
+last Persian bargainings offer a theme for conversations
+between our government and that of the Allies,&quot; one
+influential journal wrote.<a name="FNanchor_318_318" id="FNanchor_318_318" href="#Footnote_318_318" >[318]</a> At once the amicable suggestion
+was taken up by the British press. The idea was to
+join the Syrian with the Persian transactions and make
+French concessions on the other. This compromise would
+compose an ugly quarrel and settle everything for the
+best. For France's intentions toward the people of Syria
+were, it was credibly asserted, to the full as disinterested
+and generous as those of Britain toward Persia, and if the
+Syrians desired an English-speaking nation rather than
+the French to be their mentor, it was equally true that the
+Persians wanted Americans rather than British to superintend
+and accelerate their progress in civilization. But
+instead of harkening to the wishes of only one it would
+be better to ignore those of both. By this prudent compromise
+all the demands of right and justice, for which
+both governments were earnest sticklers, would thus be
+amply satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>Our American associates were less easily appeased. In
+sooth there was nothing left wherewith to appease them.
+Their press condemned the &quot;protectorate&quot; as a breach
+of the Covenant. Secretary Lansing let it be known<a name="FNanchor_319_319" id="FNanchor_319_319" href="#Footnote_319_319" >[319]</a>
+that the United States delegation had striven to obtain a
+hearing for the Persians at the Conference, but had &quot;lost
+its fight.&quot; A Persian, when apprized of this utterance,
+said: &quot;When the United States delegation strove to hinder
+Italy from annexing Fiume and obtaining the territories
+promised her by a secret treaty, they accomplished
+their aim because they refused to give way. Then they
+took care not to lose their fight. When they accepted a
+brief for the Jews and imposed a Jewish semi-state on
+Rumania and Poland, they were firm as the granite rock,
+and no amount of opposition, no future deterrents, made
+any impression on their will. Accordingly, they had their
+way. But in the cause of Persia they lost the fight,
+although logic, humanity, justice, and the ordinances
+solemnly accepted by the Great Powers were all on their
+side.&quot; ... One American press organ termed the Anglo-Persian
+accord &quot;a coup which is a greater violation of the
+Wilsonian Fourteen Points than the Shantung award to
+Japan, as it makes the whole of Persia a mere protectorate
+for Britain.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_320_320" id="FNanchor_320_320" href="#Footnote_320_320" >[320]</a></p>
+
+<p>Generally speaking, illustrations of the meaning of non-intervention
+in the home affairs of other nations were
+numerous and somewhat perplexing. Were it not that
+Mr. Wilson had come to Europe for the express purpose
+of interpreting as well as enforcing his own doctrine, one
+would have been warranted in assuming that the Supreme
+Council was frequently travestying it. But as the President
+was himself one of the leading members of that
+Council, whose decisions were unanimous, the utmost
+that one can take for granted is that he strove to impose
+his tenets on his intractable colleagues and &quot;lost the
+fight.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here is a striking instance of what would look to the
+average man very like intervention in the domestic politics
+of another nation&mdash;well-meant and, it may be, beneficent
+intervention&mdash;were it not that we are assured on the
+highest authority that it is nothing of the sort. It was
+devised as an expedient for getting outside help for the
+capture of Petrograd by the anti-Bolshevists. The end,
+therefore, was good, and the means seemed effectual to
+those who employed them. The Kolchak-Denikin party
+could, it was believed, have taken possession of that
+capital long before, by obtaining the military co-operation
+of the Esthonians. But the price asked by these was the
+recognition of their complete independence by the non-Bolshevist
+government in the name of all Russia. Kolchak,
+to his credit, refused to pay this price, seeing that
+he had no powers to do so, and only a dictator would sign
+away the territory by usurping the requisite authority.
+Consequently the combined attack on Petrograd was not
+undertaken. The Admiral's refusal was justified by the
+circumstances that he was the spokesman only of a large
+section of the Russian people, and that a thoroughly
+representative assembly must be consulted on the subject
+previous to action being taken. The military stagnation
+that ensued lasted for months. Then one day the press
+brought the tidings that the difficulty was ingeniously
+overcome. This is the shape in which the intelligence
+was communicated to the world: &quot;Colonel Marsh, of the
+British army, who is representing General Gough, organized
+a republic in northwest Russia at Reval, August 12th,
+<i>within forty-five minutes</i>, General Yudenitch being nominally
+the head of the new government, which is affiliated
+with the Kolchak government. Northwest Russia opposes
+the Esthonian government only in principle because
+it wants guaranties that the Esthonians will not be the
+stepping-stone for some big Power like Germany to control
+the Russian outlet through the Baltic. If the Esthonians
+give such guaranties, the northwestern Russians are
+perfectly willing to let them become an independent state.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_321_321" id="FNanchor_321_321" href="#Footnote_321_321" >[321]</a></p>
+
+<p>Here then was a &quot;British colonel&quot; who, in addition to
+his military duties, was, according to this account, willing
+and able to create an independent republic without any
+Supreme Council to assist him, whereas professional diplomatists
+and military men of other nations had been
+trying for months to found a Rhine republic under Dorten
+and had failed. Nor did he, if the newspaper report
+be correct, waste much time at the business. From the
+moment of its inception until northwestern Russia stood
+forth an independent state, promulgating and executing
+grave decisions in the sphere of international politics, only
+forty-five minutes are said to have elapsed. Forty-five
+minutes by the clock. It was almost as quick a feat as
+the drafting of the Covenant of Nations. Further, the
+resourceful statemaker forged a republic which was qualified
+to transfer sovereignly Russian territory to unrecognized
+states without consulting the nation or obtaining
+authority from any one. More marvelous than any other
+detail, however, is the circumstance that he did his work
+so well that it never amounted to intervention.<a name="FNanchor_322_322" id="FNanchor_322_322" href="#Footnote_322_322" >[322]</a></p>
+
+<p>One cannot affect surprise if the distinction between
+this amazing exploit of diplomatico-military prestidigitation
+and intermeddling in the internal affairs of another
+nation prove too subtle for the mental grasp of the average
+unpolitical individual.</p>
+
+<p>It is practices like these which ultimately determine
+the worth of the treaties and the Covenant which Mr.
+Wilson was content to take back with him to Washington
+as the final outcome of what was to have been the most
+superb achievement of historic man. Of the new ethical
+principles, of the generous renunciation of privileges, of
+the righting of secular wrongs, of the respect that was to
+be shown for the weak, which were to have cemented the
+union of peoples into one pacific if not blissful family,
+there remained but the memory. No such bitter draught
+of disappointment was swallowed by the nations since
+the world first had a political history. Many of the resounding
+phrases that once foretokened a new era of peace,
+right, and equity were not merely emptied of their contents,
+but made to connote their opposites. Freedom of
+the seas became supremacy of the seas, which may possibly
+turn out to be a blessed consummation for all concerned,
+but should not have been smuggled in under a
+gross misnomer. The abolition of war means, as British
+and American and French generals and admirals have
+since told their respective fellow-citizens, thorough preparations
+for the next war, which are not to be confined,
+as heretofore, to the so-called military states, but are
+to extend over all Anglo-Saxondom.<a name="FNanchor_323_323" id="FNanchor_323_323" href="#Footnote_323_323" >[323]</a> &quot;Open covenants
+openly arrived at&quot; signify secret conclaves and conspirative
+deliberations carried on in impenetrable secrecy
+which cannot be dispensed with even after the
+whole business has passed into history.<a name="FNanchor_324_324" id="FNanchor_324_324" href="#Footnote_324_324" >[324]</a> The self-determination
+of peoples finds its limit in the rights
+of every Great Power to hold its subject nationalities
+in thrall on the ground that their reciprocal relations
+appertain to the domestic policy of the state. It means,
+further, the privilege of those who wield superior force
+to put irresistible pressure upon those who are weak,
+and the lever which it places in their hands for the purpose
+is to be known under the attractive name of the protection
+of minorities. Abstention from interference in the
+home affairs of a neighboring community is made to cover
+intermeddling of the most irksome and humiliating character
+in matters which have no nexus with international
+law, for if they had, the rule would be applicable to all
+nations. The lesser peoples must harken to injunctions
+of the greater states respecting their mode of treating
+alien immigrants and must submit to the control of foreign
+bodies which are ignorant of the situation and its requirements.
+Nor is it enough that those states should accord
+to the members of the Jewish and other races all the rights
+which their own citizens enjoy&mdash;they must go farther and
+invest them with special privileges, and for this purpose
+renounce a portion of their sovereignty. They must likewise
+allow their more powerful allies to dictate to them
+their legislation on matters of transit and foreign commerce.<a name="FNanchor_325_325" id="FNanchor_325_325" href="#Footnote_325_325" >[325]</a>
+For the Great Powers, however, this law of
+minorities was not written. They are above the law.
+Their warrant is force. In a word, force is the trump
+card in the political game of the future as it was in that
+of the past. And M. Clemenceau's reminder to the petty
+states at the opening of the Conference that the wielders
+of twelve million troops are the masters of the situation
+was appropriate. Thus the war which was provoked by
+the transformation of a solemn treaty into a scrap of
+paper was concluded by the presentation of two scraps
+of paper as a treaty and a covenant for the moral renovation
+of the world.</p>
+
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_288_288" id="Footnote_288_288" href="#FNanchor_288_288"> [288]</a> <i>The Daily Telegraph</i>, March 28, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_289_289" id="Footnote_289_289" href="#FNanchor_289_289"> [289]</a> In a speech delivered at a dinner given in Paris on April 19, 1919, by
+the Commonwealth of Australia to Australian soldiers.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_290_290" id="Footnote_290_290" href="#FNanchor_290_290"> [290]</a> In March, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_291_291" id="Footnote_291_291" href="#FNanchor_291_291"> [291]</a> August 19, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_292_292" id="Footnote_292_292" href="#FNanchor_292_292"> [292]</a> Cf. <i>Corriere delta Sera</i>, August 20, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_293_293" id="Footnote_293_293" href="#FNanchor_293_293"> [293]</a> <i>Ibidem</i> (<i>Corriere della Sera</i>, August 20, 1919).</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_294_294" id="Footnote_294_294" href="#FNanchor_294_294"> [294]</a> <i>L'Humanit&eacute;,</i> May 21, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_295_295" id="Footnote_295_295" href="#FNanchor_295_295"> [295]</a> <i>The Nation</i>, August 23, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_296_296" id="Footnote_296_296" href="#FNanchor_296_296"> [296]</a> Chief of the Austrian police at Vienna Congress in the years 1814-15.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_297_297" id="Footnote_297_297" href="#FNanchor_297_297"> [297]</a> In <i>L'Echo de Paris</i>, March 2,1919. Cf. <i>The Daily Telegraph</i>, March 4th.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_298_298" id="Footnote_298_298" href="#FNanchor_298_298"> [298]</a> <i>Le Gaulois</i>, March 8, 1919. Cf. <i>The Daily Telegraph</i>, March 10th.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_299_299" id="Footnote_299_299" href="#FNanchor_299_299"> [299]</a> Cf. <i>The Chicago Tribune</i> (Paris edition), August 21, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_300_300" id="Footnote_300_300" href="#FNanchor_300_300"> [300]</a> Cf. <i>The Chicago Tribune</i> (Paris edition), August 23, 1919</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_301_301" id="Footnote_301_301" href="#FNanchor_301_301"> [301]</a> Report of Dr. Jacques Bertillon. Cf. <i>L'Information</i>, January 20, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_302_302" id="Footnote_302_302" href="#FNanchor_302_302"> [302]</a> Cf. <i>Le Matin</i>, August 13, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_303_303" id="Footnote_303_303" href="#FNanchor_303_303"> [303]</a> Excess of births over deaths (yearly average).&mdash;Cf. <i>L'Information,</i>
+January 20, 1919:
+</p>
+
+<table border='0'  cellspacing='10'  cellpadding='5'  >
+	<tr class="center">
+		<td></td>
+		<td>Germany</td>
+		<td>Great Britain</td>
+		<td>Italy</td>
+		<td>France</td>
+	</tr>
+	<tr class="center">
+		<td>1861-70</td>
+		<td>408,333</td>
+		<td>365,499</td>
+		<td>183,196</td>
+		<td>93,515</td>
+	</tr>
+	<tr class="center">
+		<td>1871-80</td>
+		<td>511,034</td>
+		<td>431,436</td>
+		<td>191,538</td>
+		<td>64,063</td>
+	</tr>
+	<tr class="center">
+		<td>1881-90</td>
+		<td>551,308</td>
+		<td>442,112</td>
+		<td>307,082</td>
+		<td>66,982</td>
+	</tr>
+	<tr class="center">
+		<td>1891-1900</td>
+		<td>730,265</td>
+		<td>430,000</td>
+		<td>339,409</td>
+		<td>23,961</td>
+	</tr>
+	<tr class="center">
+		<td>1901-10</td>
+		<td>866,338</td>
+		<td>484,822</td>
+		<td>369,959</td>
+		<td>46,524</td>
+	</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_304_304" id="Footnote_304_304" href="#FNanchor_304_304"> [304]</a> Professor L. Marchand. Cf. <i>La D&eacute;mocratie Nouvelle</i>, April 26, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_305_305" id="Footnote_305_305" href="#FNanchor_305_305"> [305]</a> Dr. Walter Rathenau, in a book entitled <i>The Death of France</i>. I have
+not been able to procure a copy of this book. The extracts given above
+are taken from a statement published by M. Brudenne in the <i>Matin</i> of
+February 16, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_306_306" id="Footnote_306_306" href="#FNanchor_306_306"> [306]</a> <i>Germania</i>, August 11, 1919. Cf. <i>Le Temps</i>, September 9, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_307_307" id="Footnote_307_307" href="#FNanchor_307_307"> [307]</a> M. Andr&eacute; Tardieu in a speech delivered on August 17, 1919. Cf. Paris
+newspapers of following two days, and in particular <i>New York Herald</i>,
+August 19th.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_308_308" id="Footnote_308_308" href="#FNanchor_308_308"> [308]</a> Cf. speech delivered by M. Andr&eacute; Tardieu on August 17, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_309_309" id="Footnote_309_309" href="#FNanchor_309_309"> [309]</a> On this subject of reparations the <i>Journal de Gen&egrave;ve</i> published several
+interesting articles at various times, as, for example, on May 15, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_310_310" id="Footnote_310_310" href="#FNanchor_310_310"> [310]</a> Speech of M. Klotz in the Chamber on September 5, 1919. Cf. <i>L'Echo
+de Paris</i>, September 6, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_311_311" id="Footnote_311_311" href="#FNanchor_311_311"> [311]</a> D'Estournelles de Constant. <i>Bulletin des Droits de l'Homme</i>, May 15,
+1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_312_312" id="Footnote_312_312" href="#FNanchor_312_312"> [312]</a> <i>The Chicago Tribune</i> (Paris edition), August 24, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_313_313" id="Footnote_313_313" href="#FNanchor_313_313"> [313]</a> Issued on November 9, 1918.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_314_314" id="Footnote_314_314" href="#FNanchor_314_314"> [314]</a> See <i>The Chicago Tribune</i> (Paris edition), August 30, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_315_315" id="Footnote_315_315" href="#FNanchor_315_315"> [315]</a> An American Senator uncharitably conjectured that she received this
+honorable distinction in order to contribute an additional vote to the
+British.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_316_316" id="Footnote_316_316" href="#FNanchor_316_316"> [316]</a> Cf. interview with a Persian official, published in the Paris edition of
+<i>The Chicago Tribune</i>, August 19, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_317_317" id="Footnote_317_317" href="#FNanchor_317_317"> [317]</a> &quot;Unfortunately, Mr. Lloyd George, who has stripped the Foreign Office
+of real power, has frequently given assurances of this nature, and his acts
+have always contradicted them. As a proof, his last interview with M.
+Clemenceau will serve.&quot; Cf. <i>L'Echo de Paris</i>, August 15, 1919, article by
+Pertinax.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_318_318" id="Footnote_318_318" href="#FNanchor_318_318"> [318]</a> <i>Le Journal des D&eacute;bats</i>, August 15, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_319_319" id="Footnote_319_319" href="#FNanchor_319_319"> [319]</a> In Washington on August 16, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_320_320" id="Footnote_320_320" href="#FNanchor_320_320"> [320]</a> <i>The Chicago Tribune</i> (Paris edition), August 19, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_321_321" id="Footnote_321_321" href="#FNanchor_321_321"> [321]</a> <i>The Chicago Tribune</i> (Paris edition), August 24, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_322_322" id="Footnote_322_322" href="#FNanchor_322_322"> [322]</a> After the above was written, a French journal, the <i>Echo de Paris</i> of
+September 19, 1919, announced that General Marsh declares that his
+agents acted without his instructions, but none the less it holds him responsible
+for this Baltic policy.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_323_323" id="Footnote_323_323" href="#FNanchor_323_323"> [323]</a> Marshal Douglas Haig, Lord French, the American pacifist, Sydney
+Baker, Senator Chamberlain, Representative Kahn, and a host of others
+have been preaching universal military training. The press, too, with considerable
+exceptions, favors the movement. &quot;We want a democratized
+army, which represents all the nation, and it can be found only in universal
+service.... Universal service is our best guaranty of peace.&quot; Cf. <i>The
+Chicago Tribune</i> (Paris edition), August 22, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_324_324" id="Footnote_324_324" href="#FNanchor_324_324"> [324]</a> President Wilson, when at the close of his conference with the Senate
+Committee on Foreign Relations&mdash;at the White House&mdash;asked how the
+United States had voted on the Japanese resolution in favor of race equality,
+replied: &quot;I am not sure of being free to answer the question, because it
+affects a large number of points that were discussed in Paris, and in the
+interest of international harmony I think I had better not reply.&quot;&mdash;<i>The
+Daily Mail</i> (Paris edition), August 22, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_325_325" id="Footnote_325_325" href="#FNanchor_325_325"> [325]</a> In virtue of Article LX of the Treaty with Austria.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV" />XIV</h3>
+
+<h3>THE TREATY WITH GERMANY</h3>
+
+
+<p>To discuss in detail the peace terms which after many
+months' desultory talk were finally presented to
+Count Brockdorff-Rantzau would transcend the scope
+of these pages. Like every other act of the Supreme
+Council, they may be viewed from one of two widely
+sundered angles of survey&mdash;either as the exercise by a
+victorious state of the power derived from victory over
+the vanquished enemy, or as one of the measures by which
+the peace of the world is to be enforced in the present and
+consolidated in the future. And from neither point of
+view can it command the approval of unbiased political
+students. At first the Germans, and not they alone,
+expected that the conditions would be based on the
+Fourteen Points, while many of the Allies took it for
+granted that they would be inspired by the resolve to
+cripple Teutondom for all time. And for each of these
+anticipations there were good formal grounds.</p>
+
+<p>The only legitimate motive for interweaving the
+Covenant with the Treaty was to make of the latter a sort
+of corollary of the former and to moderate the instincts
+of vengeance by the promptings of higher interests. On
+this ground, and only on this, did the friends of far-ranging
+reform support Mr. Wilson in his contention
+that the two documents should be rendered mutually
+interdependent. Reparation for the damage done in
+violation of international law and sound guaranties
+against its recurrence are of the essence of every peace
+treaty that follows a decisive victory. But reparation is
+seldom this and nothing more. The lower instincts of
+human nature, when dominant as they are during a
+bloody war and in the hour of victory, generally outweigh
+considerations not only of right, but also of enlightened
+egotism, leaving justice to merge into vengeance.
+And the fruits are treasured wrath and a secret
+resolve on the part of the vanquished to pay out his
+victor at the first opportunity. The war-loser of to-day
+aims at becoming the war-winner of to-morrow. And
+this frame of mind is incompatible with the temper needed
+for an era of moral fellowship such as Mr. Wilson was
+supposed to be intent on establishing. Consequently, a
+peace treaty unmodified by the principles underlying the
+Covenant is necessarily a negation of the main possibilities
+of a society of nations based upon right and a decisive
+argument against joining together the two instruments.</p>
+
+<p>The other kind of peace which Mr. Wilson was believed
+to have had at heart consisted not merely in the liquidation
+of the war, but in the uprooting of its permanent
+causes, in the renunciation by the various nations of
+sanguinary conflicts as a means of determining rival
+claims, and in such an amicable rearrangement of international
+relations as would keep such disputes from
+growing into dangerous quarrels. Right, or as near an
+approximation to it as is attainable, would then take the
+place of violence, whereby military guaranties would
+become not only superfluous, but indicative of a spirit
+irreconcilable with the main purpose of the League.
+Each nation would be entitled to equal opportunity within
+the limits assigned to it by nature and widened by its
+own mental and moral capacities. Thus permanently to
+forbid a numerous, growing, and territorially cramped
+nation to possess overseas colonies for its superfluous
+population while overburdening others with possessions
+which they are unable to utilize, would constitute a
+negation of one of the basic principles of the new ordering.</p>
+
+<p>Those were the grounds which seemed to warrant the
+belief that the Treaty would be not only formally, but
+substantially and in its spirit an integral, part of the
+general settlement based on the Fourteen Points.</p>
+
+<p>This anticipation turned out to be a delusion. Wilsonianism
+proved to be a very different system from that
+of the Fourteen Points, and its author played the part not
+only of an interpreter of his tenets, but also of a sort
+of political pope alone competent to annul the force of
+laws binding on all those whom he should refuse to dispense
+from their observance. He had to do with patriotic
+politicians permeated with the old ideas, desirous of providing
+in the peace terms for the next war and striving
+to secure the maximum of advantage over the foe presumptive,
+by dismembering his territory, depriving him
+of colonies, making him dependent on others for his
+supplies of raw stuffs, and artificially checking his natural
+growth. Nearly all of them had principles to invoke in
+favor of their claims and some had nothing else. And
+it was these tendencies which Mr. Wilson sought to
+combine with the ethical ideals to be incarnated in the
+Society of Nations. Now this was an impossible synthesis.
+The spirit of vindictiveness&mdash;for that was well
+represented at the Conference&mdash;was to merge and lose
+itself in an outflow of magnanimity; precautions against a
+hated enemy were to be interwoven with implicit confidence
+in his generosity; a military occupation would
+provide against a sudden onslaught, while an approach
+to disarmament would bear witness to the absence of
+suspicion. Thus Poland would discharge the function of
+France's ally against the Teutons in the east, but her
+frontiers were to leave her inefficiently protected against
+their future attacks from the west. Germany was dismembered,
+yet she was credited with self-discipline and
+generosity enough to steel her against the temptation to
+profit by the opportunity of joining together again what
+France had dissevered. The League of Nations was to
+be based upon mutual confidence and good fellowship,
+yet one of its most powerful future members was so distrusted
+as to be declared permanently unworthy to possess
+any overseas colonies. Germany's territory in the Saar
+Valley is admittedly inhabited by Germans, yet for
+fifteen years there is to be a foreign administration there,
+and at the end of it the people are to be asked whether
+they would like to cut the bonds that link them with their
+own state and place themselves under French sway, so
+that a premium is offered for French immigration into
+the Saar Valley.</p>
+
+<p>Those are a few of the consequences of the mixture
+of the two irreconcilable principles.</p>
+
+<p>That Germany richly deserved her punishment cannot
+be gainsaid. Her crime was without precedent. Some
+of its most sinister consequences are irremediable. Whole
+sections of her people are still unconscious not only of
+the magnitude, but of the criminal character, of their misdeeds.
+None the less there is a future to be provided
+for, and one of the safest provisions is to influence the
+potential enemy's will for evil if his power cannot be
+paralyzed. And this the Treaty failed to do.</p>
+
+<p>The Germans, when they learned the conditions, discussed
+them angrily, and the keynote was refusal to sign
+the document. The financial clauses were stigmatized
+as masked slavery. The press urged that during the
+war less than one-tenth of France's territory had been
+occupied by their countrymen and that even of this only
+a fragment was in the zone of combat. The entire wealth
+of France, they alleged, had been estimated before the war
+at from three hundred and fifty milliard to four hundred
+milliard francs, consequently for the devastated provinces
+hardly more than one-twentieth of that sum could fairly
+be demanded as reparation, whereas the claim set forth
+was incomparably more. They objected to the loss of
+their colonies because the justification alleged&mdash;that they
+were disqualified to administer them because of their
+former cruelties toward the natives&mdash;was groundless,
+as the Allies themselves had admitted implicitly by
+offering them the right of pre-emption in the case of the
+Portuguese and other overseas possessions on the very
+eve of the war.</p>
+
+<p>But the most telling objections turned upon the clauses
+that dealt with the Saar Valley. Its population is entirely
+German, yet the treaty-makers provided for its occupation
+by the French for a term of fifteen years and its
+transference to them if, after that term, the German
+government was unable to pay a certain sum in gold
+for the coal mines it contained. If that sum were not
+forthcoming the population and the district were to be
+handed over to France for all time, even though the
+former should vote unanimously for reunion with Germany.
+Count Brockdorff-Rantzau remarked in his note
+on the Treaty &quot;that in the history of modern times there
+is no other example of a civilized Power obliging a state
+to abandon its people to foreign domination as an equivalent
+for a cash payment.&quot; One of the most influential
+press organs complained that the Treaty &quot;bartered
+German men, women, and children for coal; subjected
+some districts with a thoroughly German population
+to an obligatory plebiscite<a name="FNanchor_326_326" id="FNanchor_326_326" href="#Footnote_326_326" >[326]</a> under interested supervision;
+severed others without any consultation from the Fatherland;
+delivered over the proceeds of German industry
+to the greed of foreign capitalists for an indefinite period; ...
+spread over the whole country a network of alien
+commissions to be paid by the German nation; withdrew
+streams, rivers, railways, the air service, numerous
+industrial establishments, the entire economic system,
+from the sovereignty of the German state by means either
+of internationalization or financial control; conferred on
+foreign inspectors rights such as only the satraps of
+absolute monarchs in former ages were empowered to
+exercise; in a word, they put an end to the existence
+of the German nation as such. Germany would become
+a colony of white slaves....&quot;<a name="FNanchor_327_327" id="FNanchor_327_327" href="#Footnote_327_327" >[327]</a></p>
+
+<p>Fortunately for the Allies, the reproach of exchanging
+human beings for coal was seen by their leaders to be so
+damaging that they modified the odious clause that
+warranted it. Even the comments of the friendly neutral
+press were extremely pungent. They found fault with
+the Treaty on grounds which, unhappily, cannot be reasoned
+away. &quot;Why dissimulate it?&quot; writes the foremost
+of these journals; &quot;this peace is not what we were led to
+expect. It dislodges the old dangers, but creates new
+ones. Alsace and Lorraine are, it is true, no longer in
+German hands, but ... irredentism has only changed
+its camp. In 1914 Germany put her faith in force because
+she herself wielded it. But crushed down under a peace
+which appears to violate the promises made to her, a
+peace which in her heart of hearts she will never accept,
+she will turn toward force anew. It will stand out as the
+great misfortune of this Treaty that it has tainted the
+victory with a moral blight and caused the course of the
+German revolution to swerve.... The fundamental
+error of the instrument lies in the circumstance that it
+is a compromise between two incompatible frames of
+mind. It was feasible to restore peace to Europe by
+pulling down Germany definitely. But in order to
+accomplish this it would have been necessary to crush
+a people of seventy millions and to incapacitate them
+from rising to their feet again. Peace could also have
+been secured by the sole force of right. But in this case
+Germany would have had to be treated so considerately
+as to leave her no grievance to brood over. M. Clemenceau
+hindered Mr. Wilson from displaying sufficient
+generosity to get the moral peace, and Mr. Wilson on his
+side prevented M. Clemenceau from exercising severity
+enough to secure the material peace. And so the result,
+which it was easy to foresee, is a r&eacute;gime devoid of the
+real guaranties of durability.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_328_328" id="FNanchor_328_328" href="#Footnote_328_328" >[328]</a></p>
+
+<p>The judge of the French syndicalists was still more
+severe. &quot;The Versailles peace,&quot; exclaimed M. Verfeuil,
+&quot;is worse than the peace of Brest-Litovsk ... annexations,
+economic servitudes, overwhelming indemnities,
+and a caricature of the Society of Nations&mdash;these constitute
+the balance of the new policy,&quot;<a name="FNanchor_329_329" id="FNanchor_329_329" href="#Footnote_329_329" >[329]</a> The Deputy
+Marcel Cachin said: &quot;The Allied armies fought to make
+this war the last. They fought for a just and lasting
+peace, but none of these boons has been bestowed on us.
+We are confronted with the failure of the policy of the
+one man in whom our party had put its confidence&mdash;President
+Wilson. The peace conditions ... are inacceptable
+from various points of view, financial, territorial,
+economic, social, and human.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_330_330" id="FNanchor_330_330" href="#Footnote_330_330" >[330]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is in this Treaty far more than in the Covenant that
+the principles to which Mr. Wilson at first committed
+himself are in decisive issue. True, he was wont after
+every surrender he made during the Conference to invoke
+the Covenant and its concrete realization&mdash;the League
+of Nations&mdash;as the corrective which would set everything
+right in the future. But the fact can hardly be blinked
+that it is the Treaty and its effects that impress their
+character on the Covenant and not the other way round.
+As an eminent Swiss professor observed: &quot;No league
+of nations would have hindered the Belgian people in
+1830 from separating from Holland. Can the future
+League of Nations hinder Germany from reconstituting
+its geographical unity? Can it hinder the Germans of
+Bohemia from smiting the Czech? Can it prevent the
+Magyars, who at present are scattered, from working
+for their reunion?&quot;<a name="FNanchor_331_331" id="FNanchor_331_331" href="#Footnote_331_331" >[331]</a></p>
+
+<p>These potential disturbances are so many dangers to
+France. For if war should break out in eastern Europe,
+is it to be supposed that the United States, the British
+colonies, or even Britain herself will send troops to take
+part in it? Hardly. Suppose, for instance, that the
+Austrians, who ardently desire to be merged in Germany,
+proclaim their union with her, as I am convinced they
+will one day, does any statesman believe that democratic
+America will despatch troops to coerce them back? If the
+Germans of Bohemia secede from the Czechoslovaks
+or the Croats from the Serbs, will British armies cross
+the sea to uphold the union which those peoples repudiate?
+And in the name of which of the Fourteen Points would
+they undertake the task? That of self-determination?
+France's interests, and hers alone, would be affected by
+such changes. And France would be left to fight single-handed.
+For what?</p>
+
+<p>It is interesting to note how the conditions imposed
+upon Germany were appreciated by an influential body
+of Mr. Wilson's American partizans who had pinned their
+faith to his Fourteen Points. Their view is expressed
+by their press organ as follows:<a name="FNanchor_332_332" id="FNanchor_332_332" href="#Footnote_332_332" >[332]</a></p>
+
+<p>&quot;France remains the strongest Power on the Continent.
+With her military establishment intact she faces a Germany
+without a general staff, without conscription, without
+universal military training, with a strictly limited
+amount of light artillery, with no air service, no fleet,
+with no domestic basis in raw materials for armament
+manufacture, with her whole western border fifty kilometers
+east of the Rhine demilitarized. On top of this
+France has a system of military alliances with the new
+states that touch Germany. On top of this she secured
+permanent representation in the Council of the League,
+from which Germany is excluded. On top of that economic
+terms which, while they cannot be fulfilled, do
+cripple the industrial life of her neighbor. With such a
+balance of forces France demands for herself a form of
+protection which neither Belgium, nor Poland, nor
+Czechoslovakia, nor Italy is granted.&quot;</p>
+
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_326_326" id="Footnote_326_326" href="#FNanchor_326_326"> [326]</a> One of the three districts of Schleswig. A curious phenomenon was
+this zeal of the Supreme Council for Denmark's interests, as compared with
+Denmark's refusal to profit by it, the champions of self-determination
+urging the Danes to demand a district, as Danish, which the Danes knew
+to be German!</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_327_327" id="Footnote_327_327" href="#FNanchor_327_327"> [327]</a> <i>Das Berliner Tageblatt</i>, June 4, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_328_328" id="Footnote_328_328" href="#FNanchor_328_328"> [328]</a> <i>Le Journal de Gen&egrave;ve</i>, June 24, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_329_329" id="Footnote_329_329" href="#FNanchor_329_329"> [329]</a> Cf. <i>L'Echo de Paris</i>, May 12, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_330_330" id="Footnote_330_330" href="#FNanchor_330_330"> [330]</a> <i>Ibidem</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_331_331" id="Footnote_331_331" href="#FNanchor_331_331"> [331]</a> In a monograph entitled <i>Plus Jamais</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_332_332" id="Footnote_332_332" href="#FNanchor_332_332"> [332]</a> Cf. <i>The New Republic</i>, August 13, 1919, p. 43.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV" />XV</h3>
+
+<h3>THE TREATY WITH BULGARIA</h3>
+
+
+<p>Among all the strange products of the many-sided
+outbursts of the leading delegates' reconstructive
+activity, the Treaty with Bulgaria stands out in bold
+relief. It reveals the high-water mark reached by those
+secret, elusive, and decisive influences which swayed so
+many of the mysterious decisions adopted by the Conference.
+As Bulgaria disposed of an abundant source
+of those influences, her chastisement partakes of some
+of the characteristics of a reward. Not only did she not
+fare as the treacherous enemy that she showed herself,
+but she emerged from the ordeal much better off than
+several of the victorious states. Unlike Serbia, Rumania,
+France, and Belgium, she escaped the horrors of a foreign
+invasion and she possessed and fructified all her resources
+down to the day when the armistice was concluded.
+Her peasant population made huge profits during the
+campaign and her armies despoiled Serbia, Rumania,
+and Greek Macedonia and sent home enormous booty.
+In a word, she is richer and more prosperous than before
+she entered the arena against her protectors and former
+allies.</p>
+
+<p>For, owing to the intercession of her powerful friends,
+she was treated with a degree of indulgence which,
+although expected by all who were initiated into the
+secrets of &quot;open diplomacy,&quot; scandalized those who were
+anxious that at least some simulacrum of justice should
+be maintained. Germany was forced to sign a blank
+check which her enemies will one day fill in. Austria was
+reduced to the status of a parasite living on the bounty of
+the Great Powers and denied the right of self-determination.
+Even France, exhausted by five years' superhuman
+efforts, beholds with alarm her financial future entirely
+dependent upon the ability or inability of Germany to
+pay the damages to which she was condemned.</p>
+
+<p>But the Prussia of the Balkans, owing to the intercession
+of influential anonymous friends, had no such consequences
+to deplore. Although she contracted heavy debts
+toward Germany, she was relieved of the effort to pay
+them. Her financial obligations were first transferred<a name="FNanchor_333_333" id="FNanchor_333_333" href="#Footnote_333_333" >[333]</a>
+to the Allies and then magnanimously wiped out by these,
+who then limited all her liabilities for reparations to two
+and a quarter milliard francs. An Inter-Allied commission
+in Sofia is to find and return the loot to its lawful owners,
+but it is to charge no indemnity for the damage done.
+Nor will it contain representatives of the states whose
+property the Bulgars abstracted. Serbia is allowed
+neither indemnity nor reparation. She is to receive a
+share which the Treaty neglected to fix of the two and a
+quarter milliard francs on a date which has also been
+left undetermined. She is not even to get back the
+herds of cattle of which the Bulgars robbed her. The
+lawgivers in Paris considered that justice would be met
+by obliging the Bulgars to restore 28,000 head of cattle
+in lieu of the 3,200,000 driven off, so that even if the ill-starred
+Serbs should identify, say, one million more, they
+would have no right to enforce their claim.<a name="FNanchor_334_334" id="FNanchor_334_334" href="#Footnote_334_334" >[334]</a></p>
+
+<p>Nor is that the only disconcerting detail in the Treaty.
+The Supreme Council, which sanctioned the military occupation
+of a part of Germany as a guaranty for the fulfilment
+of the peace conditions, dispenses Bulgaria from
+any such irksome conditions. Bulgaria's good faith appeared
+sufficient to the politicians who drafted the instrument.
+&quot;For reasons which one hardly dares touch
+upon,&quot; writes an eminent French publicist,<a name="FNanchor_335_335" id="FNanchor_335_335" href="#Footnote_335_335" >[335]</a> &quot;several of
+the Powers that constitute the famous world areopagus
+count on the future co-operation of Bulgaria. We shrink
+in dismay from the perspective thus opened to our gaze.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_336_336" id="FNanchor_336_336" href="#Footnote_336_336" >[336]</a></p>
+
+<p>The territorial changes which the Prussia of the
+Balkans was condemned to undergo are neither very
+considerable nor unjust. Rumania receives no Bulgarian
+territory, the frontiers of 1913 remaining unaltered.
+Serbia nets some on grounds which cannot be
+called in question, and a large part of Thrace which is inhabited,
+not by Bulgars, but mainly by Greeks and Turks,
+was taken from Bulgaria, but allotted to no state in particular.
+The upshot of the Treaty, as it appeared to
+most of the leading publicists on the Continent of Europe,
+was to leave Bulgaria, whose cruelty and destructiveness
+are described by official and unofficial reports as unparalleled,
+in a position of economic superiority to Serbia,
+Greece, and Rumania. And in the Inter-Allied commission
+Bulgaria is to have a representative, while Serbia,
+Greece, and Rumania, a part of whose stolen property
+the commission has to recover, will have none.</p>
+
+<p>A comparison between the indulgence lavished upon
+Bulgaria and the severity displayed toward Rumania is
+calculated to disconcert the stanchest friends of the
+Supreme Council. The Rumanian government, in a dignified
+note to the Conference, explained its refusal to sign
+the Treaty with Austria by enumerating a series of facts
+which amount to a scathing condemnation of the work
+of the Supreme Council. On the one hand the Council
+pleaded the engagements entered into between Japan and
+her European allies as a cogent motive for handing over
+Shantung to Japan. For treaties must be respected.
+And the argument is sound. On the other hand, they
+were bound by a similar treaty<a name="FNanchor_337_337" id="FNanchor_337_337" href="#Footnote_337_337" >[337]</a> to give Rumania the
+whole Banat, the Rumanian districts of Hungary and the
+Bukovina as far as the river Pruth. But at the Conference
+they repudiated this engagement. In 1916 they
+stipulated that if Rumania entered the war they would
+co-operate with ample military forces. They failed to
+redeem their promise. And they further undertook that
+&quot;Rumania shall have the same rights as the Allies in the
+peace preliminaries and negotiations and also in discussing
+the issues which shall be laid before the Peace Conference
+for its decisions.&quot; Yet, as we saw, she was denied these
+rights, and her delegates were not informed of the subjects
+under discussion nor allowed to see the terms of
+peace, which were in the hands of the enemies, and were
+only twice admitted to the presence of the Supreme
+Council.</p>
+
+<p>It has been observed in various countries and by the
+Allied and the neutral press that between the German
+view about the sacredness of treaties and that of the
+Supreme Council there is no substantial difference.<a name="FNanchor_338_338" id="FNanchor_338_338" href="#Footnote_338_338" >[338]</a>
+Comments of this nature are all the more distressing that
+they cannot be thrust aside as calumnious. Again it will
+not be denied that Rumania rendered inestimable services
+to the Allies. She sacrificed three hundred thousand
+of her sons to their cause. Her soil was invaded and her
+property stolen or ruined. Yet she has been deprived
+of part of her sovereignty by the Allies to whom she gave
+this help. The Supreme Council, not content with her
+law conferring equal rights on all her citizens, to whatever
+race or religion they may belong, ordered her to
+submit to the direction of a foreign board in everything
+concerning her minorities and demanded from her a
+promise of obedience in advance to their future decrees
+respecting her policy in matters of international trade
+and transit. These stipulations constitute a noteworthy
+curtailment of her sovereignty.</p>
+
+<p>That any set of public men should be carried by extrinsical
+motives thus far away from justice, fair play,
+and good faith would be a misfortune under any circumstances,
+but that at a conjuncture like the present it
+should befall the men who set up as the moral guides of
+mankind and wield the power to loosen the fabric of
+society is indeed a dire disaster.</p>
+
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_333_333" id="Footnote_333_333" href="#FNanchor_333_333"> [333]</a> In June, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_334_334" id="Footnote_334_334" href="#FNanchor_334_334"> [334]</a> The comments on these terms, published by M. Gauvain in the <i>Journal
+des D&eacute;bats</i> (September 20, 1919), are well worth reading.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_335_335" id="Footnote_335_335" href="#FNanchor_335_335"> [335]</a> M. Auguste Gauvain.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_336_336" id="Footnote_336_336" href="#FNanchor_336_336"> [336]</a> <i>Le Journal des D&eacute;bats</i>, September 20, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_337_337" id="Footnote_337_337" href="#FNanchor_337_337"> [337]</a> Concluded in the year 1916.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_338_338" id="Footnote_338_338" href="#FNanchor_338_338"> [338]</a> Cf. <i>The Daily Mail</i> (Paris edition), September 21, 1919.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI" />XVI</h3>
+
+<h3>THE COVENANT AND MINORITIES</h3>
+
+
+<p>In Mr. Wilson's scheme for the establishment of a
+society of nations there was nothing new but his
+pledge to have it realized. And that pledge has still to
+be redeemed under conditions which he himself has made
+much more unfavorable than they were. The idea itself&mdash;floating
+in the political atmosphere for ages&mdash;has come
+to seem less vague and unattainable since the days of
+Kant. The only heads of states who had set themselves
+to embody it in institutions before President Wilson took
+it up not only disappointed the peoples who believed in
+them, but discredited the idea itself.</p>
+
+<p>That a merely mechanical organization such as the
+American statesman seems to have had in mind, formed
+by parliamentary politicians deliberating in secret, could
+bind nations and peoples together in moral fellowship, is
+conceivable in the abstract. But if we turn to the reality,
+we shall find that in that direction nothing durable can
+be effected without a radical change in the ideas, aspirations,
+and temper of the leaders who speak for the nations
+to-day, and, indeed, in those of large sections of the
+nations themselves. For to organize society on those
+unfamiliar lines is to modify some of the deepest-rooted
+instincts of human nature. And that cannot be achieved
+overnight, certainly not in the span of thirty minutes,
+which sufficed for the drafting of the Covenant. The
+bulk of mankind might not need to be converted, but
+whole classes must first be educated, and in some countries
+re-educated, which is perhaps still more difficult.
+Mental and moral training must complement and reinforce
+each other, and each political unit be brought to
+realize that the interests of the vaster community take
+precedence over those of any part of it. And to impress
+these novel views upon the peoples of the world takes
+time.</p>
+
+<p>An indispensable condition of success is that the compact
+binding the members together must be entered into
+by the peoples, not merely by their governments. For
+it is upon the masses that the burden of the war lies
+heaviest. It is the bulk of the population that supplies
+the soldiers, the money, and the work for the belligerent
+states, and endures the hardships and makes the sacrifices
+requisite to sustain it. Therefore, the peoples are primarily
+interested in the abolition of the old ordering and
+the forging of the new. Moreover, as latter-day campaigns
+are waged with all the resources of the warring
+peoples, and as the possession of certain of these resources
+is often both the cause of the conflict and the objective
+of the aggressor, it follows that no mere political enactments
+will meet contemporary requirements. An association
+of nations renouncing the sword as a means of
+settling disputes must also reduce as far as possible the
+surface over which friction with its neighbors is likely to
+take place. And nowadays most of that surface is economic.
+The possession of raw materials is a more potent
+attraction than territorial aggrandizement. Indeed, the
+latter is coveted mainly as a means of securing or safeguarding
+the former. On these and other grounds, in
+drawing up a charter for a society of nations, the political
+aspect should play but a subsidiary part. In Paris it
+was the only aspect that counted for anything.</p>
+
+<p>A parliament of peoples, then, is the only organ that can
+impart viability to a society of nations worthy of the
+name. By joining the Covenant with the Peace Treaty,
+and turning the former into an instrument for the execution
+of the latter, thus subordinating the ideal to the egotistical,
+Mr. Wilson deprived his plan of its sole justification,
+and for the time being buried it. The philosopher
+Lichtenberg<a name="FNanchor_339_339" id="FNanchor_339_339" href="#Footnote_339_339" >[339]</a> wrote, &quot;One man brings forth a thought,
+another holds it over the baptismal font, the third begets
+offspring with it, the fourth stands at its deathbed, and
+the fifth buries it.&quot; Mr. Wilson has discharged the functions
+of gravedigger to the idea of a pacific society of
+nations, just as Lenin has done to the system of Marxism,
+the only difference being that Marxism is as dead as a
+door-nail, whereas the society of nations may rise again.</p>
+
+<p>It was open, then, to the three principal delegates to
+insure the peace of the world by moral means or by force.
+Having eschewed the former by adopting the doctrines of
+Monroe, abandoning the freedom of the seas, and by
+according to France strategic frontiers and other privileges
+of the militarist order, they might have enlarged
+and systematized these concessions to expediency and
+forged an alliance of the three states or of two, and undertaken
+to keep peace on the planet against all marplots.
+I wrote at the time: &quot;The delegates are becoming conscious
+of the existence of a ready-made league of nations
+in the shape of the Anglo-Saxon states, which, together
+with France, might hinder wars, promote good-fellowship,
+remold human destinies; and they are delighted thus to
+possess solid foundations on which a noble edifice can be
+raised in the fullness of time. Tribunals will be created,
+with full powers to adjudge disputes; facilities will be
+accorded to litigious states, and even an obligation will
+be imposed to invoke their arbitration. And the sum
+total of these reforms will be known to contemporary
+annals as an inchoate League of Nations. The delegates
+are already modestly disavowing the intention of realizing
+the ideal in all its parts. That must be left to coming
+generations; but what with the exhaustion of the peoples,
+their aversion from warfare, and the material obstacles
+to the renewal of hostilities in the near future, it is calculated
+that the peace will not soon be violated. Whether
+more salient results will be attained or attempted by the
+Conference nobody can foretell.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_340_340" id="FNanchor_340_340" href="#Footnote_340_340" >[340]</a></p>
+
+<p>This expedient, even had it been deliberately conceived
+and skilfully wrought out, would not have been an
+adequate solution of the world's difficulties, nor would it
+have commended itself to all the states concerned. But
+it would at least have been a temporary makeshift
+capable of being transmuted under favorable circumstances
+into something less material and more durable.
+But the amateur world-reformers could not make up
+their minds to choose either alternative. And the result
+is one of the most lamentable failures recorded in human
+history.</p>
+
+<p>I placed my own opinion on record at the time as
+frankly as the censorship which still existed for me would
+permit. I wrote: &quot;What every delegate with sound
+political instinct will ask himself is, whether the League
+of Nations will eliminate wars in future, and, if not, he
+will feel conscientiously bound to adopt other relatively
+sure means of providing against them, and these consist
+of alliances, strategic frontiers, and the permanent disablement
+of the potential enemy. On one or other of
+these alternative lines the resettlement must be devised.
+To combine them would be ruinous. Now of what practical
+use is a league of nations devoid of supernational
+forces and faced by a numerous, virile, and united race,
+smarting under a sense of injustice, thirsting for the opportunities
+for development denied to it, but granted to
+nations which it despises as inferior? Would a league
+of nations combine militarily against the gradual encroachments
+or sudden aggression of that Power against
+its weaker neighbors? Nobody is authorized to answer
+this question affirmatively. To-day the Powers cannot
+agree to intervene against Bolshevism, which they
+deem a scourge of the world, nor can they agree to
+tolerate it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In these circumstances, what compelling motives can
+be laid before those delegates who are asked to dispense
+with strategic frontiers and rely upon a league of nations
+for their defense? Take France's outlook. Peace once concluded,
+she will be confronted with a secular enemy who
+numbers some seventy millions to her forty-five millions.
+In ten years the disproportion will be still greater. Discontented
+Russia is almost certain to be taken in hand by
+Germany, befriended, reorganized, exploited, and enlisted
+as an ally.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_341_341" id="FNanchor_341_341" href="#Footnote_341_341" >[341]</a></p>
+
+
+<p>Conscious of these reefs and shoals, the French government,
+which was at first contemptuous of the Wilsonian
+scheme, discerned the use it might be put to as a military
+safeguard, and sought to convert it into that. &quot;The
+French,&quot; wrote a Francophil English journal published in
+Paris, &quot;would like the League to maintain what may be
+called a permanent military general staff. The duties
+of this organization would be to keep a hawklike eye on
+the misdemeanors, actual or threatened, of any state or
+group of states, and to be empowered with authority to
+call into instant action a great international military force
+for the frustration or suppression of such aggression.
+The French have frankly in mind the possibility that an
+unrepentant and unregenerate Germany is the most
+likely menace not only to the security of France, but to
+the peace of the world in general.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_342_342" id="FNanchor_342_342" href="#Footnote_342_342" >[342]</a></p>
+
+<p>And other states cherished analogous hopes. The
+spirit of right and justice was to be evoked like the
+spirit that served Aladdin, and to be compelled to enter the
+service of nationalism and militarism, and accomplish
+the task of armies.</p>
+
+<p>The paramount Powers prescribed the sacrifices of sovereignty
+which membership of the League necessitated,
+and forthwith dispensed themselves from making them.
+The United States government maintained its Monroe
+Doctrine for America&mdash;nay, it went farther and identified
+its interests with the Hay doctrine for the Far East.<a name="FNanchor_343_343" id="FNanchor_343_343" href="#Footnote_343_343" >[343]</a>
+It decided to construct a powerful navy for the defense
+of these political assets, and to give the youth of the
+country a semi-military training.<a name="FNanchor_344_344" id="FNanchor_344_344" href="#Footnote_344_344" >[344]</a> Defense presupposes
+attack. War, therefore, is not excluded&mdash;nay, it is admitted
+by the world-reformers, and preparations for it are
+indispensable. Equally so are the burdens of taxation.
+But if liberty of defense be one of the rights of two or three
+Powers, by what law is it confined to them and denied
+to the others? Why should the other communities be
+constrained to remain open to attack? Surely they, too,
+deserve to live and thrive, and make the most of their
+opportunities. Now if in lieu of a misnamed League of
+Nations we had an Anglo-Saxon board for the better
+government of the world, these unequal weights and
+measures would be intelligible on the principle that special
+obligations and responsibilities warrant exceptional rights.
+But no such plea can be advanced under an arrangement
+professing to be a society of free nations. All that can
+with truth be said is what M. Clemenceau told the delegates
+of the lesser states at the opening of the Conference&mdash;that
+the three great belligerents represent twelve million
+soldiers and that their supreme authority derives from
+that. The r&ocirc;le of the other peoples is to listen to the
+behests of their guardians, and to accept and execute them
+without murmur. Might is still a source of right.</p>
+
+<p>It is fair to say that the disclosure of the true base of
+the new ordering, as blurted out by M. Clemenceau at
+that historic meeting, caused little surprise among the
+initiated. For there was no reason to assume that he, or,
+indeed, the bulk of the continental statesmen, were converts
+to a doctrine of which its own apostle accepted only
+those fragments which commended themselves to his
+country or his party. Had not the French Premier
+scoffed at the League in public as in private? Had he
+not said in the Chamber: &quot;I do not believe that the
+Society of Nations constitutes the necessary conclusion
+of the present war. I will give you one of my reasons.
+It is this: if to-morrow you were to propose to me that
+Germany should enter into this society I would not
+consent.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_345_345" id="FNanchor_345_345" href="#Footnote_345_345" >[345]</a></p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am certain,&quot; wrote one of the ablest and most ardent
+champions of the League in France, Senator d'Estournelles
+de Constant&mdash;&quot;I am certain that he [M. Clemenceau] made
+an effort against himself, against his entire past, against
+his whole life, against all his convictions, to serve the
+Society of Nations. And his Minister of Foreign Affairs
+followed him.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_346_346" id="FNanchor_346_346" href="#Footnote_346_346" >[346]</a> Exactly. And as with M. Clemenceau,
+so it was with the majority of European statesmen; most
+of them made strenuous and, one may add, successful
+efforts against their convictions. And the result was
+inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The governments,&quot; we read in the organ of syndicalists,
+who had supported Mr. Wilson as long as they believed
+him determined to redeem his promises&mdash;&quot;the
+governments have acquiesced in the Fourteen Points....
+Hypocrisy. Each one cherished mental reservations.
+Virtue was exalted and vice practised. The poltroon
+eulogized heroism; the imperialist lauded the spirit of
+justice. For the past month we have been picking up
+ideas about the worth of the adhesions to the Fourteen
+Points, and never before has a more sinister or a more
+odious comedy been played. Territorial demands have
+been heaved one upon the other; contempt of the rights
+of peoples&mdash;the only right that we can recognize&mdash;has
+been expressed in striking terms; the last restraints have
+vanished; the masks have fallen.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_347_347" id="FNanchor_347_347" href="#Footnote_347_347" >[347]</a></p>
+
+
+<p>From every country in Europe the same judgment
+came pitched in varying keys. The Italian press condemned
+the proceedings of the Conference in language
+to the full as strong as that of the German or Austrian
+journals. The <i>Stampa</i> affirmed that those who, like
+Bissolati, were in the beginning for placing their trust in
+one of the two coteries at the Conference were guilty of a
+fatal mistake. &quot;The mistake lay in their belief in the
+ideal strivings of one of the parties, and in the horror
+with which the cupidity of the others was contemplated,
+whereas both of them were fighting for ... their interests....
+In verity France was no less militarist or
+absolutist than Germany, nor was England less avid than
+either. And the proof is enshrined in the peace treaties
+which have masked the results of their respective victories.
+<i>Versailles is a Brest-Litovsk</i>, aggravated in the
+same proportion as the victory of the Entente over Germany,
+is more complete than was that of Germany over
+Russia. Cupidity does not alter its character, even when
+it seeks to conceal itself under a Phrugian cap rather than
+wear a helmet.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_348_348" id="FNanchor_348_348" href="#Footnote_348_348" >[348]</a></p>
+
+<p>M. Clemenceau's opening utterance about the twelve
+million men, and the unlimited right which such formidable
+armies confer on their possessors to sit in judgment
+on the tribes and peoples of the planet, was the true
+keynote to the Conference. After that the leading statesmen
+trimmed their ship, touched the rudder, and sailed
+toward downright absolutism.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of such utterances and acts on the minds of
+the peoples are distinctly mischievous. For they tend
+to obliterate the sense of public right, which is the main
+foundation of international intercourse among progressive
+nations.</p>
+
+<p>And already it had been shaken and weakened by the
+campaigns of the past fifty years, and in particular by the
+last war. In the relations of nation to nation there were
+certain principles&mdash;derivatives of ethics diluted with
+maxims of expediency&mdash;which kept the various governments
+from too flagrant breaches of faith. These checks
+were the only substitute for morality in politics. Their
+highest power was connoted by the word Europeanism,
+which stood for a supposed feeling of solidarity among all
+the peoples of the old Continent, and for a certain respect
+for the treaties on which the state-system reposed. But
+it existed mainly among defeated nations when apprehensive
+of being isolated or chastised by their victors.
+None the less, the idea marked a certain advance toward
+an ethical bond of union.</p>
+
+
+<p>Now this embryonic sense, together with respect for
+the binding force of a nation's plighted troth, were numbered
+by the demoralizing influence of the wars of the last
+fifty years. And one of the first and peremptory needs
+of the world was their restoration. This could be effected
+only by bringing the peoples, not merely of Europe,
+but of the world, more closely together, by engrafting
+on them a feeling of close solidarity, and impressing
+them with the necessity of making common cause in
+the one struggle worth their while waging&mdash;resistance to
+the forces that militate against human welfare and
+progress. The feeling was widespread that the way to
+effect this was by some form of internationalism, by the
+broadening, deepening, and quickening all that was implied
+by Europeanism, by co-ordinating the collective
+energies of all progressive peoples, and causing them to
+converge toward a common and worthy goal. For the
+working classes this conception in a restricted form had
+long possessed a commanding attraction. What they
+aimed at, however, was no more than the catholicity of
+labor. They fancied that after the passage of the tidal
+wave of destructiveness the ground was cleared of most
+of the obstacles which had encumbered it, and that the
+forward advance might begin forthwith.</p>
+
+<p>What they failed to take sufficiently into account was
+the <i>vis inerti&aelig;</i>, the survival of the old spirit among the
+ruling orders whose members continued to live and move
+in the atmosphere of use and wont, and the spirit of hate
+and bitterness infused into all the political classes, to
+dispel which was a herculean task. It was exclusively
+to the leaders of those classes that Mr. Wilson confided
+the realization of the abstract idea of a society of nations,
+which he may at first have pictured to himself as a vast
+family conscious of common interests, bent on moral and
+material self-betterment, and willing to eschew such
+partial advantages as might hinder or retard the general
+progress. But, judging by his attitude and his action,
+he had no real acquaintance with the materials out of
+which it must be fashioned, no notion of the difficulties
+to be met, and no staying power to encounter and surmount
+them. And his first move entailed the failure of
+the scheme.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, Mr. Wilson came to the Conference
+with a home-made charter for the Society of Nations,
+which, according to the evidence of Mr. Lansing, &quot;was
+never pressed.&quot; The State Secretary added that &quot;the
+present league Covenant is superior to the American
+plan.&quot; And as for the Fourteen Points, &quot;They were not
+even discussed at the Conference.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_349_349" id="FNanchor_349_349" href="#Footnote_349_349" >[349]</a> Suspecting as much,
+I wrote at the time:<a name="FNanchor_350_350" id="FNanchor_350_350" href="#Footnote_350_350" >[350]</a> &quot;The President has pinned himself
+down to no concrete scheme whatever. His method is
+electric, choosing what is helpful and beneficent in the
+projects of others, and endeavoring to obtain from the
+dissentients a renunciation of ideas belonging to the old
+national currents and adherence to the doctrines he deems
+salutary. It is, however, already clear that the highest
+ideal now attainable is not a league of nations as the
+masses understand it, which will abolish wars and likewise
+put an end to the costly preparations for them, but
+only a coalition of victorious nations, which may hope,
+by dint of economic inducements and deterrents, to draw
+the enemy peoples into its camp in the not too distant
+future. This result would fall very short of the expectations
+aroused by the far-resonant promises made at the
+outset; but even it will be unattainable without an
+international compact binding all the members of the
+coalition to make war simultaneously upon the nation
+or group of nations which ventures to break the peace.
+I am disposed to believe that nothing less than such an
+express covenant will be regarded by the continental
+Powers of the Entente as an adequate substitute for
+certain territorial readjustments which they otherwise
+consider essential to secure them from sudden attack.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whether such a condition would prevent future
+wars is a question that only experience can answer.
+Personally, I am profoundly convinced, with Mr. Taft,
+that a genuine league of nations must have teeth in the
+guise of supernational, not international, forces. In
+these remarks I make abstraction from the larger question
+which wholly absorbs this&mdash;namely, whether the masses
+for whose behoof the lavish expenditure of time, energy,
+and ingenuity is undertaken, will accept a coalition of
+victorious governments against unregenerate peoples as a
+substitute for the Society of Nations as at first conceived.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The supposed object of the League was the substitution
+of right for force, by debarring each individual state from
+employing violence against any of the others, and by the
+use of arbitration as a means of settling disputes. This
+entails the suppression of the right to declare war and to
+prepare for it, and, as a corollary, a system of deterrents
+to hinder, and of penalties to punish rebellion on the part
+of a community. That in those cases where the law is
+set at naught efficacious means should be available to
+enforce it will hardly be denied; but whether economic
+pressure would suffice in all cases is doubtful. To me it
+seems that without a supernational army, under the
+direct orders of the League, it might under conceivable
+circumstances become impossible to uphold the decisions
+of the tribunal, and that, on the other hand, the coexistence
+of such a military force with national armaments
+would condemn the undertaking to failure.</p>
+
+<p>An analysis of the Covenant lies beyond the limits of
+my task, but it may not be amiss to point out a few of its
+inherent defects. One of the principal organs of the
+League will be the Assembly and the Council. The
+former, a very numerous and mainly political body, will
+necessarily be out of touch with the peoples, their needs
+and their aspirations. It will meet at most three or
+four times a year. And its members alone will be invested
+with all the power, which they will be chary of delegating.
+On the other hand, the Council, consisting at first of nine
+members, will meet at least once a year. The members
+of both bodies will presumably be appointed by the
+governments,<a name="FNanchor_351_351" id="FNanchor_351_351" href="#Footnote_351_351" >[351]</a> who will certainly not renounce their
+sovereignty in a matter that concerns them so closely.
+Such a system may be wise and conducive to the highest
+aims, but it can hardly be termed democratic. The
+military Powers who command twelve million soldiers will
+possess a majority in the Council.<a name="FNanchor_352_352" id="FNanchor_352_352" href="#Footnote_352_352" >[352]</a> The Secretariat alone
+will be permanent, and will naturally be appointed by
+the Great Powers.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of abolishing war, the Conference described
+its abolition as beyond the power of man to compass.
+Disarmament, which was to have been one of its main
+achievements, is eliminated from the Covenant. As the
+war that was to have been the last will admittedly be
+followed by others, the delegates of the Great Powers
+worked conscientiously, as behooved patriotic statesmen,
+to obtain in advance all possible advantages for their
+respective countries by way of preparing for it. The
+new order, which in theory reposes upon right, justice,
+and moral fellowship, in reality depends upon powerful
+armies and navies. France must remain under arms,
+seeing that she has to keep watch on the Rhine. Britain
+and the United States are to go on building warships and
+aircraft, besides training their youth for the coming
+Armageddon. The article of the Covenant which lays
+it down that &quot;the members of the League recognize that
+the maintenance of peace requires the reduction of
+national armaments to the lowest point consistent with
+national safety,&quot;<a name="FNanchor_353_353" id="FNanchor_353_353" href="#Footnote_353_353" >[353]</a> is, to use a Russian simile, written
+on water with a fork. Britain, France, and the United
+States are already agreed that they will combine to repel
+unprovoked aggression on the part of Germany. That
+evidently signifies that they will hold themselves in readiness
+to fight, and will therefore make due preparation.
+This arrangement is a substitute for a supernational army,
+as though prevention were not better than cure; that
+it will prove efficacious in the long run very few believe.
+One clear-visioned Frenchman writes: &quot;The inefficacy
+of the organization aimed at by the Conference constrains
+France to live in continual and increasing insecurity,
+owing to the falling off of her population.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_354_354" id="FNanchor_354_354" href="#Footnote_354_354" >[354]</a> He adds:
+&quot;It follows from this abortive expedient&mdash;if it is to
+remain definitive&mdash;that each member-state must protect
+itself, or come to terms with the more powerful ones, as
+in the past. Consequently we are in presence of the
+maintenance of militarism and the r&eacute;gime of armaments.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_355_355" id="FNanchor_355_355" href="#Footnote_355_355" >[355]</a>
+This writer goes farther and accuses Mr. Wilson of having
+played into the hands of Britain. &quot;President Wilson,&quot;
+he affirms, &quot;has more or less sacrificed to the English
+government the society of nations and the question
+of armaments, that of the colonies and that of the freedom
+of the seas....&quot;<a name="FNanchor_356_356" id="FNanchor_356_356" href="#Footnote_356_356" >[356]</a> This, however, is an over-statement.
+It was not for the sake of Britain that the American
+statesman gave up so much; it was for the sake of
+saving something of the Covenant. It was in the spirit
+of Sir Boyle Roche, whose attachment to the British
+Constitution was such that, to save a part of it, he was
+willing to sacrifice the whole.</p>
+
+<p>The arbitration of disputes is provided for by one of the
+articles of the Covenant;<a name="FNanchor_357_357" id="FNanchor_357_357" href="#Footnote_357_357" >[357]</a> but the parties may go to war
+three months later with a clear conscience and an appeal
+to right, justice, self-determination, and the usual abstract
+nouns.</p>
+
+<p>In a word, the directors of the Conference disciplined
+their political intelligence on lines of self-hypnotization,
+along which common sense finds it impossible to follow
+them. There were also among the delegates men who
+thought and spoke in terms of reason and logic, but their
+voices evoked no echo. One of them summed up his
+criticism somewhat as follows:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;During the war our professions of democratic principles
+were far resonant and emphatic. We were fighting
+for the nations of the world, especially for those who could
+not successfully fight for themselves. All the peoples,
+great and small, were exhorted to make the most painful
+sacrifices to enable their respective governments to conquer
+the enemy. Victory unexpectedly smiled on us,
+and the peoples asked that those promises should be made
+good. Naturally, expectations ran high. What has happened?
+The governments now answer in effect: 'We will
+promote your interests, but without your co-operation or
+assent. We will make the necessary arrangements in
+secret behind closed doors. The machinery we are devising
+will be a state machinery, not a popular one. All
+that we ask of you is implicit trust. You complain of our
+action in the past. You have good cause. You say that
+the same men are about to determine your future. Again
+you are right. But when you affirm that we are sure to
+make the like mistakes, you are wrong, and we ask you to
+take our word for it. You complain that we are politicians
+who feel the weight of certain commitments and the
+fetters of obsolete traditions from which we cannot free
+ourselves; that we are mainly concerned to protect and
+further the interests of our respective countries, and that
+it is inconceivable we should devise an organization which
+looks above and beyond those interests. We ask you,
+are you willing, then, to abandon the heritage of our
+fathers to the foreigner?'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That the downtrodden peoples in Austria and Germany
+have been emancipated is a moral triumph. But
+why has the beneficent principle that is said to have inspired
+the deed been restricted in its application? Why
+has the experiment been tried only in the enemies' countries?
+Or are things quite in order everywhere else? Is
+there no injustice in other quarters of the globe? Are
+there no complaints? If there be, why are they ignored?
+Is it because all acts of oppression are to be perpetuated
+which do not take place in the enemy's land? What
+about Ireland and about a dozen other countries and
+peoples? Are they skeletons not to be touched?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By debarring the masses from participation in a
+grandiose scheme, the success of which depends upon
+their assent, the governments are indirectly but surely
+encouraging secret combined opposition, and in some
+cases Bolshevism. The masses resent being treated as
+children after having been appealed to as arbiters and
+rescuers. For four and a half years it was they who bore
+the brunt of the war, they who sacrificed their sons and
+their substance. In the future it is they to whom the states
+will look for the further sacrifices in blood and treasure
+which will be necessary in the struggles which they evidently
+anticipate. Well, some of them refuse these sacrifices
+in advance. They challenge the right of the governments
+to retain the power of making war and peace.
+That power they are working to get into their own hands
+and to wield in their own way, or at any rate to have a
+say in its exercise. And in order to secure it, some sections
+of the peoples are making common cause with the
+socialist revolutionaries, while others have gone the length
+of Bolshevism. And that is a serious danger. The agitation
+now going on among the people, therefore, starts
+with a grievance. The masses have many other grievances
+besides the one just sketched&mdash;the survivals of the
+feudal age, the privileges of class, the inequality of opportunity.
+And the kernel formed by these is the element of
+truth and equity which imparts force to all those underground
+movements, and enables them to subsist and extend.
+Error is never dangerous by itself; it is only when
+it has an admixture of truth that it becomes powerful for
+evil. And it seems a thousand pities that the governments,
+whose own interests are at stake, as well as those
+of the communities they govern, should go out of their
+way to provide an explosive element for Bolshevism and
+its less sinister variants.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The League was treated as a living organism before it
+existed. All the problems which the Supreme Councilors
+found insoluble were reserved for its judgment. Arduous
+functions were allotted to it before it had organs to discharge
+them. Formidable tasks were imposed upon it
+before the means of achieving them were devised. It is
+an institution so elusive and elastic that the French regard
+it as capable of being used as a handy instrument for
+coercing the Teutons, who, in turn, look upon it as a
+means of recovering their place in the world; the Japanese
+hope it may become a bridge leading to racial
+equality, and the governments which devised it are bent
+on employing it as a lever for their own politico-economic
+aims, which they identify with the progress of the human
+race. How the peoples look upon it the future will show.</p>
+
+<p>On the Monroe Doctrine in connection with the League
+of Nations the less said the soonest mended. But one
+cannot well say less than this: that any real society of
+peoples such as Mr. Wilson first conceived and advocated
+is as incompatible with &quot;regional understandings like the
+Monroe Doctrine&quot; as are the maintenance of national
+armaments and the bartering of populations. It is immaterial
+whether one concludes that a Society of Nations
+is therefore impossible in the present conjuncture or that
+all those survivals of the old state system are obsolescent
+and should be abolished. The two are unquestionably
+irreconcilable.</p>
+
+<p>It would be a mistake to infer from the unanimity with
+which Mr. Wilson's Covenant was finally accepted that
+it expressed the delegates' genuine conceptions or sentiments.
+Mr. Bullitt, one of the expert advisers to the
+American Peace Delegation, testified before the Senate
+committee in Washington that State-Secretary Lansing
+remarked to him: &quot;I consider the League of Nations at
+present as entirely useless. The Great Powers have simply
+gone ahead and arranged the world to suit themselves.
+England and France, in particular, have gotten out of
+the Treaty everything they wanted. The League of
+Nations can do nothing to alter any unjust clauses of the
+Treaty except by the unanimous consent of the League
+members. The Great Powers will never consent to
+changes in the interests of weaker peoples.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_358_358" id="FNanchor_358_358" href="#Footnote_358_358" >[358]</a></p>
+
+<p>This opinion which Mr. Bullitt ascribed to Mr. Lansing
+was, to my knowledge, that of a large number of the representatives
+of the nations at the Conference. Among them
+all I have met very few who had a good word to say of
+the scheme, and of the few one had helped to formulate it,
+another had assisted him. And the unfavorable judgments
+of the remainder were delivered after the Covenant
+was signed.</p>
+
+
+<p>One of those leaders, in conversation with several other
+delegates and myself, exclaimed one day: &quot;The League
+of Nations indeed! It is an absurdity. Who among
+thinking men believes in its reality?&quot; &quot;I do,&quot; answered
+his neighbor; &quot;but, like the devils, I believe and tremble.
+I hold that it is a corrosive poison which destroys much
+that is good and will further much that is bad.&quot; A
+statesman who was not a delegate demurred. &quot;In my
+opinion,&quot; he said, &quot;it is a response to a demand put forward
+by the peoples of the globe, and because of this
+origin something good will ultimately come of it. Unquestionably
+it is very defective, but in time it may be&mdash;nay,
+must be&mdash;changed for the better.&quot; The first speaker
+replied: &quot;If you imagine that the League will help
+continental peoples, you are, I am convinced, mistaken.
+It took the United States three years to go to the help of
+Britain and France. How long do you suppose it will
+take her to mobilize and despatch troops to succor Poland,
+Rumania, or Czechoslovakia? I am acquainted with
+British colonial public opinion and sentiment&mdash;too often
+misunderstood by foreigners&mdash;and I can tell you that they
+are misconstrued by those who fancy that they would
+determine action of that kind. If England tells the
+colonies that she needs their help, they will come, because
+their people are flesh of her flesh and blood of her blood,
+and also because they depend for their defense upon her
+navy, and if she were to go under they would go under,
+too. But the continental nations have no such claims
+upon the British colonies, which would not be in a hurry
+to make sacrifices in order to satisfy their appetites or
+their passions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The second speaker then said: &quot;It is possible, but
+nowise certain, that the future League may help to settle
+these disputes which professional diplomatists would have
+arranged, and in the old way, but it will not affect those
+others which are the real causes of wars. If a nation believes
+it can further its vital interest by breaking the peace,
+the League cannot stop it. How could it? It lacks the
+means. There will be no army ready. It would have to
+create one. Even now, when such an army, powerful and
+victorious, is in the field, the League&mdash;for the Supreme
+Council is that and more&mdash;cannot get its orders obeyed.
+How then will its behest be treated when it has no troops
+at its beck and call? It is redrawing the map of central
+and eastern Europe, and is very satisfied with its work.
+But, as we know, the peoples of those countries look upon
+its map as a sheet of paper covered with lines and blotches
+of color to which no reality corresponds.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The constitution of the League was termed by Mr.
+Wilson a Covenant, a word redolent of biblical and puritanical
+times, which accorded well with the motives that
+decided him to prefer Geneva to Brussels as the seat of
+the League, and to adopt other measures of a supposed
+political character. The first draft of this document was,
+as we saw, completed in the incredibly short space of some
+thirty hours, so as to enable the President to take it with
+him to Washington. As the Ententophil <i>Echo de Paris</i>
+remarked, &quot;By a fixed date the merchandise has to be
+consigned on board the <i>George Washington</i>.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_359_359" id="FNanchor_359_359" href="#Footnote_359_359" >[359]</a></p>
+
+
+<p>The discussions that took place after the President's
+return from the United States were animated, interesting,
+and symptomatic. In April the commission had several
+sittings, at which various amendments and alterations
+were proposed, some of which would cut deep into international
+relations, while others were of slight moment
+and gave rise to amusing sallies. One day the proposal
+was mooted that each member-state should be free to
+secede on giving two years' notice. M. Larnaude, who
+viewed membership as something sacramentally inalienable,
+seemed shocked, as though the suggestion bordered
+on sacrilege, and wondered how any government should
+feel tempted to take such a step. Signor Orlando was of
+a different opinion. &quot;However precious the privilege of
+membership may be,&quot; he said, &quot;it would be a comfort
+always to know that you could divest yourself of it at will.
+I am shut up in my room all day working. I do not go
+into the open air any oftener than a prisoner might. But
+I console myself with the thought that I can go out whenever
+I take it into my head. And I am sure a similar
+reflection on membership of the League would be equally
+soothing. I am in favor of the motion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The center of interest during the drafting of the Covenant
+lay in the clause proclaiming the equality of religions,
+which Mr. Wilson was bent on having passed at all costs,
+if not in one form, then in another. This is one example
+of the occasional visibility of the religious thread which
+ran through a good deal of his personal work at the Conference.
+For it is a fact&mdash;not yet realized even by the
+delegates themselves&mdash;that distinctly religious motives
+inspired much that was done by the Conference on what
+seemed political or social grounds. The strategy adopted
+by the eminent American statesman to have his stipulation
+accepted proceeded in this case on the lines of a
+humanitarian resolve to put an end to sanguinary wars
+rather than on those which the average reformer, bent on
+cultural progress, would have traced. Actuality was imparted
+to this simple and yet thorny topic by a concrete
+proposal which the President made one day. What he is
+reported to have said is briefly this: &quot;As the treatment of
+religious confessions has been in the past, and may again
+in the future be, a cause of sanguinary wars, it seems desirable
+that a clause should be introduced into the Covenant
+establishing absolute liberty for creeds and confessions.&quot;
+&quot;On what, Mr. President,&quot; asked the first
+Polish delegate, &quot;do you found your assertion that wars
+are still brought about by the differential treatment
+meted out to religions? Does contemporary history bear
+out this statement? And, if not, what likelihood is there
+that religious inequality will precipitate sanguinary conflicts
+in the future?&quot; To this pointed question Mr. Wilson
+is said to have made the characteristic reply that he
+considered it expedient to assume this nexus between
+religious inequality and war as the safest way of bringing
+the matter forward. If he were to proceed on any other
+lines, he added, there would be truth and force in the
+objection which would doubtless be raised, that the Conference
+was intruding upon the domestic affairs of sovereign
+states. As that charge would damage the cause, it
+must be rebutted in advance. And for this purpose he
+deemed it prudent to approach the subject from the side
+he had chosen.</p>
+
+<p>This reply was listened to in silence and unfavorably
+commented upon later. The alleged relation between
+such religious inequality as has survived into the twentieth
+century and such wars as are waged nowadays is so obviously
+fictitious that one can hardly understand the line
+of reasoning that led to its assumption, or the effect which
+the fiction could be supposed to have on the minds of
+those legislators who might be opposed to the measure
+on the ground that it involved undue interference in the
+internal affairs of sovereign states. The motion was referred
+to a commission, which in due time presented a
+report. Mr. Wilson was absent when the report came up
+for discussion, his place being taken by Colonel House.
+The atmosphere was chilly, only a couple of the delegates
+being disposed to support the clause&mdash;Rumania's representative,
+M. Diamandi, was one, and another was
+Baron Makino, whose help Colonel House would gladly
+have dispensed with, so inacceptable was the condition it
+carried with it.</p>
+
+<p>Baron Makino said that he entirely agreed with Colonel
+House and the American delegates. The equality of
+religious confessions was not merely desirable, but necessary
+to the smooth working of a Society of Nations such
+as they were engaged in establishing. He held, however,
+that it should be extended to races, that extension being
+also a corollary of the principle underlying the new international
+ordering. He would therefore move the insertion
+of a clause proclaiming the equality of races and
+religions. At this Colonel House looked pensive. Nearly
+all the other opinions were hostile to Colonel House's
+motion.</p>
+
+<p>The reasons alleged by each of the dissenting lawgivers
+were interesting. Lord Robert Cecil surprised many of
+his colleagues by informing them that in England the
+Catholics, who are fairly treated as things are, could not
+possibly be set on a footing of perfect equality with their
+Protestant fellow-citizens, because the Constitution forbids
+it. Nor could the British people be asked to alter
+their Constitution. He gave as instances of the slight
+inequality at present enforced the circumstance that no
+Catholic can ascend the throne as monarch, nor sit on the
+woolsack as Lord Chancellor in the Upper House.</p>
+
+<p>M. Larnaude, speaking in the name of France, stated
+that his country had passed through a sequence of embarrassments
+caused by legislation on the relations between
+the Catholics and the state, and that the introduction
+of a clause enacting perfect equality might revive
+controversies which were happily losing their sharpness.
+He considered it, therefore, inadvisable to settle this
+delicate matter by inserting the proposed declaration in
+the Covenant. Belgium's first delegate, M. Hymans,
+pointed out that the objection taken by his government
+was of a different but equally cogent character. There
+was reason to apprehend that the Flemings might avail
+themselves of the equality clause to raise awkward issues
+and to sow seeds of dissension. On those grounds he
+would like to see the proposal waived. Signor Orlando
+half seriously, half jokingly, reminded his colleagues that
+none of their countries had, like his, a pope in their
+capital. The Italian government must, therefore, proceed
+in religious matters with the greatest circumspection,
+and could not lightly assent to any measure capable of
+being manipulated to the detriment of the public interest.
+Hence he was unable to give the motion his support. It
+was finally suggested that both proposals be withdrawn.
+To this Colonel House demurred, on the ground that
+President Wilson, who was unavoidably absent, attached
+very great weight to the declaration, to which he hoped
+the delegates would give their most favorable consideration.
+One of the members then rose and said, &quot;In that
+case we had better postpone the voting until Mr. Wilson
+can attend.&quot; This suggestion was adopted. When the
+matter came up for discussion at a subsequent sitting, the
+Japanese substituted &quot;nations&quot; for &quot;races.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime the usual arts of parliamentary emergency
+were practised outside the Conference to induce
+the Japanese to withdraw their proposal altogether. They
+were told that to accept or refuse it would be to damage
+the cause of the future League without furthering their
+own. But the Marquis Saionji and Baron Makino refused
+to yield an inch of their ground. A conversation
+then took place between the Premier of Australia, on the
+one side, and Baron Makino and Viscount Chinda, on the
+other, with a view to their reaching a compromise. For
+Mr. Hughes was understood to be the leader of those
+who opposed any declaration of racial equality. The
+Japanese statesmen showed him their amendment, and
+asked him whether he could suggest a modification that
+would satisfy himself and them. The answer was in the
+negative. To the arguments of the Japanese delegates
+the Australian Premier is understood to have replied:
+&quot;I am willing to admit the equality of the Japanese as a
+nation, and also of individuals man to man. But I do
+not admit the consequence that we should throw open our
+country to them. It is not that we hold them to be inferior
+to ourselves, but simply that we do not want them.
+Economically they are a perturbing factor, because they
+accept wages much below the minimum for which our
+people are willing to work. Neither do they blend well
+with our people. Hence we do not want them to marry
+our women. Those are my reasons. We mean no offense.
+Our restrictive legislation is not aimed specially
+at the Japanese. British subjects in India are affected
+by it in exactly the same way. It is impossible that we
+should formulate any modifications of your amendment,
+because there is no modification conceivable that would
+satisfy us both.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Japanese delegates were understood to say that
+they would maintain their motion, and that unless it
+passed they would not sign the document. Mr. Hughes
+retorted that if it should pass he would refuse to sign.
+Finally the Australian Premier asked Baron Makino
+whether he would be satisfied with the following qualifying
+proviso: &quot;This affirmation of the principle of equality
+is not to be applied to immigration or nationalization.&quot;
+Baron Makino and Viscount Chinda both answered in
+the negative and withdrew.</p>
+
+<p>The final act<a name="FNanchor_360_360" id="FNanchor_360_360" href="#Footnote_360_360" >[360]</a> is described by eye-witnesses as follows.
+Congruously with the order of the day, President
+Wilson having moved that the city of Geneva
+be selected as the capital of the future League, obtained
+a majority, whereupon he announced that the
+motion had passed.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the burning question of the equality of
+nations.<a name="FNanchor_361_361" id="FNanchor_361_361" href="#Footnote_361_361" >[361]</a> The Polish delegate arose and opposed it on
+the formal ground that nothing ought to be inserted in
+the preamble which was not dealt with also in the body
+of the Covenant, as otherwise it would be no more than
+an isolated theory devoid of organic connection with the
+whole. The Japanese delegates delivered speeches of
+cogent argument and impressive debating power. Baron
+Makino made out a very strong case for the equality of
+nations. Viscount Chinda followed in a trenchant discourse,
+which was highly appreciated by his hearers,
+nearly all of whom recognized the justice of the Japanese
+claim. The Japanese delegates refused to be dazzled
+by the circumstances that Japan was to be represented
+on the Executive Council as one of the five Great Powers,
+and that the rejection of the proposed amendment could
+not therefore be construed as a diminution of her prestige.
+This consideration, they retorted, was wholly irrelevant
+to the question whether or no the nations were to be
+recognized as equal. They ended by refusing to withdraw
+their modified amendment and calling for a vote.
+The result was a majority for the amendment. Mr.
+Wilson thereupon announced that a majority was insufficient
+to justify its adoption, and that nothing less than
+absolute unanimity could be regarded as adequate. At
+this a delegate objected: &quot;Mr. Wilson, you have just
+accepted a majority for your own motion respecting
+Geneva; on what grounds, may I ask, do you refuse to
+abide by a majority vote on the amendment of the
+Japanese delegation?&quot; &quot;The two cases are different,&quot;
+was the reply. &quot;On the subject of the seat of the League
+unanimity is unattainable.&quot; This closed the official
+discussion.</p>
+
+<p>Some time later, it is asserted, the Rumanians, who
+had supported Mr. Wilson's motion on religious equality,
+were approached on the subject, and informed that it
+would be agreeable to the American delegates to have
+the original proposal brought up once more. Such a
+motion, it was added, would come with especial propriety
+from the Rumanians, who, in the person of M. Diamandi,
+had advocated it from the outset. But the Rumanian
+delegates hesitated, pleading the invincible opposition
+of the Japanese. They were assured, however, that
+the Japanese would no longer discountenance it. Thereupon
+they broached the matter to Lord Robert Cecil,
+but he, with his wonted caution, replied that it was a
+delicate subject to handle, especially after the experience
+they had already had. As for himself, he would rather
+leave the initiative to others. Could the Rumanian
+delegates not open their minds to Colonel House, who
+took the amendment so much to heart? They acted on
+this suggestion and called on Colonel House. He, too,
+however, declared that it was a momentous as well as a
+thorny topic, and for that reason had best be referred
+to the head of the American delegation. President Wilson,
+having originated the amendment, was the person
+most qualified to take direct action. It is further affirmed
+that they sounded the President as to the advisability of
+mooting the question anew, but that he declined to face
+another vote, and the matter was dropped for good&mdash;in
+that form.</p>
+
+<p>It was publicly asserted later on that the Japanese
+decided to abide by the rejection of their amendment
+and to sign the Covenant as the result of a bargain on
+the Shantung dispute. This report, however, was pulverized
+by the Japanese delegation, which pointed out
+that the introduction of the racial clause was decided
+upon before the delegates left Japan, and when no difficulties
+were anticipated respecting Japan's claim to have
+that province ceded to her by Germany, and that the
+discussion on the amendment terminated on April 11th,
+consequently before the Kiaochow issue came up for discussion.
+As a matter of fact, the Japanese publicly
+announced their intention to adhere to the League of
+Nations two days<a name="FNanchor_362_362" id="FNanchor_362_362" href="#Footnote_362_362" >[362]</a> before a decision was reached respecting
+their claims to Kiaochow.</p>
+
+<p>This adverse note on Mr. Wilson's pet scheme to have
+religious equality proclaimed as a means of hindering
+sanguinary wars brought to its climax the reaction of the
+Conference against what it regarded as a systematic
+endeavor to establish the overlordship of the Anglo-Saxon
+peoples in the world. The plea that wars may be
+provoked by such religious inequality as still survives
+was so unreal that it awakened a twofold suspicion in the
+minds of many of Mr. Wilson's colleagues. Most of them
+believed that a pretext was being sought to enable the
+leading Powers to intervene in the domestic concerns
+of all the other states, so as to keep them firmly in hand,
+and use them as means to their own ends. And these
+ends were looked upon as anything but disinterested.
+Unhappily this conviction was subsequently strengthened
+by certain of the measures decreed by the Supreme Council
+between April and the close of the Conference. The
+misgivings of other delegates turned upon a matter which
+at first sight may appear so far removed from any of the
+pressing issues of the twentieth century as to seem wholly
+imaginary. They feared that a religious&mdash;some would
+call it racial&mdash;bias lay at the root of Mr. Wilson's policy.
+It may seem amazing to some readers, but it is none the
+less a fact that a considerable number of delegates believed
+that the real influences behind the Anglo-Saxon peoples
+were Semitic.</p>
+
+<p>They confronted the President's proposal on the subject
+of religious inequality, and, in particular, the odd
+motive alleged for it, with the measures for the protection
+of minorities which he subsequently imposed on the
+lesser states, and which had for their keynote to satisfy
+the Jewish elements in eastern Europe. And they concluded
+that the sequence of expedients framed and
+enforced in this direction were inspired by the Jews, assembled
+in Paris for the purpose of realizing their carefully
+thought-out program, which they succeeded in having
+substantially executed. However right or wrong these
+delegates may have been, it would be a dangerous mistake
+to ignore their views, seeing that they have since become
+one of the permanent elements of the situation. The
+formula into which this policy was thrown by the members
+of the Conference, whose countries it affected, and who
+regarded it as fatal to the peace of eastern Europe, was
+this: &quot;Henceforth the world will be governed by the
+Anglo-Saxon peoples, who, in turn, are swayed by their
+Jewish elements.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to convey an adequate notion of the
+warmth of feeling&mdash;one might almost call it the heat of
+passion&mdash;which this supposed discovery generated. The
+applications of the theory to many of the puzzles of the
+past were countless and ingenious. The illustrations of
+the manner in which the policy was pursued, and the
+cajolery and threats which were said to have been employed
+in order to insure its success, covered the whole
+history of the Conference, and presented it through a new
+and possibly distorted medium. The morbid suspicions
+current may have been the natural vein of men who had
+passed a great part of their lives in petty racial struggles;
+but according to common account, it was abundantly
+nurtured at the Conference by the lack of reserve and
+moderation displayed by some of the promoters of the
+minority clauses who were deficient in the sense of measure.
+What the Eastern delegates said was briefly this:
+&quot;The tide in our countries was flowing rapidly in favor of
+the Jews. All the east European governments which had
+theretofore wronged them were uttering their <i>mea culpa</i>,
+and had solemnly promised to turn over a new leaf.
+Nay, they had already turned it. We, for example,
+altered our legislation in order to meet by anticipation
+the legitimate wishes of the Conference and the pressing
+demands of the Jews. We did quite enough to obviate
+decrees which might impair our sovereignty or lessen our
+prestige. Poland and Rumania issued laws establishing
+absolute equality between the Jews and their own nationals.
+All discrimination had ceased. Immigrant Hebrews
+from Russia received the full rights of citizenship
+and became entitled to fill any office in the state. In a
+word, all the old disabilities were abolished and the
+fervent prayer of east European governments was that
+the Jewish members of their respective communities
+should be gradually assimilated to the natives and become
+patriotic citizens like them. It was a new ideal. It
+accorded to the Jews everything they had asked for. It
+would enable them to show themselves as the French,
+Italian, and Belgian Jews had shown themselves, efficient
+citizens of their adopted countries.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But in the flush of their triumph, the Jews, or rather
+their spokesmen at the Conference, were not satisfied
+with equality. What they demanded was inequality to
+the detriment of the races whose hospitality they were
+enjoying and to their own supposed advantage. They
+were to have the same rights as the Rumanians, the
+Poles, and the other peoples among whom they lived,
+but they were also to have a good deal more. Their
+religious autonomy was placed under the protection of an
+alien body, the League, which is but another name for
+the Powers which have reserved to themselves the
+governance of the world. The method is to oblige each
+of the lesser states to bestow on each minority the same
+rights as the majority enjoys, and also certain privileges
+over and above. The instrument imposing this obligation
+is a formal treaty with the Great Powers which the
+Poles, Rumanians, and other small states were summoned
+to sign. It contains twenty-one articles. The
+first part of the document deals with minorities generally,
+the latter with the Jewish elements. The second clause
+of the Polish treaty enacts that every individual who
+habitually resided in Poland on August 1, 1914, becomes a
+citizen forthwith. This is simple. Is it also satisfactory?
+Many Frenchmen and Poles doubt it, as we do ourselves.
+On August 1st numerous German and Austrian agents and
+spies, many of them Hebrews, resided habitually in
+Poland. Moreover, the foreign Jewish elements there,
+which have immigrated from Russia, having lost&mdash;like
+everybody else before the war&mdash;the expectation of seeing
+Polish independence ever restored, had definitely thrown
+in their lot with the enemies of Poland. Now to put
+into the hands of such enemies constitutional weapons is
+already a sacrifice and a risk. The Jews in Vilna recently
+voted solidly against the incorporation of that
+city in Poland.<a name="FNanchor_363_363" id="FNanchor_363_363" href="#Footnote_363_363" >[363]</a> Are they to be treated as loyal Polish
+citizens? We have conceded the point unreservedly.
+But to give them autonomy over and above, to create a
+state within the state, and enable its subjects to call in
+foreign Powers at every hand's turn, against the lawfully
+constituted authorities&mdash;that is an expedient which does
+not commend itself to the newly emancipated peoples.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Rumanian Premier Bratiano, whose conspicuous
+services to the Allied cause entitled him to a respectful
+hearing, delivered a powerful speech<a name="FNanchor_364_364" id="FNanchor_364_364" href="#Footnote_364_364" >[364]</a> before the delegates
+assembled in plenary session on this question of
+protecting ethnic and religious minorities. He covered
+ground unsurveyed by the framers of the special treaties,
+and his sincere tone lent weight to his arguments. Starting
+from the postulate that the strength of latter-day
+states depends upon the widest participation of all the
+elements of the population in the government of the
+country, he admitted the peremptory necessity of abolishing
+invidious distinctions between the various elements of
+the population there, ethnic or religious. So far, he was
+at one with the spokesmen of the Great Powers. Rumania,
+however, had already accomplished this by the
+decree enabling her Jews to acquire full citizenship by
+expressing the mere desire according to a simple formula.
+This act confers the full rights of Rumanian citizens upon
+eight hundred thousand Jews. The Jewish press of
+Bucharest had already given utterance to its entire satisfaction.
+If, however, the Jews are now to be placed in a
+special category, differentiated and kept apart from their
+fellow-citizens by having autonomous institutions, by the
+maintenance of the German-Yiddish dialect, which keeps
+alive the Teuton anti-Rumanian spirit, and by being
+authorized to regard the Rumanian state as an inferior
+tribunal, from which an appeal always lies to a foreign
+body&mdash;the government of the Great Powers&mdash;this would
+be the most invidious of all distinctions, and calculated
+to render the assimilation of the German-Yiddish-speaking
+Jews to their Rumanian fellow-citizens a sheer impossibility.
+The majority and the minority would then be
+systematically and definitely estranged from each other;
+and, seeing this, the elemental instincts of the masses
+might suddenly assume untoward forms, which the treaty,
+if ratified, would be unavailing to prevent. But, however
+baneful for the population, foreign protection is incomparably
+worse for the state, because it tends to destroy the
+cement that holds the government and people together,
+and ultimately to bring about disintegration. A classic
+example of this process of disruption is Russia's well-meant
+protection of the persecuted Christians in Turkey. In this
+case the motive was admirable, the necessity imperative,
+but the result was the dismemberment of Turkey and other
+changes, some of which one would like to forget.</p>
+
+
+<p>The delegation of Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, and Poland
+upheld M. Bratiano's contentions in brief, pithy
+speeches. President Wilson's lengthy rejoinder, delivered
+with more than ordinary sweetness, deprecated M.
+Bratiano's comparison of the Allies' proposed intervention
+with Russia's protection of the Christians of Turkey,
+and represented the measure as emanating from the
+purest kindness. He said that the Great Powers were
+now bestowing national existence or extensive territories
+upon the interested states, actually guaranteeing their
+frontiers, and therefore making themselves responsible
+for permanent tranquillity there. But the treatment of
+the minorities, he added, unless fair and considerate, might
+produce the gravest troubles and even precipitate wars.
+Therefore it behooved the Powers in the interests of all
+Europe, as of each of its individual members, to secure
+harmonious relations, and, at any rate, to remove all
+manifest obstacles to their establishment. &quot;We guarantee
+your frontiers and your territories. That means that
+we will send over arms, ships, and men, in case of necessity.
+Therefore we possess the right and recognize the
+duty to hinder the survival of a set of deplorable conditions
+which would render this intervention unavoidable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To this line of reasoning M. Bratiano made answer that
+all the helpful maxims of good government are of universal
+application, and, therefore, if this protection of minorities
+were, indeed, indispensable or desirable, it should not
+be restricted to the countries of eastern Europe, but should
+be extended to all without exception. For it is inadmissible
+that two categories of states should be artificially
+created, one endowed with full sovereignty and the other
+with half-sovereignty. Such an arrangement would destroy
+the equality which should lie at the base of a genuine
+League of Nations.</p>
+
+<p>But the Powers had made up their minds, and the special
+treaties were imposed on the unwilling governments.
+Thereupon the Rumanian Premier withdrew from the
+Conference, and neither his Cabinet nor that of the Jugoslavs
+signed the treaty with Austria at St.-Germain.</p>
+
+<p>What happened after that is a matter of history.</p>
+
+<p>Few politicians are conscious of the magnitude of the
+issue concealed by the involved diplomatic phraseology
+of the obnoxious treaties, or of the dangers to which their
+enactment will expose the minorities which they were
+framed to protect, the countries whose hospitality those
+minorities enjoy, and possibly other lands, which for the
+time being are seemingly immune from all such perilous
+race problems. The calculable, to say nothing of the unascertained,
+elements of the question might well cause
+responsible statesmen to be satisfied with the feasible.
+The Jewish elements in Europe, for centuries abominably
+oppressed, were justified in utilizing to the fullest the opportunity
+presented by the resettlement of the world in
+order to secure equality of treatment. And it must be
+admitted that their organization is marvelous. For years
+I championed their cause in Russia, and paid the penalty
+under the governments of Alexander II and III.<a name="FNanchor_365_365" id="FNanchor_365_365" href="#Footnote_365_365" >[365]</a> The
+sympathy of every unbiased man, to whatever race or
+religion he may belong, will naturally go out to a race or
+a nation which is trodden underfoot, as were the ill-starred
+Jews of Russia ever since the partition of Poland.
+But equality one would have thought sufficient to meet
+the grievance. Full equality without reservation. That
+was the view taken by numerous Jews in Poland and
+Rumania, several of whom called on me in Paris and
+urged me to give public utterance to their hopes that the
+Conference would rest satisfied with equality and to their
+fear of the consequences of an attempt to establish a
+privileged status. Why this position should exist only
+in eastern Europe and not elsewhere, why it should not
+be extended to other races with larger minorities in other
+countries, are questions to which a satisfactory response
+could be given only by farther-reaching and fateful
+changes in the legislation of the world.</p>
+
+<p>One of the statesmen of eastern Europe made a forcible
+appeal to have the minority clauses withdrawn. He took
+the ground that the principal aim pursued in conferring
+full rights on the Jews who dwell among us is to remove
+the obstacles that prevent them from becoming true and
+loyal citizens of the state, as their kindred are in France,
+Italy, Britain, and elsewhere. &quot;If it is reasonable,&quot; he
+said, &quot;that they should demand all the rights possessed
+by their Rumanian and Polish fellow-subjects, it is equally
+fair that they should take over and fulfil the correlate
+duties, as does the remainder of the population. For the
+gradual assimilation of all the ethnic elements of the community
+is our ideal, as it is the ideal of the French, English,
+Italian, and other states.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Isolation and particularism are the negative of that
+ideal, and operate like a piece of iron or wood in the human
+body which produces ulceration and gangrene. All our
+institutions should therefore be calculated to encourage
+assimilation. If we adopt the opposite policy, we inevitably
+alienate the privileged from the unprivileged sections
+of the community, generate enmity between them,
+cause endless worries to the administration and paralyze
+in advance our best-intentioned endeavors to fuse the
+various ethnic ingredients of the nation into a homogeneous
+whole.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This argument applies as fully to the other national
+fragments in our midst as to the Jews. It is manifest,
+therefore, that the one certain result of the minority
+clause will be to impose domestic enemies on each of the
+states that submits to it, and that it can commend itself
+only to those who approve the maxim, <i>Divide et impera</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It also entails the noteworthy diminution of the
+sovereignty of the state. We are to be liable to be haled
+before a foreign tribunal whenever one of our minorities
+formulates a complaint against us.<a name="FNanchor_366_366" id="FNanchor_366_366" href="#Footnote_366_366" >[366]</a> How easily, nay,
+how wickedly such complaints were filed of late may be
+inferred from the heartrending accounts of pogroms
+in Poland, which have since been shown by the Allies'
+own confidential envoys to be utterly fictitious. Again,
+with whom are we to make the obnoxious stipulations?
+With the League of Nations? No. We are to bind ourselves
+toward the Great Powers, who themselves have
+their minorities which complain in vain of being continually
+coerced. Ireland, Egypt, and the negroes are
+three striking examples. None of their delegates were
+admitted to the Conference. If the principle which
+those Great Powers seek to enforce be worth anything, it
+should be applied indiscriminately to all minorities, not
+restricted to those of the smaller states, who already
+have difficulties enough to contend against.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The trend of continental opinion was decidedly opposed
+to this policy of continuous control and periodic intervention.
+It would be unfruitful to quote the sharp
+criticisms of the status of the negroes in the United States.<a name="FNanchor_367_367" id="FNanchor_367_367" href="#Footnote_367_367" >[367]</a>
+But it will not be amiss to cite the views of two moderate
+French publicists who have ever been among the most
+fervent advocates of the Allied cause. Their comments
+deal with one of the articles<a name="FNanchor_368_368" id="FNanchor_368_368" href="#Footnote_368_368" >[368]</a> of the special Minority Treaty
+which Poland has had to sign. It runs thus: &quot;Jews shall
+not be compelled to perform any act which constitutes a
+violation of their Sabbath, nor shall they be placed under
+any disability by reason of their refusal to attend courts
+of law or to perform any legal business on their Sabbath.
+This provision, however, shall not exempt Jews from such
+obligations as shall be imposed upon all other Polish
+citizens for the necessary purposes of military service,
+national defense, or the preservation of public order.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Poland declares her intention to refrain from ordering
+or permitting elections, whether general or local, to be held
+on a Saturday, nor will registration for electoral or other
+purposes be compelled to be performed on a Saturday.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>M. Gauvain writes: &quot;One may put the question, why
+respect for the Sabbath is so peremptorily imposed when
+Sunday is ignored among several of the Allied Powers.
+In France Christians are not dispensed from appearing
+on Sundays before the assize courts. Besides, Poland
+is further obliged not to order or authorize elections on a
+Saturday. What precautions these are in favor of the
+Jewish religion as compared with the legislation of many
+Allied states which have no such ordinances in favor
+of Catholicism! Is the same procedure to be adopted
+toward the Moslems? Shall we behold the famous Mussulmans
+of India, so opportunely drawn from the shade
+by Mr. Montagu, demanding the insertion of clauses to
+protect Islam? Will the Zionists impose their dogmas
+in Palestine? Is the life of a nation to be suspended two,
+three, or four days a week in order that religious laws
+may be observed? Catholicism has adapted itself in
+practice to laic legislation and to the exigencies of modern
+life. It may well seem that Judaism in Poland could do
+likewise. In Rumania, the Jews met with no obstacle
+to the exercise of their religion. Indeed, they had contrived
+in the localities to the north of Moldavia, where
+they formed a majority, to impose their own customs
+on the rest of the population. Jewish guardians of toll-bridges
+are known to have barred the passage of these
+bridges on Saturdays, because, on the one hand, their
+religion forbade them to accept money on that day, and,
+on the other hand, they could allow no one to pass without
+paying. The Big Four might have given their attention
+to matters more useful or more pressing than enforcing
+respect for the Sabbath.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is comprehensible that M. Bratiano should have
+refused to accept in advance the conditions which the
+Four or the Five may dictate in favor of ethnic and
+religious minorities. Rumania before the war was a
+free country governed congruously with the most modern
+principles. The restrictions which she had enacted
+respecting foreigners in general, and which were on the
+point of being repealed, did not exceed those which the
+United States and the Dominion of Australia still apply
+with remarkable tenacity. Why should the Cabinets of
+London and Washington take so much to heart the lot
+of ethnic and religious minorities in certain European
+countries while they themselves refuse to admit in the
+Covenant of the Society of Nations the principle of the
+equality of races? Their conduct is awakening among
+the states 'whose interests are limited' the belief that
+they are the victims of an arbitrary policy. And that is
+not without danger.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_369_369" id="FNanchor_369_369" href="#Footnote_369_369" >[369]</a></p>
+
+<p>Another eminent Frenchman, M. Denis Cochin, who
+until quite recently was a Cabinet Minister, wrote: &quot;The
+Conference, by imposing laws in favor of minorities, has
+uselessly and unjustly offended our allies. These laws
+oblige them to respect the usages of the Jews, to maintain
+schools for them.... I have spent a large part of my
+career in demanding for French Catholics exactly that
+which the Conference imposes elsewhere. The Catholics
+pay taxes in money and taxes in blood. And yet there is
+no budget for those schools in which their religion is
+taught; no liberty for those schoolmasters who wear the
+ecclesiastical habit. I have seen a doctor in letters, fellow
+of the university, driven from his class because he
+was a Marist brother and did not choose to repudiate the
+vocation of his youth. He died of grief. I have seen
+young priests, after the long, laborious preparation necessary
+before they could take part in the competition for a
+university fellowship, thrust aside at the last moment
+and debarred from the competition because they wore the
+garb of priests. Yet a year later they were soldiers. I
+have seen Father Schell presented unanimously by the
+Institute and the Professional Corps as worthy to receive
+a chair at the Coll&egrave;ge de France, and refused by the
+Minister. Yet I hereby affirm that if foreigners, even
+though they were allies, even friends, were to meddle with
+imposing on us the abrogation of these iniquitous laws,
+my protest would be uplifted against them, together with
+that of M. Combes.<a name="FNanchor_370_370" id="FNanchor_370_370" href="#Footnote_370_370" >[370]</a> I would exclaim, like Sganarelle's
+wife, 'And what if I wish to be beaten?' I hold tyranny
+in horror, but I hold foreign intervention in greater horror
+still. Let us combat bad laws with all our strength, but
+among ourselves.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_371_371" id="FNanchor_371_371" href="#Footnote_371_371" >[371]</a></p>
+
+<p>The minority treaties tend to transform each of the
+states on which it is imposed into a miniature Balkans, to
+keep Europe in continuous turmoil and hinder the growth
+of the new and creative ideas from which alone one could
+expect that union of collective energy with individual
+freedom which is essential to peace and progress. Modern
+history affords no more striking example of the force
+of abstract bias over the teachings of experience than
+this amateur legislation which is scattering seeds of mischief
+and conflict throughout Europe.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Casting a final glance at the results of the Conference,
+it would be ungracious not to welcome as a precious boon
+the destruction of Prussian militarism, a consummation
+which we owe to the heroism of the armies rather than to
+the sagacity of the lawgivers in Paris. The restoration
+of a Polish state and the creation or extension of the other
+free communities at the expense of the Central Empires
+are also most welcome changes, which, however, ought
+never to have been marred by the disruptive wedge of the
+minority legislation. Again, although the League is a
+mill whose sails uselessly revolve, because it has no corn
+to grind, the mere fact that the necessity of internationalism
+was solemnly proclaimed as the central idea of the
+new ordering, and that an effort, however feeble, was put
+forth to realize it in the shape of a covenant of social and
+moral fellowship, marks an advance from which there can
+be no retrogression.</p>
+
+<p>Actuality was thereby imparted to the idea, which is
+destined to remain in the forefront of contemporary politics
+until the peoples themselves embody it in viable
+institutions. What the delegates failed to realize is the
+truth that a program of a league is not a league.</p>
+
+<p>On the debit side much might be added to what has
+already been said. The important fact to bear in mind&mdash;which
+in itself calls for neither praise nor blame&mdash;is that
+the world-parliament was at bottom an Anglo-Saxon assembly
+whose language, political conceptions, self-esteem,
+and disregard of everything foreign were essentially English.
+When speaking, the faces of the principal delegates
+were turned toward the future, and when acting they
+looked toward the past. As a thoroughly English press
+organ, when alluding to the League of Nations, puts it:
+&quot;We have done homage to that entrancing ideal by
+spatchcocking the Convention into the Treaty. There it
+remains as a finger-post to point the way to a new heaven
+on earth. But we observe that the Treaty itself is a
+good old eighteenth-century piece, drawing its inspiration
+from mundane and practical considerations, and paying
+a good deal more than lip service to the principle of the
+balance of power.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_372_372" id="FNanchor_372_372" href="#Footnote_372_372" >[372]</a></p>
+
+<p>That is a fair estimate of the work achieved by the
+delegates. But they sinned in their way of doing it. If
+they had deliberately and professedly aimed at these
+results, and had led the world to look for none other, most
+of the criticisms to which they have rendered themselves
+open would be pointless. But they raised hopes which
+they refused to realize, they weakened if they did not destroy
+faith in public treaties, they intensified distrust and
+race hatred throughout the world, they poured strong dissolvents
+upon every state on the European Continent,
+and they stirred up fierce passions in Russia, and then left
+that ill-starred nation a prey to unprecedented anarchy.
+In a word, they gathered up all the widely scattered explosives
+of imperialism, nationalism, and internationalism,
+and, having added to their destructiveness, passed them
+on to the peoples of the world as represented by the
+League of Nations. Some of them deplored the mess in
+which they were leaving the nations, without, however,
+admitting the causal nexus between it and their own
+achievements.</p>
+
+<p>General Smuts, before quitting Paris for South Africa,
+frankly admitted that the Peace Treaty will not give us
+the real peace which the peoples hoped for, and that peace-making
+would not begin until after the signing of the
+Treaty. The <i>Echo de Paris</i> wrote: &quot;As for us, we never
+believed in the Society of Nations.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_373_373" id="FNanchor_373_373" href="#Footnote_373_373" >[373]</a> And again: &quot;The
+Society of Nations is now but a bladder, and nobody
+would venture to describe it as a lantern.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_374_374" id="FNanchor_374_374" href="#Footnote_374_374" >[374]</a> The Bolshevist
+dictator Lenin termed it &quot;an organization to loot
+the world.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_375_375" id="FNanchor_375_375" href="#Footnote_375_375" >[375]</a></p>
+
+<p>The Allies themselves are at sixes and sevens. The
+French are suspicious of the British. A large section of
+the American people is profoundly dissatisfied with the
+part played by the English and the French at the Conference;
+Italy is stung to the quick by the treatment
+she received from France, Britain, and the United States;
+Rumania loathes the very names of those for whom she
+staked her all and sacrificed so much; in Poland and
+Belgium the English have lost the consideration which
+they enjoyed before the Conference; the Greeks are
+wroth with the American delegates; the majority of
+Russians literally execrate their ex-Allies and turn to the
+Germans and the Japanese.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The resettlement of central Europe,&quot; writes an
+American journal,<a name="FNanchor_376_376" id="FNanchor_376_376" href="#Footnote_376_376" >[376]</a> &quot;is not being made for the tranquillity
+of the liberated principles, but for the purposes of the
+Great Powers, among whom France is the active, and
+America and Britain the passive, partners. In Germany
+its purpose is the permanent elimination of the German
+nation as a factor in European politics.... We cannot
+save Europe by playing the sinister game now being
+played. There is no peace, no order, no security in it....
+What it can do is to aggravate the mischief and
+intensify the schisms.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A distinguished American, who is a consistent friend
+of England,<a name="FNanchor_377_377" id="FNanchor_377_377" href="#Footnote_377_377" >[377]</a> in a review article affirmed that the proposed
+League of Nations is slowly undermining the Anglo-American
+Entente. &quot;There is in America a growing
+sense of irritation that she should be forever entangled
+in the spider-web of European politics.&quot; ... And if the
+Senate in the supposed interests of peace should ratify
+the League, he adds, &quot;In my judgment no greater harm
+could result to Anglo-American unity than such reluctant
+consent.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_378_378" id="FNanchor_378_378" href="#Footnote_378_378" >[378]</a></p>
+
+<p>Some of Mr. Wilson's fellow-countrymen who gave
+him their whole-hearted support when he undertook to
+establish a r&eacute;gime of right and justice sum up the result
+of his labors in Paris as follows:<a name="FNanchor_379_379" id="FNanchor_379_379" href="#Footnote_379_379" >[379]</a></p>
+
+<p>&quot;His solemn warning against special alliances emerged
+as a special alliance with Britain and France. His repeated
+condemnations of secret treaties emerges as a
+recognition that 'they could not honorably be brushed
+aside,' even though they conflicted with equally binding
+public engagements entered into after they had been
+written. Openly arrived at covenants were not openly
+arrived at. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic
+barriers was applied to German barriers, and accompanied
+by the blockade of a people with whom we have
+never been at war. The adequate guaranties to be given
+and taken as respects armaments were taken from Germany
+and given to no one. The 'unhampered and unembarrassed
+opportunity for the independent determination
+of her own political development' promised to Russia,
+and defined as the 'acid test,' has been worked out
+by Mr. Wilson and others to a point where so cautious
+a man as Mr. Asquith says he regards it with 'bewilderment
+and apprehension.' The righting of the wrong done
+in 1871 emerges as a concealed annexation of the boundary
+of 1814. The 'clearly recognizable lines of nationality'
+which Italy was to obtain has been wheedled into annexations
+which have moved Viscount Bryce to denounce
+them. 'The freest opportunity of autonomous development'
+promised the peoples of Austria-Hungary failed
+to define the Austrians as peoples....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Whatever the tests one applies to the work of the
+Conference&mdash;ethical, social, or political&mdash;they reveal it
+as a factor eminently calculated to sap high interests, to
+weaken the moral nerve of the present generation, to fan
+the flames of national and racial hatred, to dig an abyss
+between the classes and the masses, and to throw open the
+sluice-gates to the inrush of the waves of anarchist internationalities.
+Truth, justice, equity, and liberty have
+been twisted and pressed into the service of economico-political
+boards. In the United States the people who
+prided themselves on their aloofness are already fighting
+over European interests. In Europe every nation's hand
+is raised against its neighbors, and every people's hand
+against its ruling class. Every government is making
+its policy subservient to the needs of the future war which
+is universally looked upon as an unavoidable outcome of
+the Versailles peace. Imperialism and militarism are
+striking roots in soil where they were hitherto unknown.
+In a word, Prussianism, instead of being destroyed, has
+been openly adopted by its ostensible enemies, and the
+huge sacrifices offered up by the heroic armies of the foremost
+nations are being misused to give one half of the
+world just cause to rise up against the other half.</p>
+
+<p>THE END</p>
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_339_339" id="Footnote_339_339" href="#FNanchor_339_339"> [339]</a> A contemporary of Goethe. His works were republished by Herzog in
+the year 1907.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_340_340" id="Footnote_340_340" href="#FNanchor_340_340"> [340]</a> <i>The Daily Telegraph</i>, January 28, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_341_341" id="Footnote_341_341" href="#FNanchor_341_341"> [341]</a> <i>The Daily Telegraph</i>, January 31, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_342_342" id="Footnote_342_342" href="#FNanchor_342_342"> [342]</a> <i>The Daily Mail</i> (Paris edition), February 13, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_343_343" id="Footnote_343_343" href="#FNanchor_343_343"> [343]</a> State-Secretary Hay addressed a note to the Powers in September, 1899,
+setting forth America's attitude toward China. It is known as the doctrine
+of the &quot;open door.&quot; In a subsequent note (July 3, 1900) he enlarged its
+scope and promulgated the integrity of China. But Russia ignored it and
+flew her flag over the Chinese customs in Newchwang. It was Japan who,
+on that occasion, asserted and enforced the doctrine without outside help.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_344_344" id="Footnote_344_344" href="#FNanchor_344_344"> [344]</a> General March intimated, when testifying before the House Military
+Committee, that President Wilson approved of universal training, indorsing
+the War Department's army program.&mdash;<i>New York Herald</i> (Paris edition).</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_345_345" id="Footnote_345_345" href="#FNanchor_345_345"> [345]</a> <i>Bulletin des Droits de l'Homme</i>, No. 10, May 15, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_346_346" id="Footnote_346_346" href="#FNanchor_346_346"> [346]</a> <i>Journal Officiel</i>, November 21, 1917.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_347_347" id="Footnote_347_347" href="#FNanchor_347_347"> [347]</a> <i>Le Populaire</i>, February 10, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_348_348" id="Footnote_348_348" href="#FNanchor_348_348"> [348]</a> <i>La Stampa</i>, June 11, 1919. Cf. <i>L'Humanit&eacute;,</i> June 13, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_349_349" id="Footnote_349_349" href="#FNanchor_349_349"> [349]</a> Cf. <i>The Chicago Tribune</i> (Paris edition), August 27, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_350_350" id="Footnote_350_350" href="#FNanchor_350_350"> [350]</a> In <i>The Daily Telegraph</i>, February 8, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_351_351" id="Footnote_351_351" href="#FNanchor_351_351"> [351]</a> The Covenant leaves the mode of recruiting them undetermined.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_352_352" id="Footnote_352_352" href="#FNanchor_352_352"> [352]</a> Article IV.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_353_353" id="Footnote_353_353" href="#FNanchor_353_353"> [353]</a> Article VIII.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_354_354" id="Footnote_354_354" href="#FNanchor_354_354"> [354]</a> M. d'Estournelles de Constant, <i>Bulletin des Droits de l'Homme</i>, May
+15, 1919, p. 450.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_355_355" id="Footnote_355_355" href="#FNanchor_355_355"> [355]</a> <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_356_356" id="Footnote_356_356" href="#FNanchor_356_356"> [356]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 457.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_357_357" id="Footnote_357_357" href="#FNanchor_357_357"> [357]</a> Article XII.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_358_358" id="Footnote_358_358" href="#FNanchor_358_358"> [358]</a> Cf. <i>The New York Herald</i> (Paris edition), September 14, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_359_359" id="Footnote_359_359" href="#FNanchor_359_359"> [359]</a> <i>L'Echo de Paris</i>, February 17, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_360_360" id="Footnote_360_360" href="#FNanchor_360_360"> [360]</a> On April 11, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_361_361" id="Footnote_361_361" href="#FNanchor_361_361"> [361]</a> The wording of the final Japanese amendment was: &quot;By the endorsement
+of the principle of equality of nations and just treatment of their
+nationals.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_362_362" id="Footnote_362_362" href="#FNanchor_362_362"> [362]</a> On April 28, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_363_363" id="Footnote_363_363" href="#FNanchor_363_363"> [363]</a> The Jewish coalition in Vilna inscribed on its program the union of
+Vilna with Russia.... There was an overwhelming majority in favor of its
+retention by Poland.&mdash;<i>Le Temps</i>, September 14, 1919. The election took
+place on September 7th.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_364_364" id="Footnote_364_364" href="#FNanchor_364_364"> [364]</a> On Saturday, May 31, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_365_365" id="Footnote_365_365" href="#FNanchor_365_365"> [365]</a> I published several series of articles in <i>The Daily Telegraph</i>, <i>The Fortnightly
+Review</i>, and other English as well as American periodicals, and a
+long chapter in my book entitled <i>Russian Characteristics</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_366_366" id="Footnote_366_366" href="#FNanchor_366_366"> [366]</a> &quot;Poland agrees that any member of the Council of the League of Nations
+shall have the right to bring to the attention of the Council any infraction,
+or <i>any danger of infraction</i>, of any of these obligations, and that the Council
+may thereupon take such action and give such direction as it may deem
+proper and effective in the circumstances.&quot;&mdash;Article XII of the Special
+Treaty with Poland.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_367_367" id="Footnote_367_367" href="#FNanchor_367_367"> [367]</a> Cf. <i>La Gazette de Lausanne</i>, April 24, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_368_368" id="Footnote_368_368" href="#FNanchor_368_368"> [368]</a> Article XI of the Special Treaty, <i>L'Etoile Belge</i>, August 17, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_369_369" id="Footnote_369_369" href="#FNanchor_369_369"> [369]</a> <i>Le Journal des D&eacute;bats</i>, July 7, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_370_370" id="Footnote_370_370" href="#FNanchor_370_370"> [370]</a> M. Emile Combes was the author of the laws which banished religious
+congregations from France.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_371_371" id="Footnote_371_371" href="#FNanchor_371_371"> [371]</a> <i>Le Figaro</i>, August 21, 1919. <i>L'Echo de Paris</i>, August 22, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_372_372" id="Footnote_372_372" href="#FNanchor_372_372"> [372]</a> <i>The Morning Post</i>, July 21, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_373_373" id="Footnote_373_373" href="#FNanchor_373_373"> [373]</a> <i>L'Echo de Paris</i>, April 29, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_374_374" id="Footnote_374_374" href="#FNanchor_374_374"> [374]</a> <i>Ibid.</i>, April 14, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_375_375" id="Footnote_375_375" href="#FNanchor_375_375"> [375]</a> <i>The Chicago Tribune</i> (Paris edition), September 17, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_376_376" id="Footnote_376_376" href="#FNanchor_376_376"> [376]</a> <i>The New Republic</i>, August 6, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_377_377" id="Footnote_377_377" href="#FNanchor_377_377"> [377]</a> Mr. James B. Beck.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_378_378" id="Footnote_378_378" href="#FNanchor_378_378"> [378]</a> <i>The North American Review</i>, June, 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_379_379" id="Footnote_379_379" href="#FNanchor_379_379"> [379]</a> Cf. <i>The New Republic</i>, August 6, 1919, pp. 5, 6.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Inside Story Of The Peace
+Conference, by Emile Joseph Dillon
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+</pre>
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+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference
+by Emile Joseph Dillon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference
+
+Author: Emile Joseph Dillon
+
+Release Date: December 26, 2004 [EBook #14477]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PEACE CONFERENCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Martin Pettit and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_The Inside Story of
+
+The Peace Conference_
+
+
+_by
+
+Dr. E.J. Dillon_
+
+
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+
+_NEW YORK AND LONDON_
+
+THE INSIDE STORY OF THE PEACE CONFERENCE
+
+Copyright 1920, by Harper & Brothers
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+Published February, 1920
+
+_To
+C.W. BARRON
+
+in memory of interesting conversations
+
+on historic occasions
+
+These pages are inscribed._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAP.                                   PAGE
+
+FOREWORD                                  ix
+
+I.    THE CITY OF THE CONFERENCE           1
+
+II.   SIGNS OF THE TIMES                  45
+
+III.  THE DELEGATES                       58
+
+IV.   CENSORSHIP AND SECRECY             117
+
+V.    AIMS AND METHODS                   136
+
+VI.   THE LESSER STATES                  184
+
+VII.  POLAND'S OUTLOOK IN THE FUTURE     264
+
+VIII. ITALY                              272
+
+IX.   JAPAN                              322
+
+X.    ATTITUDE TOWARD RUSSIA             344
+
+XI.   BOLSHEVISM                         376
+
+XII.  HOW BOLSHEVISM WAS FOSTERED        399
+
+XIII. SIDELIGHTS ON THE TREATY           407
+
+XIV.  THE TREATY WITH GERMANY            455
+
+XV.   THE TREATY WITH BULGARIA           464
+
+XVI.  THE COVENANT AND MINORITIES        469
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+It is almost superfluous to say that this book does not claim to be a
+history, however summary, of the Peace Conference, seeing that such a
+work was made sheer impossible now and forever by the chief delegates
+themselves when they decided to dispense with records of their
+conversations and debates. It is only a sketch--a sketch of the problems
+which the war created or rendered pressing--of the conditions under
+which they cropped up; of the simplicist ways in which they were
+conceived by the distinguished politicians who volunteered to solve
+them; of the delegates' natural limitations and electioneering
+commitments and of the secret influences by which they were swayed; of
+the peoples' needs and expectations; of the unwonted procedure adopted
+by the Conference and of the fateful consequences of its decisions to
+the world.
+
+In dealing with all those matters I aimed at impartiality, which is an
+unattainable ideal, but I trust that sincerity and detachment have
+brought me reasonably close to it. Having no pet theories of my own to
+champion, my principal standard of judgment is derived from the law of
+causality and the rules of historical criticism.
+
+The fatal tactical mistake chargeable to the Conference lay in its
+making the charter of the League of Nations and the treaty of peace with
+the Central Powers interdependent. For the maxims that underlie the
+former are irreconcilable with those that should determine the latter,
+and the efforts to combine them must, among other untoward results,
+create a sharp opposition between the vital interests of the people of
+the United States and the apparent or transient interests of their
+associates. The outcome of this unnatural union will be to damage the
+cause of stable peace which it was devised to further.
+
+But the surest touchstone by which to test the capacity and the
+achievements of the world-legislators is their attitude toward Russia in
+the political domain and toward the labor problem in the economic
+sphere. And in neither case does their action or inaction appear to have
+been the outcome of statesman-like ideas, or, indeed, of any higher
+consideration than that of evading the central issue and transmitting
+the problem to the League of Nations. The results are manifest to all.
+
+The continuity of human progress depends at bottom upon labor, and it is
+becoming more and more doubtful whether the civilized races of mankind
+can be reckoned on to supply it for long on conditions akin to those
+which have in various forms prevailed ever since the institutions of
+ancient times and which alone render the present social structure
+viable. If this forecast should prove correct, the only alternative to a
+break disastrous in the continuity of civilization is the frank
+recognition of the principle that certain inferior races are destined to
+serve the cause of mankind in those capacities for which alone they are
+qualified and to readjust social institutions to this axiom.
+
+In the meanwhile the Conference which ignored this problem of problems
+has transformed Europe into a seething mass of mutually hostile states
+powerless to face the economic competition of their overseas rivals and
+has set the very elements of society in flux.
+
+E.J. DILLON.
+
+
+
+
+THE INSIDE STORY OF THE PEACE CONFERENCE
+
+I
+
+THE CITY OF THE CONFERENCE
+
+
+The choice of Paris for the historic Peace Conference was an
+afterthought. The Anglo-Saxon governments first favored a neutral
+country as the most appropriate meeting-ground for the world's
+peace-makers. Holland was mentioned only to be eliminated without
+discussion, so obvious and decisive were the objections. French
+Switzerland came next in order, was actually fixed upon, and for a time
+held the field. Lausanne was the city first suggested and nearly chosen.
+There was a good deal to be said for it on its own merits, and in its
+suburb, Ouchy, the treaty had been drawn up which terminated the war
+between Italy and Turkey. But misgivings were expressed as to its
+capacity to receive and entertain the formidable peace armies without
+whose co-operation the machinery for stopping all wars could not well be
+fabricated. At last Geneva was fixed upon, and so certain were
+influential delegates of the ratification of their choice by all the
+Allies, that I felt justified in telegraphing to Geneva to have a house
+hired for six months in that picturesque city.
+
+But the influential delegates had reckoned without the French, who in
+these matters were far and away the most influential. Was it not in the
+Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, they asked, that Teuton militarism had
+received its most powerful impulse? And did not poetic justice, which
+was never so needed as in these evil days, ordain that the chartered
+destroyer who had first seen the light of day in that hall should also
+be destroyed there? Was this not in accordance with the eternal fitness
+of things? Whereupon the matter-of-fact Anglo-Saxon mind, unable to
+withstand the force of this argument and accustomed to give way on
+secondary matters, assented, and Paris was accordingly fixed upon....
+
+"Paris herself again," tourists remarked, who had not been there since
+the fateful month when hostilities began--meaning that something of the
+wealth and luxury of bygone days was venturing to display itself anew as
+an afterglow of the epoch whose sun was setting behind banks of
+thunder-clouds. And there was a grain of truth in the remark. The Ville
+Lumiere was crowded as it never had been before. But it was mostly
+strangers who were within her gates. In the throng of Anglo-Saxon
+warriors and cosmopolitan peace-lovers following the trailing skirts of
+destiny, one might with an effort discover a Parisian now and again. But
+they were few and far between.
+
+They and their principal European guests made some feeble attempts to
+vie with the Vienna of 1814-15 in elegance and taste if not in pomp and
+splendor. But the general effect was marred by the element of the
+_nouveaux-riches_ and _nouveaux-pauvres_ which was prominent, if not
+predominant. A few of the great and would-be great ladies outbade one
+another in the effort to renew the luxury and revive the grace of the
+past. But the atmosphere was numbing, their exertions half-hearted, and
+the smile of youth and beauty was cold like the sheen of winter ice.
+The shadow of death hung over the institutions and survivals of the
+various civilizations and epochs which were being dissolved in the
+common melting-pot, and even the man in the street was conscious of its
+chilling influence. Life in the capital grew agitated, fitful,
+superficial, unsatisfying. Its gaiety was forced--something between a
+challenge to the destroyer and a sad farewell to the past and present.
+Men were instinctively aware that the morrow was fraught with bitter
+surprises, and they deliberately adopted the maxim, "Let us eat and
+drink, for to-morrow we die." None of these people bore on their
+physiognomies the dignified impress of the olden time, barring a few
+aristocratic figures from the Faubourg St.-Germain, who looked as though
+they had only to don the perukes and the distinctive garb of the
+eighteenth century to sit down to table with Voltaire and the Marquise
+du Chatelet. Here and there, indeed, a coiffure, a toilet, the bearing,
+the gait, or the peculiar grace with which a robe was worn reminded one
+that this or that fair lady came of a family whose life-story in the
+days of yore was one of the tributaries to the broad stream of European
+history. But on closer acquaintanceship, especially at conversational
+tournaments, one discovered that Nature, constant in her methods,
+distributes more gifts of beauty than of intellect.
+
+Festive banquets, sinful suppers, long-spun-out lunches were as frequent
+and at times as Lucullan as in the days of the Regency. The outer,
+coarser attributes of luxury abounded in palatial restaurants, hotels,
+and private mansions; but the refinement, the grace, the brilliant
+conversation even of the Paris of the Third Empire were seen to be
+subtle branches of a lost art. The people of the armistice were weary
+and apprehensive--weary of the war, weary of politics, weary of the
+worn-out framework of existence, and filled with a vague, nameless
+apprehension of the unknown. They feared that in the chaotic slough into
+which they had fallen they had not yet touched bottom. None the less,
+with the exception of fervent Catholics and a number of earnest
+sectarians, there were few genuine seekers after anything essentially
+better.
+
+Not only did the general atmosphere of Paris undergo radical changes,
+together with its population, but the thoroughfares, many of them,
+officially changed their names since the outbreak of the war.
+
+The Paris of the Conference ceased to be the capital of France. It
+became a vast cosmopolitan caravanserai teeming with unwonted aspects of
+life and turmoil, filled with curious samples of the races, tribes, and
+tongues of four continents who came to watch and wait for the mysterious
+to-morrow. The intensity of life there was sheer oppressive; to the
+tumultuous striving of the living were added the silent influences of
+the dead. For it was also a trysting-place for the ghosts of
+sovereignties and states, militarisms and racial ambitions, which were
+permitted to wander at large until their brief twilight should be
+swallowed up in night. The dignified Turk passionately pleaded for
+Constantinople, and cast an imploring look on the lone Armenian whose
+relatives he had massacred, and who was then waiting for political
+resurrection. Persian delegates wandered about like souls in pain,
+waiting to be admitted through the portals of the Conference Paradise.
+Beggared Croesus passed famishing Lucullus in the street, and once
+mighty viziers shivered under threadbare garments in the biting frost as
+they hurried over the crisp February snow. Waning and waxing Powers,
+vacant thrones, decaying dominations had, each of them, their accusers,
+special pleaders, and judges, in this multitudinous world-center on
+which tragedy, romance, and comedy rained down potent spells. For the
+Conference city was also the clearing-house of the Fates, where the
+accounts of a whole epoch, the deeds and misdeeds of an exhausted
+civilization, were to be balanced and squared.
+
+Here strange yet familiar figures, survivals from the past, started up
+at every hand's turn and greeted one with smiles or sighs. Men on whom I
+last set eyes when we were boys at school, playing football together in
+the field or preparing lessons in the school-room, would stop me in the
+street on their way to represent nations or peoples whose lives were out
+of chime, or to inaugurate the existence of new republics. One face I
+shall never forget. It was that of the self-made temporary dictator of a
+little country whose importance was dwindling to the dimensions of a
+footnote in the history of the century. I had been acquainted with him
+personally in the halcyon day of his transient glory. Like his
+picturesque land, he won the immortality of a day, was courted and
+subsidized by competing states in turn, and then suddenly cast aside
+like a sucked orange. Then he sank into the depths of squalor. He was
+eloquent, resourceful, imaginative, and brimful of the poetry of
+untruth. One day through the asphalt streets of Paris he shuffled along
+in the procession of the doomed, with wan face and sunken eyes, wearing
+a tragically mean garb. And soon after I learned that he had vanished
+unwept into eternal oblivion.
+
+An Arabian Nights touch was imparted to the dissolving panorama by
+strange visitants from Tartary and Kurdistan, Korea and Aderbeijan,
+Armenia, Persia, and the Hedjaz--men with patriarchal beards and
+scimitar-shaped noses, and others from desert and oasis, from Samarkand
+and Bokhara. Turbans and fezzes, sugar-loaf hats and headgear resembling
+episcopal miters, old military uniforms devised for the embryonic armies
+of new states on the eve of perpetual peace, snowy-white burnooses,
+flowing mantles, and graceful garments like the Roman toga, contributed
+to create an atmosphere of dreamy unreality in the city where the
+grimmest of realities were being faced and coped with.
+
+Then came the men of wealth, of intellect, of industrial enterprise, and
+the seed-bearers of the ethical new ordering, members of economic
+committees from the United States, Britain, Italy, Poland, Russia,
+India, and Japan, representatives of naphtha industries and far-off coal
+mines, pilgrims, fanatics, and charlatans from all climes, priests of
+all religions, preachers of every doctrine, who mingled with princes,
+field-marshals, statesmen, anarchists, builders-up, and pullers-down.
+All of them burned with desire to be near to the crucible in which the
+political and social systems of the world were to be melted and recast.
+Every day, in my walks, in my apartment, or at restaurants, I met
+emissaries from lands and peoples whose very names had seldom been heard
+of before in the West. A delegation from the Pont-Euxine Greeks called
+on me, and discoursed of their ancient cities of Trebizond, Samsoun,
+Tripoli, Kerassund, in which I resided many years ago, and informed me
+that they, too, desired to become welded into an independent Greek
+republic, and had come to have their claims allowed. The Albanians were
+represented by my old friend Turkhan Pasha, on the one hand, and by my
+friend Essad Pasha, on the other--the former desirous of Italy's
+protection, the latter demanding complete independence. Chinamen,
+Japanese, Koreans, Hindus, Kirghizes, Lesghiens, Circassians,
+Mingrelians, Buryats, Malays, and Negroes and Negroids from Africa and
+America were among the tribes and tongues forgathered in Paris to watch
+the rebuilding of the political world system and to see where they "came
+in."
+
+One day I received a visit from an Armenian deputation; its chief was
+described on his visiting-card as President of the Armenian Republic of
+the Caucasus. When he was shown into my apartment in the Hotel Vendome,
+I recognized two of its members as old acquaintances with whom I had
+occasional intercourse in Erzerum, Kipri Keui, and other places during
+the Armenian massacres of the year 1895. We had not met since then. They
+revived old memories, completed for me the life-stories of several of
+our common friends and acquaintances, and narrated interesting episodes
+of local history. And having requested my co-operation, the President
+and his colleagues left me and once more passed out of my life.
+
+Another actor on the world-stage whom I had encountered more than once
+before was the "heroic" King of Montenegro. He often crossed my path
+during the Conference, and set me musing on the marvelous ups and downs
+of human existence. This potentate's life offers a rich field of
+research to the psychologist. I had watched it myself at various times
+and with curious results. For I had met him in various European capitals
+during the past thirty years, and before the time when Tsar Alexander
+III publicly spoke of him as Russia's only friend. King Nikita owes such
+success in life as he can look back on with satisfaction to his
+adaptation of St. Paul's maxim of being all things to all men. Thus in
+St. Petersburg he was a good Russian, in Vienna a patriotic Austrian, in
+Rome a sentimental Italian. He was also a warrior, a poet after his own
+fashion, a money-getter, and a speculator on 'Change. His alleged
+martial feats and his wily, diplomatic moves ever since the first Balkan
+war abound in surprises, and would repay close investigation. The ease
+with which the Austrians captured Mount Lovtchen and his capital made a
+lasting impression on those of his allies who were acquainted with the
+story, the consequences of which he could not foresee. What everybody
+seemed to know was that if the Teutons had defeated the Entente, King
+Nikita's son Mirko, who had settled down for the purpose in Vienna,
+would have been set on the throne in place of his father by the
+Austrians; whereas if the Allies should win, the worldly-wise monarch
+would have retained his crown as their champion. But these well-laid
+plans went all agley. Prince Mirko died and King Nikita was deposed. For
+a time he resided at a hotel, a few houses from me, and I passed him now
+and again as he was on his way to plead his lost cause before the
+distinguished wreckers of thrones and regimes.
+
+It seemed as though, in order to provide Paris with a cosmopolitan
+population, the world was drained of its rulers, of its prosperous and
+luckless financiers, of its high and low adventurers, of its tribe of
+fortune-seekers, and its pushing men and women of every description. And
+the result was an odd blend of classes and individuals worthy, it may
+be, of the new democratic era, but unprecedented. It was welcomed as of
+good augury, for instance, that in the stately Hotel Majestic, where the
+spokesmen of the British Empire had their residence, monocled
+diplomatists mingled with spry typewriters, smart amanuenses, and even
+with bright-eyed chambermaids at the evening dances.[1] The British
+Premier himself occasionally witnessed the cheering spectacle with
+manifest pleasure. Self-made statesmen, scions of fallen dynasties,
+ex-premiers, and ministers, who formerly swayed the fortunes of the
+world, whom one might have imagined _capaces imperii nisi imperassent_,
+were now the unnoticed inmates of unpretending hotels. Ambassadors whose
+most trivial utterances had once been listened to with concentrated
+attention, sued days and weeks for an audience of the greater
+plenipotentiaries, and some of them sued in vain. Russian diplomatists
+were refused permission to travel in France or were compelled to
+undergo more than average discomfort and delay there. More than once I
+sat down to lunch or dinner with brilliant commensals, one of whom was
+understood to have made away with a well-known personage in order to rid
+the state of a bad administrator, and another had, at a secret
+_Vehmgericht_ in Turkey, condemned a friend of mine, now a friend of
+his, to be assassinated.
+
+In Paris, this temporary capital of the world, one felt the repercussion
+of every event, every incident of moment wheresoever it might have
+occurred. To reside there while the Conference was sitting was to occupy
+a comfortable box in the vastest theater the mind of men has ever
+conceived. From this rare coign of vantage one could witness
+soul-gripping dramas of human history, the happenings of years being
+compressed within the limits of days. The revolution in Portugal, the
+massacre of Armenians, Bulgaria's atrocities, the slaughter of the
+inhabitants of Saratoff and Odessa, the revolt of the Koreans--all
+produced their effect in Paris, where official and unofficial exponents
+of the aims and ambitions, religions and interests that unite or divide
+mankind were continually coming or going, working aboveground or
+burrowing beneath the surface.
+
+It was within a few miles of the place where I sat at table with the
+brilliant company alluded to above that a few individuals of two
+different nationalities, one of them bearing, it was said, a well-known
+name, hatched the plot that sent Portugal's strong man, President
+Sidonio Paes, to his last account and plunged that ill-starred land into
+chaotic confusion. The plan was discovered by the Portuguese military
+attache, who warned the President himself and the War Minister. But
+Sidonio Paes, quixotic and foolhardy, refused to take or brook
+precautions. A few weeks later the assassin, firing three shots, had no
+difficulty in taking aim, but none of them took effect. The reason was
+interesting: so determined were the conspirators to leave nothing to
+chance, they had steeped the cartridges in a poisonous preparation,
+whereby they injured the mechanism of the revolver, which, in
+consequence, hung fire. But the adversaries of the reform movement which
+the President had inaugurated again tried and planned another attempt,
+and Sidonio Paes, who would not be taught prudence, was duly shot, and
+his admirable work undone[2] by a band of semi-Bolshevists.
+
+Less than six months later it was rumored that a number of specially
+prepared bombs from a certain European town had been sent to Moscow for
+the speedy removal of Lenin. The casual way in which these and kindred
+matters were talked of gave one the measure of the change that had come
+over the world since the outbreak of the war. There was nobody left in
+Europe whose death, violent or peaceful, would have made much of an
+impression on the dulled sensibilities of the reading public. All values
+had changed, and that of human life had fallen low.
+
+To follow these swiftly passing episodes, occasionally glancing behind
+the scenes, during the pauses of the acts, and watch the unfolding of
+the world-drama, was thrillingly interesting. To note the dubious
+source, the chance occasion of a grandiose project of world policy, and
+to see it started on its shuffling course, was a revelation in politics
+and psychology, and reminded one of the saying mistakenly attributed to
+the Swedish Chancellor Oxenstjern, "_Quam parva sapientia regitur
+mundus_."[3]
+
+The wire-pullers were not always the plenipotentiaries. Among those were
+also outsiders of various conditions, sometimes of singular ambitions,
+who were generally free from conventional prejudices and conscientious
+scruples. As traveling to Paris was greatly restricted by the
+governments of the world, many of these unofficial delegates had come in
+capacities widely differing from those in which they intended to act. I
+confess I was myself taken in by more than one of these secret
+emissaries, whom I was innocently instrumental in bringing into close
+touch with the human levers they had come to press. I actually went to
+the trouble of obtaining for one of them valuable data on a subject
+which did not interest him in the least, but which he pretended he had
+traveled several thousand miles to study. A zealous prelate, whose
+business was believed to have something to do with the future of a
+certain branch of the Christian Church in the East, in reality held a
+brief for a wholly different set of interests in the West. Some of these
+envoys hoped to influence decisions of the Conference, and they
+considered they had succeeded when they got their points of view brought
+to the favorable notice of certain of its delegates. What surprised me
+was the ease with which several of these interlopers moved about,
+although few of them spoke any language but their own.
+
+Collectivities and religious and political associations, including that
+of the Bolshevists, were represented in Paris during the Conference. I
+met one of the Bolshevists, a bright youth, who was a veritable apostle.
+He occupied a post which, despite its apparent insignificance, put him
+occasionally in possession of useful information withheld from the
+public, which he was wont to communicate to his political friends. His
+knowledge of languages and his remarkable intelligence had probably
+attracted the notice of his superiors, who can have had no suspicion of
+his leanings, much less of his proselytizing activity. However this may
+have been, he knew a good deal of what was going on at the Conference,
+and he occasionally had insight into documents of a certain interest. He
+was a seemingly honest and enthusiastic Bolshevik, who spread the
+doctrine with apostolic zeal guided by the wisdom of the serpent. He was
+ever ready to comment on events, but before opening his mind fully to a
+stranger on the subject next to his heart, he usually felt his way, and
+only when he had grounds for believing that the fortress was not
+impregnable did he open his batteries. Even among the initiated, few
+would suspect the role played by this young proselytizer within one of
+the strongholds of the Conference, so naturally and unobtrusively was
+the work done. I may add that luckily he had no direct intercourse with
+the delegates.
+
+Of all the collectivities whose interests were furthered at the
+Conference, the Jews had perhaps the most resourceful and certainly the
+most influential exponents. There were Jews from Palestine, from Poland,
+Russia, the Ukraine, Rumania, Greece, Britain, Holland, and Belgium; but
+the largest and most brilliant contingent was sent by the United States.
+Their principal mission, with which every fair-minded man sympathized
+heartily, was to secure for their kindred in eastern Europe rights equal
+to those of the populations in whose midst they reside.[4] And to the
+credit of the Poles, Rumanians, and Russians, who were to be constrained
+to remove all the existing disabilities, they enfranchised the Hebrew
+elements spontaneously. But the Western Jews, who championed their
+Eastern brothers, proceeded to demand a further concession which many of
+their own co-religionists hastened to disclaim as dangerous--a kind of
+autonomy which Rumanian, Polish, and Russian statesmen, as well as many
+of their Jewish fellow-subjects, regarded as tantamount to the creation
+of a state within the state. Whether this estimate is true or erroneous,
+the concessions asked for were given, but the supplementary treaties
+insuring the protection of minorities are believed to have little chance
+of being executed, and may, it is feared, provoke manifestations of
+elemental passions in the countries in which they are to be applied.
+
+Twice every day, before and after lunch, one met the "autocrats," the
+world's statesmen whose names were in every mouth--the wise men who
+would have been much wiser than they were if only they had credited
+their friends and opponents with a reasonable measure of political
+wisdom. These individuals, in bowler hats, sweeping past in sumptuous
+motors, as rarely seen on foot as Roman cardinals, were the destroyers
+of thrones, the carvers of continents, the arbiters of empires, the
+fashioners of the new heaven and the new earth--or were they only the
+flies on the wheel of circumstance, to whom the world was unaccountably
+becoming a riddle?
+
+This commingling of civilizations and types brought together in Paris by
+a set of unprecedented conditions was full of interest and instruction
+to the observer privileged to meet them at close quarters. The average
+observer, however, had little chance of conversing with them, for, as
+these foreigners had no common meeting-place, they kept mostly among
+their own folk. Only now and again did three or four members of
+different races, when they chanced to speak some common language, get
+an opportunity of enjoying their leisure together. A friend of mine, a
+highly gifted Frenchman of the fine old type, a descendant of
+Talleyrand, who was born a hundred and fifty years too late, opened his
+hospitable house once a week to the elite of the world, and partially
+met the pressing demand.
+
+To the gaping tourist the Ville Lumiere resembled nothing so much as a
+huge world fair, with enormous caravanserais, gigantic booths, gaudy
+merry-go-rounds, squalid taverns, and huge inns. Every place of
+entertainment was crowded, and congregations patiently awaited their
+turn in the street, undeterred by rain or wind or snow, offering
+absurdly high prices for scant accommodation and disheartened at having
+their offers refused. Extortion was rampant and profiteering went
+unpunished. Foreigners, mainly American and British, could be seen
+wandering, portmanteau in hand, from post to pillar, anxiously seeking
+where to lay their heads, and made desperate by failure, fatigue, and
+nightfall. The cost of living which harassed the bulk of the people was
+fast becoming the stumbling-block of governments and the most powerful
+lever of revolutionaries. The chief of the peace armies resided in
+sumptuous hotels, furnished luxuriously in dubious taste, flooded after
+sundown with dazzling light, and filled by day with the buzz of idle
+chatter, the shuffling of feet, the banging of doors, and the ringing of
+bells. Music and dancing enlivened the inmates when their day's toil was
+over and time had to be killed. Thus, within, one could find anxious
+deliberation and warm debate; without, noisy revel and vulgar brawl.
+"Fate's a fiddler; life's a dance."
+
+To few of those visitors did Paris seem what it really was--a nest of
+golden dreams, a mist of memories, a seed-plot of hopes, a storehouse of
+time's menaces.
+
+
+THE PARIS CONFERENCE AND THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA
+
+There were no solemn pageants, no impressive ceremonies, such as those
+that rejoiced the hearts of the Viennese in 1814-15 until the triumphal
+march of the Allied troops.
+
+The Vienna of Congress days was transformed into a paradise of delights
+by a brilliant court which pushed hospitality to the point of
+lavishness. In the burg alone were two emperors, two empresses, four
+kings, one queen, two crown-princes, two archduchesses, and three
+princes. Every day the Emperor's table cost fifty thousand gulden--every
+Congress day cost him ten times that sum. Galaxies of Europe's eminent
+personages flocked to the Austrian capital, taking with them their
+ministers, secretaries, favorites, and "confidential agents." So eager
+were these world-reformers to enjoy themselves that the court did not go
+into mourning for Queen Marie Caroline of Naples, the last of Marie
+Theresa's daughters. Her death was not even announced officially lest it
+should trouble the festivities of the jovial peace-makers!
+
+The Paris of the Conference, on the other hand, was democratic, with a
+strong infusion of plutocracy. It attempted no such brilliant display as
+that which flattered the senses or fired the imagination of the
+Viennese. In 1919 mankind was simpler in its tastes and perhaps less
+esthetic. It is certain that the froth of contemporary frivolity had
+lost its sparkling whiteness and was grown turbid. In Vienna, balls,
+banquets, theatricals, military reviews, followed one another in dizzy
+succession and enabled politicians and adventurers to carry on their
+intrigues and machinations unnoticed by all except the secret police.
+And, as the Congress marked the close of one bloody campaign and ushered
+in another, one might aptly term it the interval between two tragedies.
+For a time it seemed as though this part of the likeness might become
+applicable to the Conference of Paris.
+
+Moving from pleasure to politics, one found strong contrasts as well as
+surprising resemblances between the two peace-making assemblies, and, it
+was assumed, to the advantage of the Paris Conference. Thus, at the
+Austrian Congress, the members, while seemingly united, were pulling
+hard against one another, each individual or group tugging in a
+different direction. The Powers had been compelled by necessity to unite
+against a common enemy and, having worsted him on the battlefield, fell
+to squabbling among themselves in the Council Chamber as soon as they
+set about dividing the booty. In this respect the Paris Conference--the
+world was assured in the beginning--towered aloft above its historic
+predecessor. Men who knew the facts declared repeatedly that the
+delegates to the Quai d'Orsay were just as unanimous, disinterested, and
+single-minded during the armistice as they were through the war.
+Probably they were.
+
+Another interesting point of comparison was supplied by the _dramatis
+personae_? of both illustrious companies. They were nearly all
+representatives of old states, but there was one exception.
+
+
+THE CONGRESS CHIEF
+
+_Mistrusted, Feared, Humored, and Obeyed_
+
+A relatively new Power took part in the deliberations of the Vienna
+Congress, and, perhaps, because of its loftier intentions, introduced a
+jarring note into the concert of nations. Russia was then a newcomer
+into the European councils; indeed she was hardly yet recognized as
+European. Her gifted Tsar, Alexander I, was an idealist who wanted, not
+so much peace with the vanquished enemy as a complete reform of the
+ordering of the whole world, so that wars should thenceforward be
+abolished and the welfare of mankind be set developing like a sort of
+pacific _perpetuum mobile_. This blessed change, however, was to be
+compassed, not by the peoples or their representatives, but by the
+governments, led by himself and deliberating in secret. At the Paris
+Conference it was even so.
+
+This curious type of public worker--a mixture of the mystical and the
+practical--was the terror of the Vienna delegates. He put spokes in
+everybody's wheel, behaved as the autocrat of the Congress and felt as
+self-complacent as a saint. Countess von Thurheim wrote of him: "He
+mistrusted his environment and let himself be led by others. But he was
+thoroughly good and high-minded and sought after the weal, not merely of
+his own country, but of the whole world. _Son coeur eut embrasse le
+bonheur du monde_." He realized in himself the dreams of the
+philosophers about love for mankind, but their Utopias of human
+happiness were based upon the perfection both of subjects and of
+princes, and, as Alexander could fulfil only one-half of these
+conditions, his work remained unfinished and the poor Emperor died, a
+victim of his high-minded illusions.[5]
+
+The other personages, Metternich in particular, were greatly put out by
+Alexander's presence. They labeled him a marplot who could not and would
+not enter into the spirit of their game, but they dared not offend him.
+Without his brave troops they could not have been victorious and they
+did not know how soon they might need him again, for he represented a
+numerous and powerful people whose economic and military resources
+promised it in time the hegemony of the world. So, while they heartily
+disliked the chief of this new great country, they also feared and,
+therefore, humored him. They all felt that the enemy, although defeated
+and humbled, was not, perhaps, permanently disabled, and might, at any
+moment, rise, phoenix-like and soar aloft again. The great visionary was
+therefore feted and lauded and raised to a dizzy pedestal by men who, in
+their hearts, set him down as a crank. His words were reverently
+repeated and his smiles recorded and remembered. Hardly any one had the
+bad taste to remark that even this millennial philosopher in the
+statesman's armchair left unsightly flaws in his system for the welfare
+of man. Thus, while favoring equality generally, he obstinately refused
+to concede it to one race, in fact, he would not hear of common fairness
+being meted out to that race. It was the Polish people which was treated
+thus at the Vienna Congress, and, owing to him, Poland's just claims
+were ignored, her indefeasible rights were violated, and the work of the
+peace-makers was botched....
+
+Happily, optimists said, the Paris Conference was organized on a wholly
+different basis. Its members considered themselves mere servants of the
+public--stewards, who had to render an account of their stewardship and
+who therefore went in salutary fear of the electorate at home. This
+check was not felt by the plenipotentiaries in Vienna. Again, everything
+the Paris delegates did was for the benefit of the masses, although most
+of it was done by stealth and unappreciated by them.
+
+The remarkable document which will forever be associated with the name
+of President Wilson was the _clou_ of the Conference. The League of
+Nations scheme seemed destined to change fundamentally the relations of
+peoples toward one another, and the change was expected to begin
+immediately after the Covenant had been voted, signed, and ratified. But
+it was not relished by any government except that of the United States,
+and it was in order to enable the delegates to devise such a wording of
+the Covenant as would not bind them to an obnoxious principle or commit
+their electorates to any irksome sacrifice, that the peace treaty with
+Germany and the liquidation of the war were postponed. This delay caused
+profound dissatisfaction in continental Europe, but it had the
+incidental advantage of bringing home to the victorious nations the
+marvelous recuperative powers of the German race. It also gave time for
+the drafting of a compact so admirably tempered to the human weaknesses
+of the rival signatory nations, whose passions were curbed only by sheer
+exhaustion, that all their spokesmen saw their way to sign it. There was
+something almost genial in the simplicity of the means by which the
+eminent promoter of the Covenant intended to reform the peoples of the
+world. He gave them credit for virtues which would have rendered the
+League unnecessary and displayed indulgence for passions which made its
+speedy realization hopeless, thus affording a _superfluous_ illustration
+of the truth that the one deadly evil to be shunned by those who would
+remain philanthropists is a practical knowledge of men, and of the
+truism that the statesman's bane is an inordinate fondness for abstract
+ideas.
+
+One of the decided triumphs of the Paris Peace Conference over the
+Vienna Congress lay in the amazing speed with which it got through the
+difficult task of solving offhandedly some of the most formidable
+problems that ever exercised the wit of man. One of the Paris journals
+contained the following remarkable announcement: "The actual time
+consumed in constituting the League of Nations, which it is hoped will
+be the means of keeping peace in the world, was thirty hours. This
+doesn't seem possible, but it is true."[6]
+
+How provokingly slowly the dawdlers of Vienna moved in comparison may
+be read in the chronicles of that time. The peoples hoped and believed
+that the Congress would perform its tasks in a short period, but it was
+only after nine months' gestation and sore travail that it finally
+brought forth its offspring--a mountain of Acts which have been
+moldering in dust ever since.
+
+The Wilsonian Covenant, which bound together thirty-two states--a league
+intended to be incomparably more powerful than was the Holy
+Alliance--will take rank as the most rapid improvisation of its kind in
+diplomatic history.
+
+A comparison between the features common to the two international
+legislatures struck many observers as even more reassuring than the
+contrast between their differences. Both were placed in like
+circumstances, faced with bewildering and fateful problems to which an
+exhausting war, just ended, had imparted sharp actuality. One of the
+delegates to the Vienna Congress wrote:
+
+"Everything had to be recast and made new, the destinies of Germany,
+Italy, and Poland settled, a solid groundwork laid for the future, and a
+commercial system to be outlined."[7] Might not those very words have
+been penned at any moment during the Paris Conference with equal
+relevance to its undertakings?
+
+Or these: "However easily and gracefully the fine old French wit might
+turn the topics of the day, people felt vaguely beneath it all that
+these latter times were very far removed from the departed era and, in
+many respects, differed from it to an incomprehensible degree."[8] And
+the veteran Prince de Ligne remarked to the Comte de la Garde: "From
+every side come cries of Peace, Justice, Equilibrium, Indemnity.... Who
+will evolve order from this chaos and set a dam to the stream of
+claims?" How often have the same cries and queries been uttered in
+Paris?
+
+When the first confidential talks began at the Vienna Congress, the same
+difficulties arose as were encountered over a century later in Paris
+about the number of states that were entitled to have representatives
+there. At the outset, the four Cabinet Ministers of Austria, Russia,
+England, and Prussia kept things to themselves, excluding vanquished
+France and the lesser Powers. Some time afterward, however, Talleyrand,
+the spokesman of the worsted nation, accompanied by the Portuguese
+Minister, Labrador, protested vehemently against the form and results of
+the deliberations. At one sitting passion rose to white heat and
+Talleyrand spoke of quitting the Congress altogether, whereupon a
+compromise was struck and eight nations received the right to be
+represented. In this way the Committee of Eight was formed.[9] In Paris
+discussion became to the full as lively, and on the first Saturday, when
+the representatives of Belgium, Greece, Poland, and the other small
+states delivered impassioned speeches against the attitude of the Big
+Five they were maladroitly answered by M. Clemenceau, who relied, as the
+source from which emanated the superior right of the Great Powers, upon
+the twelve million soldiers they had placed in the field. It was
+unfortunate that force should thus confer privileges at a Peace
+Conference which was convoked to end the reign of force and privilege.
+In Vienna it was different, but so were the times.
+
+Many of the entries and comments of the chroniclers of 1815 read like
+extracts from newspapers of the first three months of 1919. "About
+Poland, they are fighting fiercely and, down to the present, with no
+decisive result," writes Count Carl von Nostitz, a Russian military
+observer.... "Concerning Germany and her future federative constitution,
+nothing has yet been done, absolutely nothing."[10] Here is a gloss
+written by Countess Elise von Bernstorff, wife of the Danish Minister:
+"Most comical was the mixture of the very different individuals who all
+fancied they had work to do at the Congress ... One noticed noblemen and
+scholars who had never transacted any business before, but now looked
+extremely consequential and took on an imposing bearing, and professors
+who mentally set down their university chairs in the center of a
+listening Congress, but soon turned peevish and wandered hither and
+thither, complaining that they could not, for the life of them, make out
+what was going on." Again: "It would have been to the interest of all
+Europe--rightly understood--to restore Poland. This matter may be
+regarded as the most important of all. None other could touch so nearly
+the policy of all the Powers represented,"[11] wrote the Bavarian
+Premier, Graf von Montgelas, just as the Entente press was writing in
+the year 1919.
+
+The plenipotentiaries of the Paris Conference had for a short period
+what is termed a good press, and a rigorous censorship which never erred
+on the side of laxity, whereas those of the Vienna Congress were
+criticized without truth. For example, the population of Vienna, we are
+told by Bavaria's chief delegate, was disappointed when it discerned in
+those whom it was wont to worship as demigods, only mortals. "The
+condition of state affairs," writes Von Gentz, one of the clearest heads
+at the Congress, "is weird, but it is not, as formerly, in consequence
+of the crushing weight that is hung around our necks, but by reason of
+the mediocrity and clumsiness of nearly all the workers."[12] One
+consequence of this state of things was the constant upspringing of new
+and unforeseen problems, until, as time went on, the bewildered
+delegates were literally overwhelmed. "So many interests cross each
+other here," comments Count Carl von Nostitz, "which the peoples want to
+have mooted at the long-wished-for League of Nations, that they fall
+into the oddest shapes.... Look wheresoever you will, you are faced with
+incongruity and confusion.... Daily the claims increase as though more
+and more evil spirits were issuing forth from hell at the invocation of
+a sorcerer who has forgotten the spell by which to lay them."[13] It was
+of the Vienna Congress that those words were written.
+
+In certain trivial details, too, the likeness between the two great
+peace assemblies is remarkable. For example, Lord Castlereagh, who
+represented England at Vienna, had to return to London to meet
+Parliament, thus inconveniencing the august assembly, as Mr. Wilson and
+Mr. George were obliged to quit Paris, with a like effect. Before
+Castlereagh left the scene of his labors, uncharitable judgments were
+passed on him for allowing home interests to predominate over his
+international activities.
+
+The destinies of Poland and of Germany, which were then about to become
+a confederation, occupied the forefront of interest at the Congress as
+they did at the Conference. A similarity is noticeable also in the state
+of Europe generally, then and now. "The uncertain condition of all
+Europe," writes a close observer in 1815, "is appalling for the peoples:
+every country has mobilized ... and the luckless inhabitants are crushed
+by taxation. On every side people complain that this state of peace is
+worse than war ... individuals who despised Napoleon say that under him
+the suffering was not greater ... every country is sapping its own
+prosperity, so that financial conditions, in lieu of improving since
+Napoleon's collapse, are deteriorating every where."[14]
+
+In 1815, as in 1919, the world pacifiers had their court painters, and
+Isabey, the French portraitist, was as much run after as was Sir William
+Orpen in 1919. In some respects, however, there was a difference.
+"Isabey," said the Prince de Ligne, "is the Congress become painter.
+Come! His talk is as clever as his brush." But Sir William Orpen was so
+absorbed by his work that he never uttered a word during a sitting. The
+contemporaries of the Paris Conference were luckier than their forebears
+of the Vienna Congress--for they could behold the lifelike features of
+their benefactors in a cinema. "It is understood," wrote a Paris
+journal, "that the necessity of preserving a permanent record of the
+personalities and proceedings at the Peace Conference has not been lost
+sight of. Very shortly a series of cinematographic films of the
+principal delegates and of the commissions is to be made on behalf of
+the British government, so that, side by side with the Treaty of Paris,
+posterity will be able to study the physiognomy of the men who made
+it."[15] In no case is it likely to forget them.
+
+So the great heart of Paris, even to a greater degree than that of
+Vienna over a hundred years ago, beat and throbbed to cosmic measures
+while its brain worked busily at national, provincial, and economic
+questions.
+
+Side by side with the good cheer prevalent that kept the eminent
+lawgivers of the Vienna Congress in buoyant spirits went the cost of
+living, prohibitive outside the charmed circle in consequence of the
+high and rising prices.
+
+"Every article," writes the Comte de la Garde, one of the chroniclers
+of the Vienna Congress, "but more especially fuel, soared to incredible
+heights. The Austrian government found it necessary, in consequence, to
+allow all its officials supplements to their salaries and
+indemnities."[16] In Paris things were worse. Greed and disorganization
+combined to make of the French capital a vast fleecing-machine. The sums
+of money expended by foreigners in France during all that time and a
+much longer period is said to have exceeded the revenue from foreign
+trade. There was hardly any coal, and even the wood fuel gave out now
+and again. Butter was unknown. Wine was bad and terribly dear. A public
+conveyance could not be obtained unless one paid "double, treble, and
+quintuple fares and a gratuity." The demand was great and the supply
+sometimes abundant, but the authorities contrived to keep the two apart
+systematically.
+
+THE COST OF LIVING
+
+In no European country did the cost of living attain the height it
+reached in France in the year 1919. Not only luxuries and comforts, but
+some of life's necessaries, were beyond the reach of home-coming
+soldiers, and this was currently ascribed to the greed of merchants, the
+disorganization of transports, the strikes of workmen, and the
+supineness of the authorities, whose main care was to keep the nation
+tranquil by suppressing one kind of news, spreading another, and giving
+way to demands which could no longer be denied. There was another and
+more effectual cause: the war had deprived the world of twelve million
+workmen and a thousand milliard francs' worth of goods. But of this
+people took no account. The demobilized soldiers who for years had been
+well fed and relieved of solicitude for the morrow returned home,
+flushed with victory, proud of the commanding position which they had
+won in the state, and eager to reap the rewards of their sacrifices. But
+they were bitterly disillusioned. They expected a country fit for heroes
+to live in, and what awaited them was a condition of things to which
+only a defeated people could be asked to resign itself. The food to
+which the poilu had, for nearly five years, been accustomed at the front
+was become, since the armistice, the exclusive monopoly of the
+capitalist or the _nouveau-riche_ in the rear. To obtain a ration of
+sugar he or his wife had to stand in a long queue for hours, perhaps go
+away empty-handed and return on the following morning. When his
+sugar-card was eventually handed to him he had again to stand in line
+outside the grocer's door and, when his turn came to enter it, was
+frequently told that the supply was exhausted and would not be
+replenished for a week or longer. Yet his newspaper informed him that
+there was plenty of colonial sugar, ready for shipment, but forbidden by
+the authorities to be imported into France. I met many poor people from
+the provinces and some resident in Paris who for four years had not once
+eaten a morsel of sugar, although the well-to-do were always amply
+supplied. In many places even bread was lacking, while biscuits,
+shortbread, and fancy cakes, available at exorbitant prices, were
+exhibited in the shop windows. Tokens of unbridled luxury and glaring
+evidences of wanton waste were flaunted daily and hourly in the faces of
+the humbled men who had saved the nation and wanted the nation to
+realize the fact. Lucullan banquets, opulent lunches, all-night dances,
+high revels of an exotic character testified to the peculiar psychic
+temper as well as to the material prosperity of the passive elements of
+the community and stung the poilus to the quick. "But what justice,"
+these asked, "can the living hope for, when the glorious dead are so
+soon forgotten?" For one ghastly detail remains to complete a picture to
+which Boccaccio could hardly have done justice. "While all this wild
+dissipation was going on among the moneyed class in the capital the
+corpses of many gallant soldiers lay unburied and uncovered on the
+shell-plowed fields of battle near Rheims, on the road to
+Neuville-sur-Margival and other places--sights pointed out to visitors
+to tickle their interest in the grim spectacle of war. In vain
+individuals expostulated and the press protested. As recently as May
+persons known to me--my English secretary was one--looked with the
+fascination of horror on the bodies of men who, when they breathed, were
+heroes. They lay there where they had fallen and agonized, and now, in
+the heat of the May sun, were moldering in dust away--a couple of hours'
+motor drive from Paris...."[17]
+
+The soldiers mused and brooded. Since the war began they had undergone a
+great psychic transformation. Stationed at the very center of a
+sustained fiery crisis, they lost their feeling of acquiescence in the
+established order and in the place of their own class therein. In the
+sight of death they had been stirred to their depths and volcanic fires
+were found burning there. Resignation had thereupon made way for a
+rebellious mood and rebellion found sustenance everywhere. The poilu
+demobilized retained his military spirit, nay, he carried about with him
+the very atmosphere of the trenches. He had rid himself of the sentiment
+of fear and the faculty of reverence went with it. His outlook on the
+world had changed completely and his inner sense reversed the social
+order which he beheld, as the eye reverses the object it apprehends.
+Respect for persons and institutions survived in relatively few
+instances the sacredness of life and the fear of death. He was
+impressed, too, with the all-importance of his class, which he had
+learned during the war to look upon as the Atlas on whose shoulders rest
+the Republic and its empire overseas. He had saved the state in war and
+he remained in peace-time its principal mainstay. With his value as
+measured by these priceless services he compared the low estimate put
+upon him by those who continued to identify themselves with the
+state--the over-fed, lazy, self-seeking money-getters who reserved to
+themselves the fruits of his toil.
+
+One can well imagine--I have actually heard--the poilus putting their
+case somewhat as follows: "So long as we filled the gap between the
+death-dealing Teutons and our privileged compatriots we were well fed,
+warmly clad, made much of. During the war we were raised to the rank of
+pillars of the state, saviors of the nation, arbiters of the world's
+destinies. So long as we faced the enemy's guns nothing was too good for
+us. We had meat, white bread, eggs, wine, sugar in plenty. But, now that
+we have accomplished our task, we have fallen from our high estate and
+are expected to become pariahs anew. We are to work on for the old gang
+and the class from which it comes, until they plunge us into another
+war. For what? What is the reward for what we have achieved, what the
+incentive for what we are expected to accomplish? We cannot afford as
+much food as before the war, nor of the same quality. We are in want
+even of necessaries. Is it for this that we have fought? A thousand
+times no. If we saved our nation we can also save our class. We have the
+will and the power. Why should we not exert them?" The purpose of the
+section of the community to which these demobilized soldiers mainly
+belonged grew visibly definite as consciousness of their collective
+force grew and became keener. Occasionally it manifested itself openly
+in symptomatic spurts.
+
+One dismal night, at a brilliant ball in a private mansion, a select
+company of both sexes, representatives of the world of rank and fashion,
+were enjoying themselves to their hearts' content, while their
+chauffeurs watched and waited outside in the cold, dark streets, chewing
+the cud of bitter reflections. Between the hours of three and four in
+the morning the latter held an open-air meeting, and adopted a
+resolution which they carried out forthwith. A delegation was sent
+upstairs to give notice to the light-hearted guests that they must be
+down in their respective motors within ten minutes on pain of not
+finding any conveyances to take them home. The mutineers were nearly all
+private chauffeurs in the employ of the personages to whom they sent
+this indelicate ultimatum. The resourceful host, however, warded off the
+danger and placated the rebellious drivers by inviting them to an
+improvised little banquet of _pates de foie gras_, dry champagne, and
+other delicacies. The general temper of the proletariat remained
+unchanged. Tales of rebellion still more disquieting were current in
+Paris, which, whether true or false, were aids to a correct diagnosis of
+the situation.
+
+A dancing mania broke out during the armistice, which was not confined
+to the French capital. In Berlin, Rome, London, it aroused the
+indignation of those whose sympathy with the spiritual life of their
+respective nations was still a living force. It would seem, however, to
+be the natural reaction produced by a tremendous national calamity,
+under which the mainspring of the collective mind temporarily gives way
+and the psychical equilibrium is upset. Disillusion, despondency, and
+contempt for the passions that lately stirred them drive the people to
+seek relief in the distractions of pleasures, among which dancing is
+perhaps one of the mildest. It was so in Paris at the close of the long
+period of stress which ended with the rise of Napoleon. Dancing then
+went on uninterruptedly despite national calamities and private
+hardships. "Luxury," said Victor Hugo, "is a necessity of great states
+and great civilizations, but there are moments when it must not be
+exhibited to the masses." There was never a conjuncture when the danger
+of such an exhibition was greater or more imminent than during the
+armistice on the Continent--for it was the period of incubation
+preceding the outbreak of the most malignant social disease to which
+civilized communities are subject.
+
+The festivities and amusements in the higher circles of Paris recall the
+glowing descriptions of the fret and fever of existence in the Austrian
+capital during the historic Vienna Congress a hundred years ago. Dancing
+became epidemic and shameless. In some salons the forms it took were
+repellent. One of my friends, the Marquis X., invited to a dance at the
+house of a plutocrat, was so shocked by what he saw there that he left
+almost at once in disgust. Madame Machin, the favorite teacher of the
+choreographic art, gave lessons in the new modes of dancing, and her fee
+was three hundred francs a lesson. In a few weeks she netted, it is
+said, over one hundred thousand francs.
+
+The Prince de Ligne said of the Vienna Congress: "Le Congres danse mais
+il ne marche pas." The French press uttered similar criticisms of the
+Paris Conference, when its delegates were leisurely picking up
+information about the countries whose affairs they were forgathered to
+settle. The following paragraph from a Paris journal--one of many
+such--describes a characteristic scene:
+
+     The domestic staff at the Hotel Majestic, the headquarters of the
+     British Delegation at the Peace Conference, held a very successful
+     dance on Monday evening, attended by many members of the British
+     Mission and Staff. The ballroom was a medley of plenipotentiaries
+     and chambermaids, generals and orderlies, Foreign Office attaches
+     and waitresses. All the latest forms of dancing were to be seen,
+     including the jazz and the hesitation waltz, and, according to the
+     opinion of experts, the dancing reached an unusually high standard
+     of excellence. Major Lloyd George, one of the Prime Minister's
+     sons, was among the dancers. Mr. G.H. Roberts, the Food Controller,
+     made a very happy little speech to the hotel staff.[18]
+
+The following extract is also worth quoting:
+
+     A packed house applauded 'Hullo, Paris!' from the rise of the
+     curtain to the finale at the new Palace Theater (in the rue
+     Mogador), Paris, last night.... President Wilson, Mr. A.J. Balfour,
+     and Lord Derby all remained until the fall of the curtain at 12.15
+     ... and ... were given cordial cheers from the dispersing audience
+     as they passed through the line of Municipal Guards, who presented
+     arms as the distinguished visitors made their way to their
+     motor-cars.[19]
+
+Juxtaposed with the grief, discontent, and physical hardships prevailing
+among large sections of the population which had provided most of the
+holocausts for the Moloch of War, the ostentatious gaiety of the
+prosperous few might well seem a challenge. And so it was construed by
+the sullen lack-alls who prowled about the streets of Paris and told one
+another that their turn would come soon.
+
+When the masses stare at the wealthy with the eyes one so often noticed
+during the eventful days of the armistice one may safely conclude, in
+the words of Victor Hugo, that "it is not thoughts that are harbored by
+those brains; it is events."
+
+By the laboring classes the round of festivities, the theatrical
+representations, the various negro and other foreign dances, and the
+less-refined pleasures of the world's blithest capital were watched with
+ill-concealed resentment. One often witnessed long lines of motor-cars
+driving up to a theater, fashionable restaurant, or concert-hall,
+through the opening portals of which could be caught a glimpse of the
+dazzling illumination within, while, a few yards farther off, queues of
+anemic men and women were waiting to be admitted to the shop where milk
+or eggs or fuel could be had at the relatively low prices fixed by the
+state. The scraps of conversation that reached one's ears were far from
+reassuring.
+
+I have met on the same afternoon the international world-regenerators,
+smiling, self-complacent, or preoccupied, flitting by in their motors to
+the Quai d'Orsay, and also quiet, determined-looking men, trudging along
+in the snow and slush, wending their way toward their labor
+conventicles, where they, too, were drafting laws for a new and strange
+era, and I voluntarily fell to gaging the distance that sundered the two
+movements, and asked myself which of the inchoate legislations would
+ultimately be accepted by the world. The question since then has been
+partially answered. As time passed, the high cost of living was
+universally ascribed, as we saw, to the insatiable greed of the
+middlemen and the sluggishness of the authorities, whose incapacity to
+organize and unwillingness to take responsibility increased and augured
+ill of the future of the country unless men of different type should in
+the meanwhile take the reins. Practically nothing was done to ameliorate
+the carrying power of the railways, to utilize the waterways, to employ
+the countless lorries and motor-vans that were lying unused, to
+purchase, convey, and distribute the provisions which were at the
+disposal of the government. Various ministerial departments would
+dispute as to which should take over consignments of meat or vegetables,
+and while reports, notes, and replies were being leisurely written and
+despatched, weeks or months rolled by, during which the foodstuffs
+became unfit for human consumption. In the middle of May, to take but
+one typical instance, 2,401 eases of lard and 1,418 cases of salt meat
+were left rotting in the docks at Marseilles. In the storage magazines
+at Murumas, 6,000 tons of salt meat were spoiled because it was nobody's
+business to remove and distribute them. Eighteen refrigerator-cars
+loaded with chilled meat arrived in Paris from Havre in the month of
+June. When they were examined at the cold-storage station it was
+discovered that, the doors having been negligently left open, the
+contents of the cases had to be destroyed.[20] From Belgium 108,000
+kilos of potatoes were received and allowed to lie so long at one of the
+stations that they went bad and had to be thrown away. When these and
+kindred facts were published, the authorities, who had long been silent,
+became apologetic, but remained throughout inactive. In other countries
+the conditions, if less accentuated, were similar.
+
+One of the dodges to which unscrupulous dealers resorted with impunity
+and profit was particularly ingenious. At the central markets, whenever
+any food is condemned, the public-health authorities seize it and pay
+the owner full value at the current market rates. The marketmen often
+turned this equitable arrangement to account by keeping back large
+quantities of excellent vegetables, for which the population was
+yearning, and when they rotted and had to be carted away, received their
+money value from the Public Health Department, thus attaining their
+object, which was to lessen the supply and raise the prices on what they
+kept for sale.[21] The consequence was that Paris suffered from a
+continual dearth of vegetables and fruits. Statistics published by the
+United States government showed the maximum increase in the cost of
+living in four countries as follows: France, 235 per cent.; Britain, 135
+per cent.; Canada, 115 per cent.; and the United States, 107 per
+cent.[22] But since these data were published prices continued to rise
+until, at the beginning of July, they had attained the same level as
+those of Russia on the eve of the revolution there. In Paris, Lyons,
+Marseilles, the prices of various kinds of fish, shell-fish, jams,
+apples, had gone up 500 per cent., cabbage over 900 per cent., and
+celeriac 2,000 per cent. Anthracite coal, which in the year 1914 cost 56
+francs a ton, could not be purchased in 1919 for less than 360 francs.
+
+The restaurants and hotels waged a veritable war of plunder on their
+guests, most of whom, besides the scandalous prices, which bore no
+reasonable relation to the cost of production, had to pay the government
+luxury tax of 10 per cent, over and above. A well-known press
+correspondent, who entertained seven friends to a simple dinner in a
+modest restaurant, was charged 500 francs, 90 francs being set down for
+one chicken, and 28 for three cocktails. The _maitre d'hotel_, in
+response to the pressman's expostulations, assured him that these
+charges left the proprietor hardly any profit. As it chanced, however,
+the journalist had just been professionally investigating the cost of
+living, and had the data at his finger-ends. As he displayed his
+intimate knowledge to his host, and obviously knew where to look for
+redress, he had the satisfaction of obtaining a rebate of 150
+francs.[23]
+
+Nothing could well be more illuminating than the following curious
+picture contributed by a journal whose representative made a special
+inquiry into the whole question of the cost of living.[24] "I was dining
+the other day at a restaurant of the Bois de Boulogne. There was a long
+queue of people waiting at the door, some sixty persons all told, mostly
+ladies, who pressed one another closely. From time to time a voice
+cried: 'Two places,' whereupon a door was held opened, two patients
+entered, and then it was loudly slammed, smiting some of those who stood
+next to it. At last my turn came, and I went in. The guests were sitting
+so close to one another that they could not move their elbows. Only the
+hands and fingers were free. There sat women half naked, and men whose
+voices and dress betrayed newly acquired wealth. Not one of them
+questioned the bills which were presented. And what bills! The _hors
+d'oeuvre_, 20 francs. Fish, 90 francs. A chicken, 150 francs. Three
+cigars, 45 francs. The repast came to 250 francs a person at the very
+lowest." Another journalist commented upon this story as follows: "Since
+the end of last June," he said, "445,000 quintals of vegetables, the
+superfluous output of the Palatinate, were offered to France at nominal
+prices. And the cost of vegetables here at home is painfully notorious.
+Well, the deal was accepted by the competent Commission in Paris.
+Everything was ready for despatching the consignment. The necessary
+trains were secured. All that was wanting was the approval of the French
+authorities, who were notified. Their answer has not yet been given and
+already the vegetables are rotting in the magazines."
+
+The authorities pleaded the insufficiency of rolling stock, but the
+press revealed the hollowness of the excuse and the responsibility of
+those who put it forward, and showed that thousands of wagons, lorries,
+and motor-vans were idle, deteriorating in the open air. For instance,
+between Cognac and Jarnac the state railways had left about one
+thousand wagons unused, which were fast becoming unusable.[25] And this
+was but one of many similar instances.
+
+It would be hard to find a parallel in history for the rapacity combined
+with unscrupulousness and ingenuity displayed during that fateful period
+by dishonest individuals, and left unpunished by the state. Doubtless
+France was not the only country in which greed was insatiable and its
+manifestations disastrous. From other parts of the Continent there also
+came bitter complaints of the ruthlessness of profiteers, and in Italy
+their heartless vampirism contributed materially to the revolutionary
+outbreaks throughout that country in July. Even Britain was not exempt
+from the scourge. But the presence of whole armies of well-paid,
+easy-going foreign troops and officials on French soil stimulated greed
+by feeding it, and also their complaints occasionally bared it to the
+world. The impression it left on certain units of the American forces
+was deplorable. When United States soldiers who had long been stationed
+in a French town were transferred to Germany, where charges were low,
+the revulsion of feeling among the straightforward, honest Yankees was
+complete and embarrassing. And by way of keeping it within the bounds of
+political orthodoxy, they were informed that the Germans had conspired
+to hoodwink them by selling at undercost prices, in order to turn them
+against the French. It was an insidious form of German propaganda!
+
+On the other hand, the experience of British and American warriors in
+France sometimes happened to be so unfortunate that many of them gave
+credence to the absurd and mischievous legend that their governments
+were made to pay rent for the trenches in which their troops fought and
+died, and even for the graves in which the slain were buried.
+
+An acquaintance of mine, an American delegate, wanted an abode to
+himself during the Conference, and, having found one suitable for which
+fifteen to twenty-five thousand francs a year were deemed a fair rent,
+he inquired the price, and the proprietor, knowing that he had to do
+with a really wealthy American, answered, "A quarter of a million
+francs." Subsequently the landlord sent to ask whether the distinguished
+visitor would take the place; but the answer he received ran, "No, I
+have too much self-respect."
+
+Hotel prices in Paris, beginning from December, 1918, were prohibitive
+to all but the wealthy. Yet they were raised several times during the
+Conference. Again, despite the high level they had reached by the
+beginning of July, they were actually quintupled in some hotels and
+doubled in many for about a week at the time of the peace celebrations.
+Rents for flats and houses soared proportionately.
+
+One explanation of the fantastic rise in rents is characteristic. During
+the war and the armistice, the government--and not only the French
+government--proclaimed a moratorium, and no rents at all were paid, in
+consequence of which many house-owners were impoverished and others
+actually beggared. And it was with a view to recoup themselves for these
+losses that they fleeced their tenants, French and foreign, as soon as
+the opportunity presented itself. An amusing incident arising out of the
+moratorium came to light in the course of a lawsuit. An ingenious
+tenant, smitten with the passion of greed, not content with occupying
+his flat without paying rent, sublet it at a high figure to a man who
+paid him well and in advance, but by mischance set fire to the place and
+died. Thereupon the _tenant_ demanded and received a considerable sum
+from the insurance company in which the defunct occupant had had to
+insure the flat and its contents. He then entered an action at law
+against the proprietor of the house for the value of the damage caused
+by the fire, and he won his case. The unfortunate owner was condemned to
+pay the sum claimed, and also the costs of the action.[26] But he could
+not recover his rent.
+
+Disorganization throughout France, and particularly in Paris, verged on
+the border of chaos. Every one felt its effects, but none so severely as
+the men who had won the war. The work of demobilization, which began
+soon after the armistice, but was early interrupted, proceeded at
+snail-pace. The homecoming soldiers sent hundreds of letters to the
+newspapers, complaining of the wearisome delays on the journey and the
+sharp privations which they were needlessly forced to endure. Thus,
+whereas they took but twenty-eight hours to travel from Hanover to
+Cologne--the lines being German, and therefore relatively well
+organized--they were no less than a fortnight on the way between Cologne
+and Marseilles.[27] During the German section of the journey they were
+kept warm, supplied with hot soup and coffee twice daily; but during the
+second half, which lasted fourteen days, they received no beverage, hot
+or cold. "The men were cared for much less than horses." That these
+poilus turned against the government and the class responsible for this
+gross neglect was hardly surprising. One of them wrote: "They [the
+authorities] are frightened of Bolshevism. But we who have not got home,
+we all await its coming. I don't, of course, mean the real Bolshevism,
+but even that kind which they paint in such repellent hues."[28] The
+conditions of telegraphic and postal communications were on a par with
+everything else. There was no guarantee that a message paid for would
+even be sent by the telegraph-operators, or, if withheld, that the
+sender would be apprised of its suppression. The war arrangements were
+retained during the armistice. And they were superlatively bad. A
+committee appointed by the Chamber of Deputies to inquire into the
+matter officially, reported that,[29] at the Paris Telegraph Bureau
+alone, 40,000 despatches were held back every day--40,000 a day, or
+58,400,000 in four years! And from the capital alone. The majority of
+them were never delivered, and the others were distributed after great
+delay. The despatches which were retained were, in the main, thrown into
+a basket, and, when the accumulation had become too great, were
+destroyed. The Control Section never made any inquiry, and neither the
+senders nor those to whom the despatches were addressed were ever
+informed.[30] Even important messages of neutral ambassadors in Rome and
+London fell under the ban. The recklessness of these censors, who ceased
+even to read what they destroyed, was such that they held up and made
+away with state orders transmitted by the great munitions factories, and
+one of these was constrained to close down because it was unable to
+obtain certain materials in time.
+
+The French Ambassador in Switzerland reported that, owing to these
+holocausts, important messages from that country, containing orders for
+the French national loan, never reached their destination, in
+consequence of which the French nation lost from ten to twenty million
+francs. And even the letters and telegrams that were actually passed
+were so carelessly handled that many of them were lost on the way or
+delayed until they became meaningless to the addressee. So, for
+instance, an official letter despatched by the Minister of Commerce to
+the Minister of Finance in Paris was sent to Calcutta, where the French
+Consul-General came across it, and had it directed back to Paris. The
+correspondent of the _Echo de Paris_, who was sent to Switzerland by his
+journal, was forbidden by law to carry more than one thousand francs
+over the frontier, nor was the management of the journal permitted to
+forward to him more than two hundred francs at a time. And when a
+telegram was given up in Paris, crediting him with two hundred francs,
+it was stopped by the censor. Eleven days were let go by without
+informing the persons concerned. When the administrator of the journal
+questioned the chief censor, he declined responsibility, having had
+nothing to do with the matter, but he indicated the Central Telegraph
+Control as the competent department. There, too, however, they were
+innocent, having never heard of the suppression. It took another day to
+elicit the fact that the economic section of the War Ministry was alone
+answerable for the decision. The indefatigable manager of the _Echo de
+Paris_ applied to the department in question, but only to learn that it,
+too, was without any knowledge of what had happened, but it promised to
+find out. Soon afterward it informed the zealous manager that the
+department which had given the order could only be the Exchange
+Commission of the Ministry of Finances. And during all the time the
+correspondent was in Zurich without money to pay for telegrams or to
+settle his hotel and restaurant bills.[31]
+
+The Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself, in a report on the whole
+subject, characterized the section of Telegraphic Control as "an organ
+of confusion and disorder which has engendered extraordinary abuses, and
+risked compromising the government seriously."[32] It did not merely
+risk, it actually went far to compromise the government and the entire
+governing class as well.
+
+It looked as though the rulers of France were still unconsciously guided
+by the maxim of Richelieu, who wrote in his testament, "If the peoples
+were too comfortable there would be no keeping them to the rules of
+duty." The more urgent the need of resourcefulness and guidance, the
+greater were the listlessness and confusion. "There is neither unity of
+conduct," wrote a press organ of the masses, "nor co-ordination of the
+Departments of War, Public Works, Revictualing, Transports. All these
+services commingle, overlap, clash, and paralyze one another. There is
+no method. Thus, whereas France has coffee enough to last her a
+twelvemonth, she has not sufficient fuel for a week. Scruples, too, are
+wanting, as are punishments; everywhere there is a speculator who offers
+his purse, and an official, a station-master, or a subaltern to stretch
+out his hand.... Shortsightedness, disorder, waste, the frittering away
+of public moneys and irresponsibility: that is the balance...."[33]
+
+That the spectacle of the country sinking in this administrative
+quagmire was not conducive to the maintenance of confidence in its
+ruling classes can well be imagined. On all sides voices were uplifted,
+not merely against the Cabinet, whose members were assumed to be
+actuated by patriotic motives and guided by their own lights, but
+against the whole class from which they sprang, and not in France only,
+but throughout Europe. Nothing, it was argued, could be worse than what
+these leaders had brought upon the country, and a change from the
+bourgeoisie to the proletariat could not well be inaugurated at a more
+favorable conjuncture.
+
+In truth the bourgeoisie were often as impatient of the restraints and
+abuses as the homecoming poilu. The middle class during the armistice
+was subjected to some of the most galling restraints that only the war
+could justify. They were practically bereft of communications. To use
+the telegraph, the post, the cable, or the telephone was for the most
+part an exhibition of childish faith, which generally ended in the loss
+of time and money.
+
+This state of affairs called for an immediate and drastic remedy, for,
+so long as it persisted, it irritated those whom it condemned to
+avoidable hardship, and their name was legion. It was also part of an
+almost imperceptible revolutionary process similar to that which was
+going on in several other countries for transferring wealth and
+competency from one class to another and for goading into rebellion
+those who had nothing to lose by "violent change in the politico-social
+ordering." The government, whose powers were concentrated in the hands
+of M. Clemenceau, had little time to attend to these grievances. For its
+main business was the re-establishment of peace. What it did not fully
+realize was the gravity of the risks involved. For it was on the cards
+that the utmost it could achieve at the Conference toward the
+restoration of peace might be outweighed and nullified by the
+consequences of what it was leaving undone and unattempted at home. At
+no time during the armistice was any constructive policy elaborated in
+any of the Allied countries. Rhetorical exhortations to keep down
+expenditure marked the high-water level of ministerial endeavor there.
+
+The strikes called by the revolutionary organizations whose aim was the
+subversion of the regime under which those monstrosities flourished at
+last produced an effect on the parliament. One day in July the French
+Chamber left the Cabinet in a minority by proposing the following
+resolution: "The Chamber, noting that the cost of living in Belgium has
+diminished by a half and in England by a fourth since the armistice,
+while it has continually increased in France since that date, judges the
+government's economic policy by the results obtained and passes to the
+order of the day."[34]
+
+Shortly afterward the same Chamber recanted and gave the Cabinet a
+majority. In Great Britain, too, the House of Commons put pressure on
+the government, which at last was forced to act.
+
+On the other hand, extravagance was systematically encouraged everywhere
+by the shortsighted measures which the authorities adopted and
+maintained as well as by the wanton waste promoted or tolerated by the
+incapacity of their representatives. In France the moratorium and
+immunity from taxation gave a fillip to recklessness. People who had
+hoarded their earnings before the war, now that they were dispensed from
+paying rent and relieved of fair taxes, paid out money ungrudgingly for
+luxuries and then struck for higher salaries and wages.
+
+Even the Deputies of the Chamber, which did nothing to mitigate the evil
+complained of, manifested a desire to have their own salaries--six
+hundred pounds a year--augmented proportionately to the increased cost
+of living; but in view of the headstrong current of popular opinion
+against parliamentarism the government deemed it impolitic to raise the
+point at that conjuncture.
+
+Most of the working-men's demands in France as in Britain were granted,
+but the relief they promised was illusory, for prices still went up,
+leaving the recipients of the relief no better off. And as the wages
+payable for labor are limited, whereas prices may ascend to any height,
+the embittered laborer fancied he could better his lot by an appeal to
+the force which his organization wielded. The only complete solution of
+the problem, he was assured, was to be found in the supersession of the
+governing classes and the complete reconstruction of the social fabric
+on wholly new foundations.[35] And some of the leaders rashly declared
+that they were unable to discern the elements of any other.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Cf. _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), March 12,1919.
+
+[2] On December 18, 1918.
+
+[3] "With what little wisdom the world is governed."
+
+[4] "Mr. Bernard Richards, Secretary of the delegation from the American
+Jewish Congress to the Peace Conference, expressed much satisfaction
+with the work done in Paris for the protection of Jewish rights and the
+furtherance of the interests of other minorities involved in the peace
+settlement." (_The New York Herald_, July 20, 1919.) How successful was
+the influence of the Jewish community at the Peace Conference may be
+inferred from the following: "Mr. Henry H. Rosenfelt, Director of the
+American Jewish Relief Committee, announces that all New York agencies
+engaged in Jewish relief work will join in a united drive in New York in
+December to raise $7,500,000 (L1,500,000) to provide clothing, food, and
+medicines for the six million Jews throughout Eastern Europe _as well as
+to make possible a comprehensive programme for their complete
+rehabilitation_.--American Radio News Service." Cf. _The Daily Mail_,
+August 19, 1919.
+
+[5] Countess Lulu von Thurheim, _My Life_, 1788-1852. German edition,
+Munich, 1913-14.
+
+[6] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), February 23, 1919.
+
+[7] Grafen von Montgelas, _Denwuerdigkeiten des bayrischen
+Staatsministers Maximilian._ See also Dr. Karl Soll, _Der Wiener
+Kongress_.
+
+[8] Varnhagen von Ense.
+
+[9] Friedrich von Gentz.
+
+[10] Dr. Karl Soll, _Count Carl von Nostitz_.
+
+[11] Cf. Dr. Karl Soll, _Der Wiener Kongress_.
+
+[12] Dr. Karl Soll, _Friedrich von Gentz_.
+
+[13] Dr. Karl Soll, _Count Carl von Nostitz_, p. 109.
+
+[14] Jean Gabriel Eynard--the representative of Geneva.
+
+[15] _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), March 22, 1919.
+
+[16] Count de la Garde.
+
+[17] Cf. _Le Matin_, May 31, 1919. A noteworthy example of the
+negligence of the authorities was narrated by this journal on the same
+day. To a wooden cross with an inscription recording that the grave was
+tenanted by "an unknown Frenchman" was hung a disk containing his name
+and regiment! And here and there the skulls of heroes protruded from the
+grass, but the German tombs were piously looked after by Boche
+prisoners.
+
+[18] _The Daily Mail_ (Continental edition), March 12, 1919.
+
+[19] _Ibid._, April 23, 1919.
+
+[20] Cf. _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), June 8, 1919.
+
+[21] Cf. _The New York Herald_, June 2, 1919.
+
+[22] Cf. _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), April 20, 1919.
+
+[23] _Le Figaro_, June 8, 1919.
+
+[24] _L'Humanite_, July 10, 1919.
+
+[25] _La Democratie Nouvelle_, June 14, 1919.
+
+[26] _Le Figaro_, March 6, 1919.
+
+[27] _L'Humanite_, May 23, 1919.
+
+[28] _3 Ibid._
+
+[29] _Le Gaulois_, March 23, 1919. _The New York Herald_ (Paris
+edition), March 22, 1919. _L'Echo de Paris_, June 12, 1919.
+
+[30] _The New York Herald_, March 22, 1919.
+
+[31] _L'Echo de Paris_, June 12, 1919.
+
+[32] _The New York Herald_, March 22, 1919.
+
+[33] _L'Humanite_, May 23, 1919.
+
+[34] on July 18, 1919. Cf. _Matin, Echo de Paris, Figaro_, July 10,
+1919.
+
+[35] Cf. _L'Humanite_ (French Syndicalist organ), July 11, 1919.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+SIGNS OF THEIR TIMES
+
+
+Society during the transitional stage through which it has for some
+years been passing underwent an unprecedented change the extent and
+intensity of which are as yet but imperfectly realized. Its more
+striking characteristics were determined by the gradual decomposition of
+empires and kingdoms, the twilight of their gods, the drying up of their
+sources of spiritual energy, and the psychic derangement of communities
+and individuals by a long and fearful war. Political principles, respect
+for authority and tradition, esteem for high moral worth, to say nothing
+of altruism and public spirit, either vanished or shrank to shadowy
+simulacra. In contemporary history currents and cross-currents, eddies
+and whirlpools, became so numerous and bewildering that it is not easy
+to determine the direction of the main stream. Unsocial tendencies
+coexisted with collectivity of effort, both being used as weapons
+against the larger community and each being set down as a manifestation
+of democracy. Against every kind of authority the world, or some of its
+influential sections, was up in revolt, and the emergence of the
+passions and aims of classes and individuals had freer play than ever
+before.
+
+To this consummation conservative governments, and later on their chiefs
+at the Peace Conference, systematically contributed with excellent
+intentions and efficacious measures. They implicitly denied, and acted
+on the denial, that a nation or a race, like an individual, has
+something distinctive, inherent, and enduring that may aptly be termed
+soul or character. They ignored the fact that all nations and races are
+not of the same age nor endowed with like faculties, some being young
+and helpless, others robust and virile, and a third category senescent
+and decrepit, and that there are some races which Nature has wholly and
+permanently unfitted for service among the pioneers of progress. In
+consequence of these views, which I venture to think erroneous, they
+applied the same treatment to all states. Just as President Wilson, by
+striving to impose his pinched conception of democracy and his lofty
+ideas of political morality on Mexico, had thrown that country into
+anarchy, the two Anglo-Saxon governments by enforcing their theories
+about the protection of minorities and other political conceptions in
+various states of Europe helped to loosen the cement of the
+politico-social structure there.
+
+Through these as well as other channels virulent poison penetrated to
+the marrow of the social organism. Language itself, on which all human
+intercourse hinges, was twisted to suit unwholesome ambitions, further
+selfish interests, and obscure the vision of all those who wanted real
+reforms and unvarnished truth. During the war the armies were never told
+plainly what they were struggling for; officially they were said to be
+combating for justice, right, self-determination, the sacredness of
+treaties, and other abstract nouns to which the heroic soldiers never
+gave a thought and which a section of the civil population
+misinterpreted. Indeed, so little were these shibboleths understood even
+by the most intelligent among the politicians who launched them that one
+half of the world still more or less conscientiously labors to establish
+their contraries and is anathematizing the other half for championing
+injustice, might, and unveracity--under various misnomers.
+
+Anglo-Saxondom, taking the lead of humanity, imitated the Catholic
+states of by-past days, and began to impose on other peoples its own
+ideas, as well as its practices and institutions, as the best fitted to
+awaken their dormant energies and contribute to the social
+reconstruction of the world. In the interval, language, whether applied
+to history, journalism, or diplomacy, was perverted and words lost their
+former relations to the things connoted, and solemn promises were
+solemnly broken in the name of truth, right, or equity. For the new era
+of good faith, justice and morality was inaugurated, oddly enough, by a
+general tearing up of obligatory treaties and an ethical violation of
+the most binding compacts known to social man. This happened
+coincidently to be in keeping with the general insurgence against all
+checks and restraints, moral and social, for which the war is mainly
+answerable, and to be also in harmony with the regular supersession of
+right by might which characterizes the present epoch and with the
+disappearance of the sense of law. In a word, under the auspices of the
+amateur world-reformers, the tendency of Bolshevism throve and
+spread--an instructive case of people serving the devil at the bidding
+of God's best friends.
+
+As in the days of the Italian despots, every individual has the chance
+of rising to the highest position in many of the states, irrespective of
+his antecedents and no matter what blots may have tarnished his
+'scutcheon. Neither aristocratic descent, nor public spirit nor even a
+blameless past is now an indispensable condition of advancement. In
+Germany the head of the Republic is an honest saddler. In Austria the
+chief of the government until recently was the assassin of a prime
+minister. The chief of the Ukraine state was an ex-inmate of an asylum.
+Trotzky, one of the Russian duumvirs, is said to have a record which
+might of itself have justified his change of name from Braunstein. Bela
+Kuhn, the Semitic Dictator of Hungary, had the reputation of a thief
+before rising to the height of ruler of the Magyars.... In a word,
+Napoleon's ideal is at last realized, "La carriere est ouverte aux
+talents."
+
+Among the peculiar traits of this evanescent epoch may be mentioned
+inaccessibility to the teaching of facts which run counter to cherished
+prejudices, aims, and interests. People draw from facts which they
+cannot dispute only the inferences which they desire. An amusing
+instance of this occurred in Paris, where a Syndicalist organ[36]
+published an interesting and on the whole truthful account of the
+chaotic confusion, misery, and discontent prevailing in Russia and of
+the brutal violence and foxy wiles of Lenin. The dreary picture included
+the cost of living; the disorganization of transports; the terrible
+mortality caused by the after-effects of the war; the crowding of
+prisons, theaters, cinemas, and dancing-saloons; the eagerness of
+employers to keep their war prisoners employed while thousands of
+demobilized soldiers were roaming about the cities and villages vainly
+looking for work; the absence of personal liberty; the numerous arrests,
+and the relative popularity withal of the Dictator. This popularity, it
+was explained, the press contributed to keep alive, especially since the
+abortive attempt made on his life, when the journals declared that he
+was indispensable for the time being to his country.
+
+He himself was described as a hard despot, ruthless as a tiger who
+strikes his fellow-workers numb and dumb with fear. "But he is under no
+illusions as to the real sentiments of the members of the Soviet who
+back him, nor does he deign to conceal those which he entertains toward
+them.... Whenever Lenin himself is concerned justice is expeditious.
+Some men will be delivered from prison after many years of preventive
+confinement without having been brought to trial, others who fired on
+Kerensky will be kept untried for an indefinite period, whereas the
+brave Russian patriot who aimed his revolver at Lenin, and whom the
+French press so justly applauded, had only three weeks to wait for his
+condemnation to death."
+
+This article appearing in a Syndicalist organ seemed an event. Some
+journals summarized and commented it approvingly, until it was
+discovered to be a skit on the transient conditions in France, whereupon
+the "admirable _expose_ based upon convincing evidence" and the
+"forcible arguments" became worthless.[37]
+
+An object-lesson in the difficulty of legislating in Anglo-Saxon fashion
+for foreign countries and comprehending their psychology was furnished
+by two political trials which, taking place in Paris during the
+Conference, enabled the delegates to estimate the distance that
+separates the Anglo-Saxon from the Continental mode of thought and
+action in such a fundamental problem as the administration of justice.
+Raoul Villain, the murderer of Jean Jaures--France's most eminent
+statesman--was kept in prison for nearly five years without a trial. He
+had assassinated his victim in cold blood. He had confessed and
+justified the act. The eye-witnesses all agreed as to the facts. Before
+the court, however, a long procession of ministers of state,
+politicians, historians, and professors defiled, narrating in detail the
+life-story, opinions, and strivings of the victim, who, in the eyes of a
+stranger, unacquainted with its methods, might have seemed to be the
+real culprit. The jury acquitted the prisoner.
+
+The other accused man was a flighty youth who had fired on the French
+Premier and wounded him. He, however, had not long to wait for his
+trial. He was taken before the tribunal within three weeks of his arrest
+and was promptly condemned to die.[38] Thus the assassin was justified
+by the jury and the would-be assassin condemned to be shot. "Suppose
+these trials had taken place in my country," remarked a delegate of an
+Eastern state, "and that of the two condemned men one had been a member
+of the privileged minority, what an uproar the incident would have
+created in the United States and England! As it happened in western
+Europe, it passed muster."
+
+How far removed some continental nations are from the Anglo-Saxons in
+their mode of contemplating and treating another momentous category of
+social problems may be seen from the circumstance that the Great Council
+in Basel adopted a bill brought in by the Socialist Welti, authorizing
+the practice of abortion down to the third month, provided that the
+husband and wife are agreed, and in cases where there is no marriage
+provided it is the desire of the woman and that the operation is
+performed by a regular physician.[39]
+
+Another striking instance of the difference of conceptions between the
+Anglo-Saxon and continental peoples is contained in the following
+unsavory document, which the historian, whose business it is to flash
+the light of criticism upon the dark nooks of civilization, can neither
+ignore nor render into English. It embodies a significant decision taken
+by the General Staff of the 256th Brigade of the Army of Occupation[40]
+and was issued on June 21, 1919.[41]
+
+
+
+
+     SIGNS OF THE TIMES
+
+     EXPLOITATION ET POLICE DE LA MAISON PUBLIQUE DE MUeNCHEN-GLADBACH
+
+     (1.) Les deux femmes composant l'unique personnel de la maison
+     publique de Gladbach (2, Gasthausstrasse), sont venues en
+     delegation declarer qu'elles ne pouvaient suffire a la nombreuse
+     clientele, qui envahit leur maison, devant laquelle stationneraient
+     en permanence de nombreux groupes de clients affames.
+
+     Elles declarent que defalcation faite du service qu'elles doivent
+     assurer a leurs abonnes belges et allemands, elles ne peuvent
+     fournir a la division qu'un total de vingt entrees par jour (10
+     pour chacune d'elle).
+
+     L'etablissement d'ailleurs ne travaille pas la nuit et observe
+     strictement le repos dominical. D'autre part les ressources de la
+     ville ne permettent pas, parait-il, d'augmenter le personnel. Dans
+     ces conditions, en vue d'eviter tout desordre et de ne pas demander
+     a ces femmes un travail audessus de leurs forces, les mesures
+     suivantes seront prises:
+
+     (2.) JOURS DE TRAVAIL: Tous les jours de la semaine, sauf le
+     dimanche.
+
+     RENDEMENT MAXIMUM: Chaque jour chaque femme recoit 10 hommes, soit
+     20 pour les deux personnes, 120 par semaine.
+
+     HEURES D'OUVERTURE: 17 heures a 21 heures. Aucune reception n'aura
+     lieu en dehors de ces heures.
+
+     TARIF: Pour un sejour d'un quart heure (entree et sortie de
+     l'etablissement comprises) ... 5 marks.
+
+     CONSOMMATIONS: La maison ne vend aucune boisson. Il n'y a pas de
+     salle d'attente. Les clients doivent donc se presenter par deux.
+
+     (3.) REPARTITION: Les 6 jours de la semaine sont donnes: Le
+     lundi--1er bat. du 164 et C.H.R. Le mardi--1er bat. du 169 et
+     C.H.R. Le mercredi--2e bat. du 164 et C.H.R. Le jeudi--2e bat. du
+     169 et C.H.R. Le vendredi--3e bat. du 164. Le samedi--3e bat. du
+     169.
+
+     (4.) Dans chaque bataillon il sera etabli le jour qui leur est
+     fixe, 20 tickets deposes aux bureaux des sergents-majeur a raison
+     de 5 par compagnie. Les hommes desireux de rendre visite a
+     l'etablissement reclamerout au bureau de leur sergent-majeur, 1
+     ticket qui leur donnera driot de priorite.
+
+
+The value of that document derives from its having been issued as an
+ordinary regulation, from its having been reproduced in a widely
+circulated journal of the capital without evolving comment, and from the
+strong light which it projects upon one of the darkest corners of the
+civilization which has been so often and so eloquently eulogized.
+
+Manifestly the currents of the new moral life which the Conference was
+to have set flowing are as yet somewhat weak, the new ideals are still
+remote and the foreshadowings of a nobler future are faint. Another
+token of the change which is going forward in the world was reported
+from the Far East, but passed almost unnoticed in Europe. The Chinese
+Ministry of Public Instruction, by an edict of November 3, 1919,
+officially introduced in all secondary schools a phonetic system of
+writing in place of the ideograms theretofore employed. This is
+undoubtedly an event of the highest importance in the history of
+culture, little though it may interest the Western world to-day. At the
+same time, as a philologist by profession, I agree with a continental
+authority[42] who holds that, owing to the monosyllabic character of the
+Chinese language and to the further disadvantage that it lacks wholly or
+partly several consonants,[43] it will be practically impossible, as the
+Japanese have already found, to apply the new alphabet to the
+traditional literary idiom. Neither can it be employed for the needs of
+education, journalism, of the administration, or for telegraphing. It
+will, however, be of great value for elementary instruction and for
+postal correspondence. It is also certain to develop and extend. But its
+main significance is twofold: as a sign of China's awakening and as an
+innovation, the certain effect of which will be to weaken national unity
+and extend regionalism at its expense. From this point of view the
+reform is portentous.
+
+Another of the signs of the new times which calls for mention is the
+spread and militancy of the labor movement, to which the war and its
+concomitants gave a potent impulse. It is differentiated from all
+previous ferments by this, that it constitutes merely an episode in the
+universal insurgency of the masses, who are fast breaking through the
+thin social crust formed by the upper classes and are emerging rapidly
+above the surface. One of the most impressive illustrations of this
+general phenomenon is the rise of wages, which in Paris has set the
+municipal street-sweepers above university professors, the former
+receiving from 7,600 to 8,000 francs a year, whereas the salary of the
+latter is some 500 francs less.[44]
+
+This general disturbance is the outcome of many causes, among which are
+the over-population of the world, the spread of education and of equal
+opportunity, the anonymity of industrial enterprises, scientific and
+unscientific theories, the specialization of labor and its depressing
+influence.[45] These factors produced a labor organization which the
+railways, newspapers, and telegraph contributed to perfect and transform
+into a proletarian league, and now all progressive humanity is tending
+steadily and painfully to become one vast collectivity for producing and
+sharing on more equitable lines the means of living decently. This
+consummation is coming about with the fatality of a natural law, and the
+utmost the wisest of governments can do is to direct it through pacific
+channels and dislodge artificial obstacles in its course.
+
+One of the first reforms toward which labor is tending with more or
+less conscious effort is the abolition of the hereditary principle in
+the possession of wealth and influence and of the means of obtaining
+them. The division of labor in the past caused the dissociation of the
+so-called nobler avocations from manual work, and gradually those who
+followed higher pursuits grew into a sort of hereditary caste which
+bestowed relative immunity from the worst hardships of life's struggle
+and formed a ruling class. To-day the masses have their hands on the
+principal levers for shattering this top crust of the social sphere and
+seem resolved to press them.
+
+The problem for the solution of which they now menacingly clamor is the
+establishment of an approximately equitable principle for the
+redistribution of the world's resources--land, capital, industries,
+monopolies, mines, transports, and colonies. Whether
+socialization--their favorite prescription--is the most effectual way of
+achieving this object may well be doubted, but must be thoroughly
+examined and discussed. The end once achieved, it is expected that
+mankind will have become one gigantic living entity, endowed with
+senses, nerves, heart, arteries, and all the organs necessary to operate
+and employ the forces and wealth of the planet. The process will be
+complex because the factors are numerous and of various orders, and for
+this reason few political thinkers have realized that its many phases
+are aspects of one phenomenon. That is also a partial explanation of the
+circumstance that at the Conference the political questions were
+separated from the economic and treated by politicians as paramount, the
+others being relegated to the background. The labor legislation passed
+in Paris reduced itself, therefore, to counsels of perfection.
+
+That the Conference was incapable of solving a problem of this magnitude
+is self-evident. But the delegates could and should have referred it to
+an international parliament, fully representative of all the interests
+concerned. For the best way of distributing the necessaries and comforts
+of life, which have been acquired or created by manual toil, is a
+problem that can neither be ignored nor reasoned away. So long as it
+remains a problem it will be a source of intermittent trouble and
+disorder throughout the civilized world. The titles, which the classes
+heretofore privileged could invoke in favor of possession, are now being
+rapidly acquired by the workers, who in addition dispose of the force
+conferred by organization, numbers, and resolve. At the same time most
+of the stimuli and inventives to individual enterprise are being
+gradually weakened by legislation, which it would be absurd to condemn
+and dangerous to regard as a settlement. In the meanwhile productivity
+is falling off, while the demand for the products of labor is growing
+proportionately to the increase of population and culture.
+
+Hitherto the laws of distribution were framed by the strong, who were
+few and utilized the many. To-day their relative positions have shifted;
+the many have waxed strong and are no longer minded to serve as
+instruments in the hands of a class, hereditary or selected. But the
+division of mankind into producers and utilizers has ever been the solid
+and durable mainstay of that type of civilization from which progressive
+nations are now fast moving away, and the laws and usages against which
+the proletariat is up in arms are but its organic expression.
+
+From the days of the building of the Pyramids down to those of the
+digging of the Panama Canal the chasm between the two social orders
+remained open. The abolition of slavery changed but little in the
+arrangement--was, indeed, effected more in the interests of the old
+economics than in deference to any strong religious or moral sentiment.
+In substance the traditional ordering continued to exist in a form
+better adapted to the modified conditions. But the filling up of that
+chasm, which is now going forward, involves the overthrow of the system
+in its entirety, and the necessity of either rearing a wholly new
+structure, of which even the keen-sighted are unable to discern the
+outlines, or else the restoration of the old one on a somewhat different
+basis. And the only basis conceivable to-day is that which would start
+from the postulate that some races of men come into the world devoid of
+the capacity for any more useful part in the progress of mankind than
+that which was heretofore allotted to the proletariat. It cannot be
+gainsaid that there are races on the globe which are incapable of
+assimilating the higher forms of civilization, but which might well be
+made to render valuable services in the lower without either suffering
+injustice themselves or demoralizing others. And it seems nowise
+impossible that one day these reserves may be mobilized and
+systematically employed in virtue of the principle that the weal of the
+great progressive community necessitates such a distribution of parts as
+will set each organ to perform the functions for which it is best
+qualified.
+
+Since the close of the war internationalism was in the air, and the
+labor movement intensified it. It stirred the thought and warmed the
+imagination alike of exploiters and exploited. Reformers and pacifists
+yearned for it as a means of establishing a well-knit society of
+progressive and pacific peoples and setting a term to sanguinary wars.
+Some financiers may have longed for it in a spirit analogous to that in
+which Nero wished that the Roman people had but one neck. And the
+Conference chiefs seemed to have pictured it to themselves--if, indeed,
+they meditated such an abstract matter--in the guise of a _pax
+Anglo-Saxonica_, the distinctive feature of which would lie in the
+transfer to the two principal peoples--and not to a board representing
+all nations--of those attributes of sovereignty which the other states
+would be constrained to give up. Of these three currents flowing in the
+direction of internationalism only one--that of finance--appears for the
+moment likely to reach its goal....
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[36] _L'Humanite,_ March 6 and 18, 1919.
+
+[37] Cf. _L'Humanite_, April 10,1919.
+
+[38] The sentence was subsequently commuted.
+
+[39] _La Gazette de Lausanne_, May 26, 1919.
+
+[40] 128th Division.
+
+[41] It was reproduced by the French Syndicalist organ, _L'Humanite_ of
+July 7, 1919.
+
+[42] R. de Saussure. Cf. _Journal de Geneve_, August 18, and also May
+26, 1919.
+
+[43] d, r, t, l, g (partly) and p, except at the beginning of a word.
+
+[44] Cf. the French papers generally for the month of May--also
+_Bonsoir_, July 26, 1919.
+
+[45] Walther Rathenau has dealt with this question in several of his
+recent pamphlets, which are not before me at the moment.
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE DELEGATES
+
+
+The plenipotentiaries, who became the world's arbiters for a while, were
+truly representative men. But they mirrored forth not so much the souls
+of their respective peoples as the surface spirit that flitted over an
+evanescent epoch. They stood for national grandeur, territorial
+expansion, party interests, and even abstract ideas. Exponents of a
+narrow section of the old order at its lowest ebb, they were in no sense
+heralds of the new. Amid a labyrinth of ruins they had no clue to guide
+their footsteps, in which the peoples of the world were told to follow.
+Only true political vision, breadth of judgment, thorough mastery of the
+elements of the situation, an instinct for discerning central issues,
+genuine concern for high principles of governance, and the rare moral
+courage that disregards popularity as a mainspring of action--could have
+fitted any set of legislators to tackle the complex and thorny problems
+that pressed for settlement and to effect the necessary preliminary
+changes. That the delegates of the principal Powers were devoid of many
+of these qualities cannot fairly be made a subject of reproach. It was
+merely an accident. But it was as unfortunate as their honest conviction
+that they could accomplish the grandiose enterprise of remodeling the
+communities of the world without becoming conversant with their
+interests, acquainted with their needs, or even aware of their
+whereabouts. For their failure, which was inevitable, was also bound to
+be tragic, inasmuch as it must involve, not merely their own ambition to
+live in history as the makers of a new and regenerate era, but also the
+destinies of the nations and races which confidently looked up to them
+for the conditions of future pacific progress, nay, of normal existence.
+
+During the Conference it was the fashion in most European countries to
+question the motives as well as to belittle the qualifications of the
+delegates. Now that political passion has somewhat abated and the
+atmosphere is becoming lighter and clearer, one may without provoking
+contradiction pay a well-deserved tribute to their sincerity, high
+purpose, and quick response to the calls of public duty and moral
+sentiment. They were animated with the best intentions, not only for
+their respective countries, but for humanity as a whole. One and all
+they burned with the desire to go as far as feasible toward ending the
+era of destructive wars. Steady, uninterrupted, pacific development was
+their common ideal, and they were prepared to give up all that they
+reasonably could to achieve it. It is my belief, for example, that if
+Mr. Wilson had persisted in making his League project the cornerstone of
+the new world structure and in applying his principles without favor,
+the Italians would have accepted it almost without discussion, and the
+other states would have followed their example. All the delegates must
+have felt that the old order of things, having been shaken to pieces by
+the war and its concomitants, could not possibly survive, and they
+naturally desired to keep within evolutionary bounds the process of
+transition to the new system, thus accomplishing by policy what
+revolution would fain accomplish by violence. It was only when they came
+to define that policy with a view to its application that their
+unanimity was broken up and they split into two camps, the pacifists and
+the militarists, or the democrats and imperialists, as they have been
+roughly labeled. Here, too, each member of the assembly worked with
+commendable single-mindedness, and under a sense of high responsibility,
+for that solution of the problem which to him seemed the most conducive
+to the general weal. And they wrestled heroically one with the other for
+what they held to be right and true relatively to the prevalent
+conditions. The circumstance that the cause and effects of this clash of
+opinions and sentiments were so widely at variance with early
+anticipations had its roots partly in their limited survey of the
+complex problem, and partly, too, in its overwhelming vastness and their
+own unfitness to cope with it.
+
+The delegates who aimed at disarmament and a society of pacific peoples
+made out as good a case--once their premises were admitted--as those who
+insisted upon guarantees, economic and territorial. Everything depended,
+for the theory adopted, upon each individual's breadth of view, and for
+its realization upon the temper of the peoples and that of their
+neighbors. As under the given circumstances either solution was sure to
+encounter formidable opposition, which only a doughty spirit would dare
+to affront, compromise, offering a side-exit out of the quandary, was
+avidly taken. In this way the collective sagacities, working in
+materials the nature of which they hardly understood, brought forth
+strange products. Some of the incongruities of the details, such, for
+instance, as the invitation to Prinkipo, despatched anonymously,
+occasionally surpass satire, but their bewildered authors are entitled
+to the benefit of extenuating circumstances.
+
+On the momentous issue of a permanent peace based on Mr. Wilson's
+pristine concept of a league of nations, and in accordance with rigid
+principles applied equally to all the states, there was no discussion.
+In other words, it was tacitly agreed that the fourteen points should
+not form a bar to the vital postulates of any of the Great Powers. It
+was only on the subject of the lesser states and the equality of nations
+that the debates were intense, protracted, and for a long while
+fruitless. At times words flamed perilously high. For months the
+solutions of the Adriatic, the Austrian, Turkish, and Thracian problems
+hung in poignant suspense, the public looking on with diminishing
+interest and waxing dissatisfaction. The usual optimistic assurances
+that all would soon run smoothly and swiftly fell upon deaf ears. Faith
+in the Conference was melting away.
+
+The plight of the Supreme Council and the vain exhortations to believe
+in its efficiency reminded me of the following story.
+
+A French parish priest was once spiritually comforting a member of his
+flock who was tormented by doubts about the goodness of God as measured
+by the imperfection of His creation. Having listened to a vivid account
+of the troubled soul's high expectation of its Maker and of its deep
+disappointment at His work, the pious old cure said: "Yes, my child. The
+world is indeed bad, as you say, and you are right to deplore it. But
+don't you think you may have formed to yourself an exaggerated idea of
+God?" An analogous reflection would not be out of place when passing
+judgment on the Conference which implicitly arrogated to itself some of
+the highest attributes of the Deity, and thus heightened the contrast
+between promise and achievement. Certainly people expected much more
+from it than it could possibly give. But it was the delegates themselves
+who had aroused these expectations announcing the coming of a new epoch
+at their fiat. The peoples were publicly told by Mr. Lloyd George and
+several of his colleagues that the war of 1914-18 would be the last. His
+"Never again" became a winged phrase, and the more buoyant optimists
+expected to see over the palace of arbitration which was to be
+substituted for the battlefield, the inspiring inscription: "A la
+derniere des guerres, l'humanite reconnaissante."[46] Mr. Wilson's vast
+project was still more attractive.
+
+Mr. Lloyd George is too well known in his capacity of British
+parliamentarian to need to be characterized. The splendid services he
+rendered the Empire during the war, when even his defects proved
+occasionally helpful, will never be forgotten. Typifying not only the
+aims, but also the methods, of the British people, he never seems to
+distrust his own counsels whencesoever they spring nor to lack the
+courage to change them in a twinkling. He stirred the soul of the nation
+in its darkest hour and communicated his own glowing faith in its star.
+During the vicissitudes of the world struggle he was the right man for
+the responsible post which he occupied, and I am proud of having been
+one of the first to work in my own modest way to have him placed there.
+But a good war-leader may be a poor peace-negotiator, and, as a matter
+of fact, there are few tasks concerned with the welfare of the nation
+which Mr. Lloyd George could not have tackled with incomparably greater
+chances of accomplishing it than that of remodeling the world. His
+antecedents were all against him. His lack of general equipment was
+prohibitive; even his inborn gifts were disqualifications. One need not
+pay too great heed to acrimonious colleagues who set him down as a
+word-weaving trimmer, between whose utterances and thoughts there is no
+organic nexus, who declines to take the initiative unless he sees
+adequate forces behind him ready to his to his support, who lacks the
+moral courage that serves as a parachute for a fall from popularity,
+but possesses in abundance that of taking at the flood the rising tide
+which balloon-like lifts its possessor high above his fellows. But
+judging him in the light of the historic events in which he played a
+prominent part, one cannot dismiss these criticisms as groundless.
+
+Opportunism is an essential element of statecraft, which is the art of
+the possible. But there is a line beyond which it becomes shiftiness,
+and it would be rash to assert that Mr. Lloyd George is careful to keep
+on the right side of it. At the Conference his conduct appeared to
+careful observers to be traced mainly by outside influences, and as
+these were various and changing the result was a zigzag. One day he
+would lay down a certain proposition as a dogma not to be modified, and
+before the week was out he would advance the contrary proposition and
+maintain that with equal warmth and doubtless with equal conviction.
+Guided by no sound knowledge and devoid of the ballast of principle, he
+was tossed and driven hither and thither like a wreck on the ocean. Mr.
+Melville Stone, the veteran American journalist, gave his countrymen his
+impression of the first British delegate. "Mr. Lloyd George," he said,
+"has a very keen sense of humor and a great power over the multitude,
+but with this he displays a startling indifference to, if not ignorance
+of, the larger affairs of nations." In the course of a walk Mr. Lloyd
+George expressed surprise when informed that in the United States the
+war-making power was invested in Congress. "What!" exclaimed the
+Premier, "you mean to tell me that the President of the United States
+cannot declare war? I never heard that before." Later, when questions of
+national ambitions were being discussed, Mr. Lloyd George asked, "What
+is that place Rumania is so anxious to get?" meaning Transylvania.[47]
+
+The stories current of his praiseworthy curiosity about the places
+which he was busy distributing to the peoples whose destinies he was
+forging would be highly amusing if the subject were only a private
+individual and his motive a desire for useful information, but on the
+representative of a great Empire they shed a light in which the dignity
+of his country was necessarily affected and his own authority deplorably
+diminished. For moral authority at that conjuncture was the sheet anchor
+of the principal delegates. Although without a program, Mr. Lloyd George
+would appear to have had an instinctive feeling, if not a reasoned
+belief, that in matters of general policy his safest course would be to
+keep pace with the President of the United States. For he took it for
+granted that Mr. Wilson's views were identical with those of the
+American people. One of his colleagues, endeavoring to dispel this
+illusion, said: "Your province at this Conference is to lead. Your
+colleagues, including Mr. Wilson, will follow. You have the Empire
+behind you. Voice its aspirations. They coincide with those of the
+English-speaking peoples of the world. Mr. Wilson has lost his
+elections, therefore he does not stand for as much as you imagine. You
+have won your elections, so you are the spokesman of a vast community
+and the champion of a noble cause. You can knead the Conference at your
+will. Assert your will. But even if you decide to act in harmony with
+the United States, that does not mean subordinating British interests to
+the President's views, which are not those of the majority of his
+people." But Mr. Lloyd George, invincibly diffident--if diffidence it
+be--shrank from marching alone, and on certain questions which mattered
+much Mr. Wilson had his way.
+
+One day there was an animated discussion in the twilight of the Paris
+conclave while the press was belauding the plenipotentiaries for their
+touching unanimity. The debate lay between the United States as voiced
+by Mr. Wilson and Great Britain as represented by Mr. Lloyd George. On
+the morrow, before the conversation was renewed, a colleague adjured the
+British Premier to stand firm, urging that his contention of the
+previous day was just in the abstract and beneficial to the Empire as
+well. Mr. Lloyd George bowed to the force of these motives, but yielded
+to the greater force of Mr. Wilson's resolve. "Put it to the test,"
+urged the colleague. "I dare not," was the rejoinder. "Wilson won't
+brook it. Already he threatens, if we do, to leave the Conference and
+return home." "Well then, let him. If he did, we should be none the
+worse off for his absence. But rest assured, he won't go. He cannot
+afford to return home empty-handed after his splendid promises to his
+countrymen and the world." Mr. Lloyd George insisted, however, and said,
+"But he will take his army away, too." "What!" exclaimed the tempter.
+"His army? Well, I only ..." but it would serve no useful purpose to
+quote the vigorous answer in full.
+
+This odd mixture of exaggerated self-confidence, mismeasurement of
+forces, and pliability to external influences could not but be baleful
+in one of the leaders of an assembly composed, as was the Paris
+Conference, of men each with his own particular ax to grind and
+impressible only to high moral authority or overwhelming military force.
+It cannot be gainsaid that no one, not even his own familiars, could
+ever foresee the next move in Mr. Lloyd George's game of statecraft, and
+it is demonstrable that on several occasions he himself was so little
+aware of what he would do next that he actually advocated as
+indispensable measures diametrically opposed to those which he was to
+propound, defend, and carry a week or two later. A conversation which
+took place between him and one of his fellow-workers gives one the
+measure of his irresolution and fitfulness. "Do tell me," said this
+collaborator, "why it is that you members of the Supreme Council are
+hurriedly changing to-day the decisions you came to after five months'
+study, which you say was time well spent?"
+
+"Because of fresh information we have received in the meanwhile. We know
+more now than we knew then and the different data necessitate different
+treatment."
+
+"Yes, but the conditions have not changed since the Conference opened.
+Surely they were the same in January as they are in June. Is not that
+so?"
+
+"No doubt, no doubt, but we did not ascertain them before June, so we
+could not act upon them until now."
+
+With the leading delegates thus drifting and the pieces on the political
+chessboard bewilderingly disposed, outsiders came to look upon the
+Conference as a lottery. Unhappily, it was a lottery in which there were
+no mere blanks, but only prizes or heavy forfeits.
+
+To sum up: the first British delegate, essentially a man of expedients
+and shifts, was incapable of measuring more than an arc of the political
+circle at a time. A comprehensive survey of a complicated situation was
+beyond his reach. He relied upon imagination and intuition as
+substitutes for precise knowledge and technical skill. Hence he himself
+could never be sure that his decision, however carefully worked out,
+would be final, seeing that in June facts might come to his cognizance
+with which five months' investigations had left him unacquainted. This
+incertitude about the elements of the problem intensified the ingrained
+hesitancy that had characterized his entire public career and warped his
+judgment effectually. The only approach to a guiding principle one can
+find in his work at the Conference was the loosely held maxim that Great
+Britain's best policy was to stand in with the United States in all
+momentous issues and to identify Mr. Wilson with the United States for
+most purposes of the Congress. Within these limits Mr. Lloyd George was
+unyielding in fidelity to the cause of France, with which he merged that
+of civilization.
+
+M. Clemenceau is the incarnation of the tireless spirit of destruction.
+Pulling down has ever been his delight, and it is largely to his success
+in demolishing the defective work of rivals--and all human work is
+defective--that he owes the position of trust and responsibility to
+which the Parliament raised him during the last phase of the war.
+Physically strong, despite his advanced age, he is mentally brilliant
+and superficial, with a bias for paradox, epigram, and racy,
+unconventional phraseology. His action is impulsive. In the Dreyfus days
+I saw a good deal of M. Clemenceau in his editorial office, when he
+would unburden his soul to M.M. Vaughan, the poet Quillard, and others.
+Later on I approached him while he was chief of the government on a
+delicate matter of international combined with national politics, on
+which I had been requested to sound him by a friendly government, and I
+found him, despite his developed and sobering sense of responsibility,
+whimsical, impulsive, and credulous as before. When I next talked with
+him he was the rebellious editor of _L'Homme Enchaine_, whose corrosive
+strictures upon the government of the day were the terror of Ministers
+and censors. Soon afterward he himself became the wielder of the great
+national gagging-machine, and in the stringency with which he
+manipulated it he is said by his own countrymen to have outdone the
+government of the Third Empire. His _alter ego_, Georges Mandel, is
+endowed with qualities which supplement and correct those of his
+venerable chief. His grasp of detail is comprehensive and firm, his
+memory retentive, and his judgment bold and deliberate. A striking
+illustration of the audacity of his resolve was given in the early part
+of 1918. Marshal Joffre sent a telegram to President Wilson in
+Washington, and because he had omitted to despatch it through the War
+Ministry, M. Mandel, who is a strict disciplinarian, proposed that he be
+placed under arrest. It was with difficulty that some public men moved
+him to leniency.
+
+M. Clemenceau, the professional destroyer, who can boast that he
+overthrew eighteen Cabinets, or nineteen if we include his own, was
+unquestionably the right man to carry on the war. He acquitted himself
+of the task superbly. His faith in the Allies' victory was unwavering.
+He never doubted, never flagged, never was intimidated by obstacles nor
+wheedled by persons. Once during the armistice, in May or June, when
+Marshal Foch expressed his displeasure that the Premier should have
+issued military orders to troops under his command[48] without first
+consulting him, he was on the point of dismissing the Marshal and
+appointing General Petain to succeed him.[49] Whether the qualities
+which stood him in such good stead during the world struggle could be of
+equal, or indeed of much, avail in the general constructive work for
+which the Conference was assembled is a question that needs only to be
+formulated. But in securing every advantage that could be conferred on
+his own country his influence on the delegates was decisive. M.
+Clemenceau, who before the war was the intimate friend of Austrian
+journalists, hated his country's enemies with undying hate. And he loved
+France passionately. I remember significant words of his, uttered at the
+end of the year 1899 to an enterprising young man who had founded a
+Franco-German review in Munich and craved his moral support. "Is it
+possible," he exclaimed, "that it has already come to that? Well, a
+nation is not conquered until it accepts defeat. Whenever France gives
+up she will have deserved her humiliation."
+
+At the Conference M. Clemenceau moved every lever to deliver his country
+for all time from the danger of further invasions. And, being a realist,
+he counted only on military safeguards. At the League of Nations he was
+wont to sneer until it dawned upon him that it might be forged into an
+effective weapon of national defense. And then he included it in the
+litany of abstract phrases about right, justice, and the
+self-determination of peoples which it became the fashion to raise to
+the inaccessible heights where those ideals are throned which are to be
+worshiped but not incarnated. The public somehow never took his
+conversion to Wilsonianism seriously, neither did his political friends
+until the League bade fair to become serviceable in his country's hands.
+M. Clemenceau's acquaintanceship with international politics was at once
+superior to that of the British Premier and very slender. But his
+program at the Conference was simple and coherent, because independent
+of geography and ethnography: France was to take Germany's leading
+position in the world, to create powerful and devoted states in eastern
+Europe, on whose co-operation she could reckon, and her allies were to
+do the needful in the way of providing due financial and economic
+assistance so as to enable her to address herself to the cultural
+problems associated with her new role. And he left nothing undone that
+seemed conducive to the attainment of that object. Against Mr. Wilson he
+maneuvered to the extent which his adviser, M. Tardieu, deemed safe, and
+one of his most daring speculations was on the President's journey to
+the States, during which M. Clemenceau and his European colleagues hoped
+to get through a deal of work on their own lines and to present Mr.
+Wilson with the decisions ready for ratification on his return. But the
+stratagem was not merely apparent; it was bruited abroad with indiscreet
+details, whereupon the first American delegate on his return broke the
+tables of their laws--one of which separated the Treaty from the
+Covenant--and obliged them to begin anew. It is fair to add that M.
+Clemenceau was no uncompromising partisan of the conquest of the left
+bank of the Rhine, nor of colonial conquests. These currents took their
+rise elsewhere. "We don't want protesting deputies in the French
+Parliament," he once remarked in the presence of the French Minister of
+Foreign Affairs.[50] Offered the choice between a number of bridgeheads
+in Germany and the military protection of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, he
+unhesitatingly decided for the latter, which had been offered to him by
+President Wilson after the rejection of the Rhine frontier.
+
+M. Clemenceau, whose remarkable mental alacrity, self-esteem, and love
+of sharp repartee occasionally betrayed him into tactless sallies and
+epigrammatic retorts, deeply wounded the pride of more than one delegate
+of the lesser Powers in a way which they deemed incompatible alike with
+circumspect statesmanship and the proverbial hospitality of his country.
+For he is incapable of resisting the temptation to launch a _bon mot_,
+however stinging. It would be ungenerous, however, to attach more
+importance to such quickly forgotten utterances than he meant them to
+carry. An instance of how he behaved toward the representatives of
+Britain and France is worth recording, both as characterizing the man
+and as extenuating his offense against the delegates of the lesser
+Powers.
+
+One morning[51] M. Clemenceau appeared at the Conference door, and
+seemed taken aback by the large number of unfamiliar faces and figures
+behind Mr. Balfour, toward whom he sharply turned with the brusque
+interrogation: "Who are those people behind you? Are they English?"
+"Yes, they are," was the answer. "Well, what do they want here?" "They
+have come on the same errand as those who are now following you."
+Thereupon the French Premier, whirling round, beheld with astonishment
+and displeasure a band of Frenchmen moving toward him, led by M. Pichon,
+the Minister of Foreign Affairs. In reply to his question as to the
+motive of their arrival, he was informed that they were all experts, who
+had been invited to give the Conference the benefit of their views about
+the revictualing of Hungary. "Get out, all of you. You are not wanted
+here," he cried in a commanding voice. And they all moved away meekly,
+led by M. Pichon, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Their services proved
+to be unnecessary, for the result reached by the Conference was
+negative.
+
+M. Tardieu cannot be separated from his chief, with whom he worked
+untiringly, placing at his disposal his intimate knowledge of the nooks
+and crannies of professional and unprofessional diplomacy. He is one of
+the latest arrivals and most pushing workers in the sphere of the Old
+World statecraft, affects Yankee methods, and speaks English. For
+several years political editor of the _Temps_, he obtained access to the
+state archives, and wrote a book on the Agadir incident which was well
+received, and also a monograph on Prince von Buelow, became Deputy, aimed
+at a ministerial portfolio, and was finally appointed Head Commissary to
+the United States. Faced by difficulties there--mostly the specters of
+his own former utterances evoked by German adversaries--his progress at
+first was slow. He was accused of having approved some of the drastic
+methods--especially the U-boat campaign--which the Germans subsequently
+employed, because in the year 1912, when he was writing on the subject,
+France believed that she herself possessed the best submarines, and she
+meant to employ them. He was also challenged to deny that he had
+written, in August, 1912, that in every war churches and monuments of
+art must suffer, and that "no army, whatever its nationality, can
+renounce this." He was further charged with having taken a kindly
+interest in air-war and bomb-dropping, and given it as his opinion that
+it would be absurd "to deprive of this advantage those who had made most
+progress in perfecting this weapon." But M. Tardieu successfully
+exorcised these and other ghosts. And on his return from the United
+States he was charged with organizing a press bureau of his own, to
+supply American journalists with material for their cablegrams, while at
+the same time he collaborated with M. Clemenceau in reorganizing the
+political communities of the world. It is only in the French Chamber, of
+which he is a distinguished member, that M. Tardieu failed to score a
+brilliant success. Few men are prophets in their own country, and he is
+far from being an exception. At the Conference, in its later phases, he
+found himself in frequent opposition to the chief of the Italian
+delegation, Signor Tittoni. One of the many subjects on which they
+disagreed was the fate of German Austria and the political structure and
+orientation of the independent communities which arose on the ruins of
+the Dual Monarchy. M. Tardieu favored an arrangement which would bring
+these populations closely together and impart to the whole an
+anti-Teutonic impress. If Germany could not be broken up into a number
+of separate states, as in the days of her weakness, all the other
+European peoples in the territories concerned could, and should, be
+united against her, and at the least hindered from making common cause
+with her. The unification of Germany he considered a grave danger, and
+he strove to create a countervailing state system.
+
+To the execution of this project there were formidable difficulties.
+For one thing, none of the peoples in question was distinctly
+anti-German. Each one was for itself. Again, they were not particularly
+enamoured of one another, nor were their interests always concordant,
+and to constrain them by force to unite would have been not to prevent
+but to cause future wars. A Danubian federation--the concrete shape
+imagined for this new bulwark of European peace--did not commend itself
+to the Italians, who had their own reasons for their opposition besides
+the Wilsonian doctrine, which they invoked. If it be true, Signor
+Tittoni argues, that Austria does not desire to be amalgamated with
+Germany, why not allow her to exercise the right of self-determination
+accorded to other peoples? M. Tardieu, on the other hand, not content
+with the prohibition to Germany to unite with Austria, proposed[52] that
+in the treaty with Austria this country should be obliged to repress the
+unionist movement in the population. This amendment was inveighed
+against by the Italian delegation in the name of every principle
+professed and transgressed by the world-mending Powers. Even from the
+French point of view he declared it perilous, inasmuch as there was, and
+could be, no guarantee that a Danubian confederation would not become a
+tool in Germany's hands.
+
+Two things struck me as characteristic of the principal
+plenipotentiaries: as a rule, they eschewed first-rate men as
+fellow-workers, one integer and several zeros being their favorite
+formula, and they took no account of the flight of time, planning as
+though an eternity were before them and then suddenly improvising as
+though afraid of being late for a train or a steamer. These
+peculiarities were baleful. The lesser states, having mainly first-class
+men to represent them, illustrated the law of compensation, which
+assigned many mediocrities to the Great Powers. The former were also the
+most strenuous toilers, for their task bristled with difficulties and
+abounded in startling surprises, and its accomplishment depended on the
+will of others. Time and again they went over the ground with infinite
+care, counting and gaging the obstacles in their way, devising means to
+overcome them, and rehearsing the effort in advance. So much stress had
+been laid during the war on psychology, and such far-reaching
+consequences were being drawn from the Germans' lack of it, that these
+public men made its cultivation their personal care. Hence, besides
+tracing large-scale maps of provinces and comprehensive maps[53] of the
+countries to be reconstituted, and ransacking history for arguments and
+precedents, they conscientiously ascertained the idiosyncrasies of their
+judges, in order to choose the surest ways to impress, convince, or
+persuade them. And it was instructive to see them try their hand at this
+new game.
+
+One and all gave assent to the axiom that moderation would impress the
+arbiters more favorably than greed, but not all of them wielded
+sufficient self-command to act upon it. The more resourceful delegates,
+whose tasks were especially redoubtable because they had to demand large
+provinces coveted by others, prepared the ground by visiting personally
+some of the more influential arbiters before these were officially
+appointed, forcibly laying their cases before them and praying for their
+advice. In reality they were striving to teach them elementary
+geography, history, and politics. The Ulysses of the Conference, M.
+Venizelos, first pilgrimaged to London, saying: "If the Foreign Office
+is with Greece, what matters it who is against her." He hastened to call
+on President Wilson as soon as that statesman arrived in Europe, and,
+to the surprise of many, the two remained a long time closeted together.
+"Whatever did you talk about?" asked a colleague of the Greek Premier.
+"How did you keep Wilson interested in your national claims all that
+time? You must have--" "Oh no," interrupted the modest statesman. "I
+disposed of our claims succinctly enough. A matter of two minutes. Not
+more. I asked him to dispense me from taking up his time with such
+complicated issues which he and his colleagues would have ample
+opportunity for studying. The rest of the time I was getting him to give
+me the benefit of his familiarity with the subject of the League of
+Nations. And he was good enough to enumerate the reasons why it should
+be realized, and the way in which it must be worked. I was greatly
+impressed by what he said." "Just fancy!" exclaimed a colleague,
+"wasting all that time in talking about a scheme which will never come
+to anything!" But M. Venizelos knew that the time was not misspent.
+President Wilson was at first nowise disposed to lend a favorable ear to
+the claims of Greece, which he thought exorbitant, and down to the very
+last he gave his support to Bulgaria against Greece whole-heartedly. The
+Cretan statesman passed many an hour of doubt and misgiving before he
+came within sight of his goal. But he contrived to win the President
+over to his way of envisaging many Oriental questions. He is a
+past-master in practical psychology.
+
+The first experiments of M. Venizelos, however, were not wholly
+encouraging. For all the care he lavished on the chief luminaries of the
+Conference seemingly went to supplement their education and fill up a
+few of the geographical, historical, philological, ethnological, and
+political gaps in their early instruction rather than to guide them in
+their concrete decisions, which it was expected would be always left to
+the "commissions of experts." But the fruit which took long to mature
+ripened at last, and Greece had many of her claims allowed. Thus in
+reorganizing the communities of the world the personal factor played a
+predominant part. Venizelos was, so to say, a fixed star in the
+firmament, and his light burned bright through every rift in the clouds.
+His moderation astonished friends and opponents. Every one admired his
+_expose_ of his case as a masterpiece. His statesman-like setting, in
+perspective, the readiness with which he put himself in the place of his
+competitor and struck up a fair compromise, endeared him to many, and
+his praises were in every one's mouth. His most critical hour--it lasted
+for months--struck when he found himself struggling with the President
+of the United States, who was for refusing the coast of Thrace to Greece
+and bestowing it on Bulgaria. But with that dispute I deal in another
+place.
+
+Of Italy's two plenipotentiaries during the first five months one was
+the most supple and the other the most inflexible of her statesmen,
+Signor Orlando and Baron Sonnino. If her case was presented to the
+Conference with less force than was attainable, the reasons are obvious.
+Her delegates had a formal treaty on which they relied; to the attitude
+of their country from the outbreak of the war to its finish they rightly
+ascribed the possibility of the Allies' victory, and they expected to
+see this priceless service recognized practically; the moderation and
+suppleness of Signor Orlando were neutralized by the uncompromising
+attitude of Baron Sonnino, and, lastly, the gaze of both statesmen was
+fixed upon territorial questions and sentimental aspirations to the
+neglect of economic interests vital to the state--in other words, they
+beheld the issues in wrong perspective. But one of the most popular
+figures among the delegates was Signor Orlando, whose eloquence and
+imagination gave him advantages which would have been increased a
+hundredfold if he might have employed his native language in the
+conclave. For he certainly displayed resourcefulness, humor, a historic
+sense, and the gift of molding the wills of men. But he was greatly
+hampered. Some of his countrymen alleged that Baron Sonnino was his evil
+genius. One of the many sayings attributed to him during the Conference
+turned upon the quarrels of some of the smaller peoples among
+themselves. "They are," the Premier said, "like a lot of hens being held
+by the feet and carried to market. Although all doomed to the same fate,
+they contrive to fight one another while awaiting it."
+
+After the fall of Orlando's Cabinet, M. Tittoni repaired to Paris as
+Italy's chief delegate. His reputation as one of Europe's principal
+statesmen was already firmly established; he had spent several years in
+Paris as Ambassador, and he and the late Di San Giuliano and Giolitti
+were the men who broke with the Central Empires when these were about to
+precipitate the World War. In French nationalist circles Signor Tittoni
+had long been under a cloud, as the man of pro-German leanings. The
+suspicion--for it was nothing more--was unfounded. On the contrary, M.
+Tittoni is known to have gone with the Allies to the utmost length
+consistent with his sense of duty to his own country. To my knowledge he
+once gave advice which his Italian colleagues and political friends and
+adversaries now bitterly regret was disregarded. The nature of that
+counsel will one day be disclosed....
+
+Of Japan's delegates, the Marquis Saionji and Baron Makino, little need
+be said, seeing that their qualifications for their task were
+demonstrated by the results. Mainly to statesmanship and skilful
+maneuvering Japan is indebted for her success at the Paris Conference,
+where her cause was referred by Mr. Lloyd George and M. Clemenceau to
+Mr. Wilson to deal with. The behavior of her representatives was an
+illuminating object-lesson in the worth of psychological tactics in
+practical politics. They hardly ever appeared in the footlights,
+remained constantly silent and observant, and were almost ignored by the
+press. But they kept their eyes fixed on the goal. Their program was
+simple. Amid the flitting shadows of political events they marched
+together with the Allies, until these disagreed among themselves, and
+then they voted with Great Britain and the United States. Occasionally
+they went farther and proposed measures for the lesser states which
+Britain framed, but desired to second rather than propose. Japan, at the
+Conference, was a stanch collaborator of the two English-speaking
+principals until her own opportunity came, and then she threw all her
+hoarded energies into her cause, and by her firm resolve dispelled any
+opposition that Mr. Wilson may have intended to offer. One of the most
+striking episodes of the Conference was the swift, silent, and
+successful campaign by which Japan had her secret treaty with China
+hall-marked by the puritanical President of the United States, whose
+sense of morality could not brook the secret treaties concluded by Italy
+and Rumania with the Greater and Greatest Powers of Europe. Again, it
+was with statesman-like sagacity that the Japanese judged the Russian
+situation and made the best of it--first, shortly before the invitation
+to Prinkipo, and, later, before the celebrated eight questions were
+submitted to Admiral Kolchak. I was especially struck by an occurrence,
+trivial in appearance, which demonstrated the weight which they rightly
+attached to the psychological side of politics. Everybody in Paris
+remarked, and many vainly complained of, the indifference, or rather,
+unfriendliness, of which Russians were the innocent victims. Among the
+Allied troops who marched under the Arc de Triomphe on July 14th there
+were Rumanians, Greeks, Portuguese, and Indians, but not a single
+Russian. A Russian general drove about in the forest of flags and
+banners that day looking eagerly for symbols of his own country, but for
+hours the quest was fruitless. At last, when passing the Japanese
+Embassy, he perceived, to his delight, an enormous Russian flag waving
+majestically in the breeze, side by side with that of Nippon. "I shed
+tears of joy," he told his friend that evening, "and I vowed that
+neither I nor my country would ever forget this touching mark of
+friendship."
+
+Japanese public opinion criticized severely the failure of their
+delegates to obtain recognition of the equality of races or nations.
+This judgment seems unjust, for nothing that they could have done or
+said would have wrung from Mr. Wilson and Mr. Hughes their assent to the
+doctrine, nor, if they had been induced to proclaim it, would it have
+been practically applied.
+
+In general, the lawyers were the most successful in stating their cases.
+But one of the delegates of the lesser states who made the deepest
+impression on those of the greater was not a member of the bar. The head
+of the Polish delegation, Roman Dmowski, a picturesque, forcible
+speaker, a close debater and resourceful pleader, who is never at a loss
+for an image, a comparison, an _argumentum ad hominem_, or a repartee,
+actually won over some of the arbiters who had at first leaned toward
+his opponents--a noteworthy feat if one realizes all that it meant in an
+assembly where potent influences were working against some of the
+demands of resuscitated Poland. His speech in September on the future of
+eastern Galicia was a veritable masterpiece.
+
+M. Dmowski appeared at the Conference under all the disadvantages that
+could be heaped upon a man who has incurred the resentment of the most
+powerful international body of modern times. He had the misfortune to
+have the Jews of the world as his adversaries. His Polish friends
+explained this hostility as follows. His ardent nationalist sentiments
+placed him in antagonism to every movement that ran counter to the
+progress of his country on nationalist lines. For he is above all things
+a Pole and a patriot. And as the Hebrew population of Poland,
+disbelieving in the resurrection of that nation, had long since struck
+up a cordial understanding with the states that held it in bondage, the
+gifted author of a book on the _Foundations of Nationalism_, which went
+through four editions, was regarded by the Hebrew elements of the
+population as an irreconcilable enemy. In truth, he was only the leader
+of a movement that was a historical necessity. One of the theses of the
+work was the necessity of cultivating an anti-German spirit in Poland as
+the only antidote against the Teuton virus introduced from Berlin
+through economic and other channels. And as the Polish Jews, whose idiom
+is a corrupted German dialect and whose leanings are often Teutonic,
+felt that the attack upon the whole was an attack on the part, they
+anathematized the author and held him up to universal obloquy. And there
+has been no reconciliation ever since. In the United States, where the
+Jewish community is numerous and influential, M. Dmowski found spokes in
+his wheel at every stage of his journey, and in Paris, too, he had to
+full-front a tremendous opposition, open and covert. Whatever unbiased
+people may think of this explanation and of his hostility to the Germans
+and their agents, Roman Dmowski deservedly enjoys the reputation of a
+straightforward and loyal fighter for his country's cause, a man who
+scorns underhand machinations and proclaims aloud--perhaps too
+frankly--the principles for which he is fighting. Polish Jews who
+appeared in Paris, some of them his bitterest antagonists, recognized
+the chivalrous way in which he conducts his electoral and other
+campaigns. Among the delegates his practical acquaintanceship with East
+European polities entitled him to high rank. For he knows the world
+better than any living statesman, having traveled over Europe, Asia, and
+America. He undertook and successfully accomplished a delicate mission
+in the Far East in the year 1905, rendering valuable services to his
+country and to the cause of civilization.
+
+"M. Dmowski's activity," his friends further assert, "is impassioned and
+unselfish. The ambition that inspires and nerves him is not of the
+personal sort, nor is his patriotism a ladder leading to place and
+power. Polish patriotism occupies a category apart from that of other
+European peoples, and M. Dmowski has typified it with rare fidelity and
+completeness. If Wilsonianism had been realized, Polish nationalism
+might have become an anachronism. To-day it is a large factor in
+European politics and is little understood in the West. M. Dmowski lives
+for his country. Her interests absorb his energies. He would probably
+agree with the historian Paolo Sarpi, who said, 'Let us be Venetians
+first and Christians after.' Of the two widely divergent currents into
+which the main stream of political thought and sentiment throughout the
+world is fast dividing itself, M. Dmowski moves with the national away
+from the international championed by Mr. Wilson. The frequency with
+which the leading spirits of Bolshevism turn out to be Jews--to the
+dismay and disgust of the bulk of their own community--and the ingenuity
+they displayed in spreading their corrosive tenets in Poland may not
+have been without effect upon the energy of M. Dmowski's attitude toward
+the demand of the Polish Jews to be placed in the privileged position of
+wards of the League of Nations. But the principle of the protection of
+minority--Jewish or Gentile--is assailable on grounds which have nothing
+to do with race or religion." Some of the most interesting and
+characteristic incidents at the Conference had the Polish statesman for
+their principal actor, and to him Poland owes some of the most solid and
+enduring benefits conferred on her at the Conference.
+
+Of a different temper is M. Paderewski, who appeared in Paris to plead
+his country's cause at a later stage of the labors of the Conference.
+This eminent artist's energies were all blended into one harmonious
+whole, so that his meetings with the great plenipotentiaries were never
+disturbed by a jarring note. As soon as it was borne in upon him that
+their decisions were as irrevocable as decrees of Fate, he bowed to them
+and treated the authors as Olympians who had no choice but to utter the
+stern fiat. Even when called upon to accept the obnoxious clause
+protecting religious and ethnic minorities against which his colleague
+had vainly fought, M. Paderewski sunk political passion in reason and
+attuned himself to the helpful role of harmonizer. He held that it would
+have been worse than useless to do otherwise. He was grieved that his
+country must acquiesce in that decree, he regretted intensely the
+necessity which constrained such proven friends of Poland as the Four to
+pass what he considered a severe sentence on her; but he resigned
+himself gracefully to the inevitable and thanked Fate's executioners for
+their personal sympathy. This attitude evoked praise and admiration from
+Messrs. Lloyd George and Wilson, and the atmosphere of the conclave
+seemed permeated with a spirit that induced calm satisfaction and the
+joy of elevated thoughts. M. Paderewski made a deep and favorable
+impression on the Supreme Council.
+
+Belgium sent her most brilliant parliamentarian, M. Hymans, as first
+plenipotentiary to the Conference. He was assisted by the chief of the
+Socialist party, M. Vandervelde, and by an eminent authority on
+international law, M. Van den Heuvel. But for reasons which elude
+analysis, none of the three delegates hit it off with the duumvirate
+who were spinning the threads of the world's destinies. M. Hymans,
+however, by his warmth, sincerity, and courage impressed the
+representatives of the lesser states, won their confidence, became their
+natural spokesman, and blazed out against all attempts--and they were
+numerous and deliberate--to ignore their existence. It was he who by his
+direct and eloquent protest took M. Clemenceau off his guard and
+elicited the amazing utterance that the Powers which could put twelve
+million soldiers in the field were the world's natural arbiters. In this
+way he cleared the atmosphere of the distorting mists of catchwords and
+shibboleths.
+
+How decisive a role internal politics played in the designation of
+plenipotentiaries to the Conference was shown with exceptional clearness
+in the case of Rumania. That country had no legislature. The Constituent
+Assembly, which had been dissolved owing to the German invasion, was
+followed by no fresh elections. The King, with whom the initiative thus
+rested, had reappointed M. Bratiano Chief of the Government, and M.
+Bratiano was naturally desirous of associating his own historic name
+with the aggrandizement of his country. But he also desired to secure
+the services of his political rival, M. Take Jonescu, whose reputation
+as a far-seeing statesman and as a successful negotiator is world-wide.
+Among his qualifications are an acquaintanceship with European countries
+and their affairs and a rare facility for give and take which is of the
+essence of international politics. He can assume the initiative in
+_pourparlers_, however uncompromising the outlook; frame plausible
+proposals; conciliate his opponents by showing how thoroughly he
+understands and appreciates their point of view, and by these means he
+has often worked out seemingly hopeless negotiations to a satisfactory
+issue. M. Clemenceau wrote of him, "C'est un grand Europeen."[54]
+
+M. Bratiano's bid for the services of his eminent opponent was coupled
+with the offer of certain portfolios in the Cabinet to M. Jonescu and to
+a number of his parliamentary supporters. While negotiations were slowly
+proceeding by telegraph, M. Jonescu, who had already taken up his abode
+in Paris, was assiduously weaving his plans. He began by assuming what
+everybody knew, that the Powers would refuse to honor the secret treaty
+with France, Britain, and Russia, which assigned to Rumania all the
+territories to which she had laid claim, and he proposed first striking
+up a compromise with the other interested states, then compacting
+Rumania, Jugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Greece into a solid
+block, and asking the Powers to approve and ratify the new league. Truly
+it was a genial conception worthy of a broad-minded statesman. It aimed
+at a durable peace based on what he considered a fair settlement of
+claims satisfactory to all, and it would have lightened the burden of
+the Big Four. But whether it could have been realized by peoples moved
+by turbid passions and represented by trustees, some of whom were
+avowedly afraid to relinquish claims which they knew to be exorbitant,
+may well be doubted.
+
+But the issue was never put to the test. The two statesmen failed to
+agree on the Cabinet question; M. Jonescu kept aloof from office, and
+the post of second delegate fell to Rumania's greatest diplomatist and
+philologist, M. Mishu, who had for years admirably represented his
+country as Minister in the British capital. From the outset M.
+Bratiano's position was unenviable, because he based his country's case
+on the claims of the secret treaty, and to Mr. Wilson every secret
+treaty which he could effectually veto was anathema. Between the two
+men, in lieu of a bond of union, there was only a strong force of mutual
+repulsion, which kept them permanently apart. They moved on different
+planes, spoke different languages, and Rumania, in the person of her
+delegates, was treated like Cinderella by her stepmother. The Council of
+Three kept them systematically in the dark about matters which it
+concerned them to know, negotiated over their heads, transmitted to
+Bucharest injunctions which only they were competent to receive,
+insisted on their compromising to accept future decrees of the
+Conference without an inkling as to their nature, and on their admitting
+the right of an alien institution--the League of Nations--to intervene
+in favor of minorities against the legally constituted government of the
+country. M. Bratiano, who in a trenchant speech inveighed against these
+claims of the Great Powers to take the governance of Europe into their
+own hands, withdrew from the Conference and laid his resignation in the
+hands of the King.
+
+One of the most remarkable debaters in this singular parliament, where
+self-satisfied ignorance and dullness of apprehension were so hard to
+pierce, was the youthful envoy of the Czechoslovaks, M. Benes. This
+politician, who before the Conference came to an end was offered the
+honorable task of forming a new Cabinet, which he wisely declined,
+displayed a masterly grasp of Continental politics and a rare gift of
+identifying his country's aspirations with the postulates of a settled
+peace. A systematic thinker, he made a point of understanding his case
+at the outset. He would begin his _expose_ by detaching himself from all
+national interests and starting from general assumptions recognized by
+the Olympians, and would lead his hearers by easy stages to the
+conclusions which he wished them to draw from their own premises. And
+two of them, who had no great sympathy with his thesis, assured me that
+they could detect no logical flaw in his argument. Moderation and
+sincerity were the virtues which he was most eager to exhibit, and they
+were unquestionably the best trump cards he could play. Not only had he
+a firm grasp of facts and arguments, but he displayed a sense of measure
+and open-mindedness which enabled him to implant his views on the minds
+of his hearers.
+
+Armenia's cause found a forcible and suasive pleader in Boghos Pasha,
+whose way of marshaling arguments in favor of a contention that was
+frowned upon by many commanded admiration. The Armenians asked for a
+vast stretch of territory with outlets on the Black Sea and the
+Mediterranean, but they were met with the objections that their total
+population was insignificant; that only in one province were they in a
+majority, and that their claim to Cilicia clashed with one of the
+reserved rights of France. The ice, therefore, was somewhat thin in
+parts, but Boghos Pasha skated over it gracefully. His description of
+the Armenian massacres was thrilling. Altogether his _expose_ was a
+masterpiece, and was appreciated by Mr. Wilson and M. Clemenceau.
+
+The Jugoslav delegates, MM. Vesnitch and Trumbitch, patriotic,
+tenacious, uncompromising, had an early opportunity of showing the stuff
+of which they were made. When they were told that the Jugoslav state was
+not yet recognized and that the kingdom of Serbia must content itself
+with two delegates, they lodged an indignant protest against both
+decisions, and refused to appear at the Conference unless they were
+allowed an adequate number of representatives. Thereupon the Great
+Powers compromised the matter by according them three, and with stealthy
+rage they submitted to the refusal of recognition. They were not again
+heard of until one day they proposed that their dispute with Italy
+about Fiume and the Dalmatian coast should be solved by submitting it to
+President Wilson for arbitration. The expedient was original. President
+Wilson, people remembered, had had an animated talk on the subject with
+the Italian Premier, Orlando, and it was known that he had set his face
+against Italy's claim and against the secret treaty that recognized it.
+Consequently the Serbs were running no risk by challenging Signor
+Orlando to lay the matter before the American delegate. Whether, all
+things considered, it was a wise move to make has been questioned.
+Anyhow, the Italian delegation declined the suggestion on a number of
+grounds which several delegates considered convincing. The Conference,
+it urged, had been convoked precisely for the purpose of hearing and
+settling such disputes as theirs, and the Conference consisted, not of
+one, but of many delegates, who collectively were better qualified to
+deal with such problems than any one man. Europeans, too, could more
+fully appreciate the arguments, and the atmosphere through which the
+arguments should be contemplated, than the eminent American idealist,
+who had more than once had to modify his judgment on European matters.
+Again, to remove the discussion from the international court might well
+be felt as a slight put upon the men who composed it. For why should
+their verdict be less worth soliciting than that of the President of the
+United States? True, Italy's delegates were themselves judges in that
+tribunal, but the question to be tried was not a matter between two
+countries, but an issue of much wider import--namely, what frontiers
+accorded to the embryonic state of Jugoslavia would be most conducive to
+the world's peace. And nobody, they held, could offer a more complete or
+trustworthy answer than they and their European colleagues, who were
+conversant with all the elements of the problem. Besides--but this
+objection was not expressly formulated--had not Mr. Wilson already
+decided against Italy? On these and other grounds, then, they decided to
+leave the matter to the Conference. It was a delicate subject, and few
+onlookers cared to open their minds on its merits.
+
+Albania was represented by an old friend of mine, the venerable Turkhan
+Pasha, who had been in diplomacy ever since the Congress of Berlin in
+the 'seventies of last century, and who looked like a modernized Nestor.
+I made his acquaintance many years ago, when he was Ambassador of Turkey
+in St. Petersburg. He was then a favorite everywhere in the Russian
+capital as a conscientious Ambassador, a charming talker, and a
+professional peace-maker, who wished well to everybody. The Young Turks
+having recalled him from St. Petersburg, he soon afterward became Grand
+Vizier to the Mbret of Albania. Far resonant events removed the Mbret
+from the throne, Turkhan Pasha from the Vizierate, and Albania from the
+society of nations, and I next found my friend in Switzerland ill in
+health, eating the bitter bread of exile, temporarily isolated from the
+world of politics and waiting for something to turn up. A few years more
+gave the Allies an unexpectedly complete victory and brought back
+Turkhan Pasha to the outskirts of diplomacy and politics. He suddenly
+made his appearance at the Paris Conference as the representative of
+Albania and the friend of Italy.
+
+Another Albanian friend of mine, Essad Pasha, whose plans for the
+regeneration of his country differed widely from those of Turkhan, was
+for a long while detained in Saloniki. By dint of solicitations and
+protests, he at last obtained permission to repair to Paris and lay his
+views before the Conference, where he had a curious interview with Mr.
+Wilson. The President, having received from Albanians in the United
+States many unsolicited judgments on the character and antecedents of
+Essad Pasha, had little faith in his fitness to introduce and popularize
+democratic institutions in Albania. And he unburdened himself of these
+doubts to friends, who diffused the news. The Pasha asked for an
+audience, and by dint of patience and perseverance his prayer was heard.
+Five minutes before the appointed hour he was at the President's house,
+accompanied by his interpreter, a young Albanian named Stavro, who
+converses freely in French, Greek, and Turkish, besides his native
+language. But while in the antechamber Essad, remembering that the
+American President speaks nothing but pure English, suggested that
+Stavro should drive over to the Hotel Crillon for an interpreter to
+translate from French. Thereupon one of the secretaries stopped him,
+saying: "Although he cannot speak French, the President understands it,
+so that a second interpreter will be unnecessary." Essad then addressed
+Mr. Wilson in Albanian, Stavro translated his words into French, and the
+President listened in silence. It was the impression of those in the
+room that, at any rate, Mr. Wilson understood and appreciated the gist
+of the Pasha's sharp criticism of Italy's behavior. But, to be on the
+safe side, the President requested his visitor to set down on paper at
+his leisure everything he had said and to send it to him.
+
+
+PRESIDENT WILSON
+
+
+President Wilson, before assuming the redoubtable role of world arbiter,
+was hardly more than a name in Europe, and it was not a synonym for
+statecraft. His ethical objections to the rule of Huerta in Mexico, his
+attempt to engraft democratic principles there, and the anarchy that
+came of it were matters of history. But the President of the nation to
+whose unbounded generosity and altruism the world owes a debt of
+gratitude that can only be acknowledged, not repaid, deservedly enjoyed
+a superlative measure of respect from his foreign colleagues, and the
+author of the project which was to link all nations together by ties of
+moral kinship was literally idolized by the masses. Never has it fallen
+to my lot to see any mortal so enthusiastically, so spontaneously
+welcomed by the dejected peoples of the universe. His most casual
+utterances were caught up as oracles. He occupied a height so far aloft
+that the vicissitudes of everyday life and the contingencies of politics
+seemingly could not touch him. He was given credit for a rare degree of
+selflessness in his conceptions and actions and for a balance of
+judgment which no storms of passion could upset. So far as one could
+judge by innumerable symptoms, President Wilson was confronted with an
+opportunity for good incomparably vaster than had ever before been
+within the reach of man.
+
+Soon after the opening of the Conference the shadowy outlines of his
+portrait began to fill in, slowly at first, and before three months had
+passed the general public beheld it fairly complete, with many of its
+natural lights and shades. The quality of an active politician is never
+more clearly brought out than when, raised to an eminent place, he is
+set an arduous feat in sight of the multitude. Mr. Wilson's task was
+manifestly congenial to him, for it was deliberately chosen by himself,
+and it comprised the most tremendous problems ever tackled by man born
+of woman. The means by which he set to work to solve them were
+startlingly simple: the regeneration of the human race was to be
+compassed by means of magisterial edicts secretly drafted and sternly
+imposed on the interested peoples, together with a new and not wholly
+appropriate nomenclature.
+
+In his own country, where he has bitter adversaries as well as devoted
+friends, Mr. Wilson was regarded by many as a composite being made up
+of preacher, teacher, and politician. To these diverse elements they
+refer the fervor and unction, the dogmatic tone, and the practised
+shrewdness that marked his words and acts. Independent American opinion
+doubted his qualifications to be a leader. As a politician, they said,
+he had always followed the crowd. He had swum with the tide of public
+sentiment in cardinal matters, instead of stemming or canalizing and
+guiding it. Deficient in courageous initiative, he had contented himself
+with merely executive functions. No new idea, no fresh policy, was
+associated with his name. His singular attitude on the Mexican imbroglio
+had provoked the sharp criticism even of friends and the condemnation of
+political opponents. His utterances during the first stages of the World
+War, such as the statement that the American people were too proud to
+fight and had no concern with the causes and objects of the war,[55]
+when contrasted with the opposite views which he propounded later on,
+were ascribed to quick political evolution--but were not taken as
+symptoms of a settled mind. He seemed a pacifist when his pride revolted
+at the idea of settling any intelligible question by an appeal to
+violence, and a semi-militarist when, having in his own opinion created
+a perfectly safe and bloodless peace guarantee in the shape of the
+League of Nations, he agreed to safeguard it by a military compact which
+sapped its foundation. He owed his re-election for a second term partly,
+it was alleged, to the belief that during the first he had kept his
+country out of the war despite the endeavors of some of its eminent
+leaders to bring it in; yet when firmly seated in the saddle, he
+followed the leaders whom he had theretofore with-stood and obliged the
+nation to fight.
+
+As chief of the great country, his domestic critics add, which had just
+turned victory's scale in favor of the Allies, Mr. Wilson saw a superb
+opportunity to hitch his wagon to a star, and now for the first time he
+made a determined bid for the leadership of the world. Here the idealist
+showed himself at his best. But by the way of preparation he asked the
+nation at the elections to refuse their votes to his political
+opponents, despite the fact that they were loyally supporting his
+policy, and to return only men of his own party, and in order to silence
+their misgivings he declared that to elect Republican Senators would be
+to repudiate the administration of the President of the United States at
+a critical conjuncture. This was urged against him as the inexpiable
+sin. The electors, however, sent his political opponents to the Senate,
+whereupon the President organized his historic visit to Europe. It might
+have become a turning-point in the world's history had he transformed
+his authority and prestige into the driving-power requisite to embody
+his beneficent scheme. But he wasted the opportunity for lack of moral
+courage. Thus far American criticism. But the peoples of Europe ignored
+the estimates of the President made by his fellow-countrymen, who, as
+such, may be forgiven for failing to appreciate his apostleship, or set
+the full value on his humanitarian strivings. The war-weary masses
+judged him not by what he had achieved or attempted in the past, but by
+what he proposed to do in the future. And measured by this standard, his
+spiritual statue grew to legendary proportions.
+
+Europe, when the President touched its shores, was as clay ready for the
+creative potter. Never before were the nations so eager to follow a
+Moses who would take them to the long-promised land where wars are
+prohibited and blockades unknown. And to their thinking he was that
+great leader. In France men bowed down before him with awe and
+affection. Labor leaders in Paris told me that they shed tears of joy in
+his presence, and that their comrades would go through fire and water to
+help him to realize his noble schemes.[56] To the working classes in
+Italy his name was a heavenly clarion at the sound of which the earth
+would be renewed. The Germans regarded him and his humane doctrine as
+their sheet-anchor of safety. The fearless Herr Muehlon said, "If
+President Wilson were to address the Germans, and pronounce a severe
+sentence upon them, they would accept it with resignation and without a
+murmur and set to work at once." In German-Austria his fame was that of
+a savior, and the mere mention of his name brought balm to the suffering
+and surcease of sorrow to the afflicted. A touching instance of this
+which occurred in the Austrian capital, when narrated to the President,
+moved him to tears. There were some five or six thousand Austrian
+children in the hospitals at Vienna who, as Christmas was drawing near,
+were sorely in need of medicaments and much else. The head of the
+American Red Cross took up their case and persuaded the Americans in
+France to send two million dollars' worth of medicaments to Vienna.
+These were duly despatched, and had got as far as Berne, when the French
+authorities, having got wind of the matter, protested against this
+premature assistance to infant enemies on grounds which the other
+Allies had to recognize as technically tenable, and the medicaments were
+ordered back to France from Berne. Thereupon Doctor Ferries, of the
+International Red Cross, became wild with indignation and laid the
+matter before the Swiss government, which undertook to send some
+medicaments to the children, while the Americans were endeavoring to
+move the French to allow at least some of the remedies to go through.
+The children in the hospitals, when told that they must wait, were
+bright and hopeful. "It will be all right," some of them exclaimed.
+"Wilson is coming soon, and he will bring us everything."
+
+Thus Mr. Wilson had become a transcendental hero to the European
+proletarians, who in their homely way adjusted his mental and moral
+attributes to their own ideal of the latter-day Messiah. His legendary
+figure, half saint, half revolutionist, emerged from the transparent
+haze of faith, yearning, and ignorance, as in some ecstatic vision. In
+spite of his recorded acts and utterances the mythopeic faculty of the
+peoples had given itself free scope and created a messianic democrat
+destined to free the lower orders, as they were called, in each state
+from the shackles of capitalism, legalized thraldom, and crushing
+taxation, and each nation from sanguinary warfare. Truly, no human being
+since the dawn of history has ever yet been favored with such a superb
+opportunity. Mr. Wilson might have made a gallant effort to lift society
+out of the deep grooves into which it had sunk, and dislodge the secular
+obstacles to the enfranchisement and transfiguration of the human race.
+At the lowest it was open to him to become the center of a countless
+multitude, the heart of their hearts, the incarnation of their noblest
+thought, on condition that he scorned the prudential motives of
+politicians, burst through the barriers of the old order, and deployed
+all his energies and his full will-power in the struggle against sordid
+interests and dense prejudice. But he was cowed by obstacles which his
+will lacked the strength to surmount, and instead of receiving his
+promptings from the everlasting ideals of mankind and the inspiriting
+audacities of his own highest nature and appealing to the peoples
+against their rulers, he felt constrained in the very interest of his
+cause to haggle and barter with the Scribes and the Pharisees, and ended
+by recording a pitiful answer to the most momentous problems couched in
+the impoverished phraseology of a political party.
+
+Many of his political friends had advised the President not to visit
+Europe lest the vast prestige and influence which he wielded from a
+distance should dwindle unutilized on close contact with the realists'
+crowd. Even the war-god Mars, when he descended into the ranks of the
+combatants on the Trojan side, was wounded by a Greek, and, screaming
+with pain, scurried back to Olympus with paling halo. But Mr. Wilson
+decided to preside and to direct the fashioning of his project, and to
+give Europe the benefit of his advice. He explained to Congress that he
+had expressed the ideals of the country for which its soldiers had
+consciously fought, had had them accepted "as the substance of their own
+thoughts and purpose" by the statesmen of the associated governments,
+and now, he concluded: "I owe it to them to see to it, in so far as in
+me lies, that no false or mistaken interpretation is put upon them, and
+no possible effort omitted to realize them. It is now my duty to play my
+full part in making good what they offered their lives and blood to
+obtain. I can think of no call to service which could transcend
+this."[57] No intention could well be more praiseworthy.
+
+Soon after the _George Washington_, flying the presidential flag, had
+steamed out of the Bay on her way to Europe, the United Press received
+from its correspondent on board, who was attached to Mr. Wilson's
+person, a message which invigorated the hopes of the world and evoked
+warm outpourings of the seared soul of suffering man in gratitude toward
+the bringer of balm. It began thus: "The President sails for Europe to
+uphold American ideals, and literally to fight for his Fourteen Points.
+The President, at the Peace Table, will insist on the freedom of the
+seas and a general disarmament.... The seas, he holds, ought to be
+guarded by the whole world."
+
+Since then the world knows what to think of the literal fighting at the
+Peace Table. The freedom of the seas was never as much as alluded to at
+the Peace Table, for the announcement of Mr. Wilson's militant
+championship brought him a wireless message from London to the effect
+that that proposal, at all events, must be struck out of his program if
+he wished to do business with Britain. And without a fight or a
+remonstrance the President struck it out. The Fourteen Points were not
+discussed at the Conference.[58] One may deplore, but one cannot
+misunderstand, what happened. Mr. Wilson, too, had his own fixed aim to
+attain: intent on associating his name with a grandiose humanitarian
+monument, he was resolved not to return to his country without some sort
+of a covenant of the new international life. He could not afford to go
+home empty-handed. Therein lay his weakness and the source of his
+failure. For whenever his attitude toward the Great Powers was taken to
+mean, "Unless you give me my Covenant, you cannot have your Treaty," the
+retort was ready: "Without our Treaty there will be no Covenant."
+
+Like Dejoces, the first king of the Medes, who, having built his palace
+at Ecbatana, surrounded it with seven walls and permanently withdrew his
+person from the gaze of his subjects, Mr. Wilson in Paris admitted to
+his presence only the authorized spokesmen of states and causes, and not
+all of these. He declined to receive persons who thought they had a
+claim to see him, and he received others who were believed to have none.
+During his sojourn in Paris he took many important Russian affairs in
+hand after having publicly stated that no peace could be stable so long
+as Russia was torn by internal strife. And as familiarity with Russian
+conditions was not one of his accomplishments, he presumably needed
+advice and help from those acquainted with them. Now a large number of
+Russians, representing all political parties and four governments, were
+in Paris waiting to be consulted. But between January and May not one of
+them was ever asked for information or counsel. Nay, more, those who
+respectfully solicited an audience were told to wait. In the meanwhile
+men unacquainted with the country and people were sent by Mr. Wilson to
+report on the situation, and to begin by obtaining the terms of an
+acceptable treaty from the Bolshevik government.
+
+The first plenipotentiary of one of the principal lesser states was for
+months refused an audience, to the delight of his political adversaries,
+who made the most of the circumstance at home. An eminent diplomatist
+who possessed considerable claims to be vouchsafed an interview was put
+off from week to week, until at last, by dint of perseverance, as it
+seemed to him, the President consented to see him. The diplomatist,
+pleased at his success, informed a friend that the following Wednesday
+would be the memorable day. "But are you not aware," asked the friend,
+"that on that day the President will be on the high seas on his way back
+to the United States?" He was not aware of it. But when he learned that
+the audience had been deliberately fixed for a day when Mr. Wilson would
+no longer be in France he felt aggrieved.
+
+In Italy the President's progress was a veritable triumph. Emperors and
+kings had roused no such enthusiasm. One might fancy him a deity
+unexpectedly discovered under the outward appearance of a mortal and now
+being honored as the god that he was by ecstatic worshipers. Everything
+he did was well done, everything he said was nobly conceived and worthy
+of being treasured up. In these dispositions a few brief months wrought
+a vast difference.
+
+In this respect an instructive comparison might be made between Tsar
+Alexander I at the Vienna Congress and the President of the United
+States at the Conference of Paris. The Russian monarch arrived in the
+Austrian capital with the halo of a Moses focusing the hopes of all the
+peoples of Europe. His reputation for probity, public spirit, and lofty
+aspirations had won for him the good-will and the anticipatory blessings
+of war-weary nations. He, too, was a mystic, believed firmly in occult
+influences, so firmly indeed that he accepted the fitful guidance of an
+ecstatic lady whose intuition was supposed to transcend the sagacity of
+professional statesmen. And yet the Holy Alliance was the supreme
+outcome of his endeavors, as the League of Nations was that of Mr.
+Wilson's. In lieu of universal peace all eastern Europe was still
+warring and revolting in September and the general outlook was
+disquieting. The disheartening effect of the contrast between the
+promise and the achievement of the American statesman was felt
+throughout the world. But Mr. Wilson has the solace to know that people
+hardly ever reach their goal--though they sometimes advance fairly near
+to it. They either die on the way or else it changes or they do.
+
+It was doubtless a noble ambition that moved the Prime Ministers of the
+Great Powers and the chief of the North American Republic to give their
+own service to the Conference as heads of their respective missions. For
+they considered themselves to be the best equipped for the purpose, and
+they were certainly free from such prejudices as professional traditions
+and a confusing knowledge of details might be supposed to engender. But
+in almost every respect it was a grievous mistake and the source of
+others still more grievous. True, in his own particular sphere each of
+them had achieved what is nowadays termed greatness. As a war leader Mr.
+Lloyd George had been hastily classed with Marlborough and Chatham, M.
+Clemenceau compared to Danton, and Mr. Wilson set apart in a category to
+himself. But without questioning these journalistic certificates of fame
+one must admit that all three plenipotentiaries were essentially
+politicians, old parliamentary hands, and therefore expedient-mongers
+whose highest qualifications for their own profession were drawbacks
+which unfitted them for their self-assumed mission. Of the concrete
+world which they set about reforming their knowledge was amazingly
+vague. "Frogs in the pond," says the Japanese proverb, "know naught of
+the ocean." There was, of course, nothing blameworthy in their
+unacquaintanceship with the issues, but only in the offhandedness with
+which they belittled its consequences. Had they been conversant with the
+subject or gifted with deeper insight, many of the things which seemed
+particularly clear to them would have struck them as sheer inexplicable,
+and among these perhaps their own leadership of the world-parliament.
+
+What they lacked, however, might in some perceptible degree have been
+supplied by enlisting as their helpers men more happily endowed than
+themselves. But they deliberately chose mediocrities. It is a mark of
+genial spirits that they are well served, but the plenipotentiaries of
+the Conference were not characterized by it. Away in the background some
+of them had familiars or casual prompters to whose counsels they were
+wont to listen, but many of the adjoints who moved in the limelight of
+the world-stage were gritless and pithless.
+
+As the heads of the principal governments implicitly claimed to be the
+authorized spokesmen of the human race and endowed with unlimited
+powers, it is worth noting that this claim was boldly challenged by the
+peoples' organs in the press. Nearly all the journals read by the masses
+objected from the first to the dictatorship of the group of Premiers,
+Mr. Wilson being excepted. "The modern parasite," wrote a respectable
+democratic newspaper,[59] "is the politician. Of all the privileged
+beings who have ever governed us he is the worst. In that, however,
+there is nothing surprising ... he is not only amoral, but incompetent
+by definition. And it is this empty-headed individual who is intrusted
+with the task of settling problems with the very rudiments of which he
+is unacquainted." Another French journal[60] wrote: "In truth it is a
+misfortune that the leaders of the Conference are Cabinet chiefs, for
+each of them is obsessed by the carking cares of his domestic policy.
+Besides, the Paris Conference takes on the likeness of a lyrical drama
+in which there are only tenors. Now would even the most beautiful work
+in the world survive this excess of beauties?"
+
+The truth as revealed by subsequent facts would seem to be that each of
+the plenipotentiaries recognizing parliamentary success as the source of
+his power was obsessed by his own political problems and stimulated by
+his own immediate ends. As these ends, however incompatible with each
+other, were believed by each one to tend toward the general object, he
+worked zealously for their attainment. The consequences are notorious.
+M. Clemenceau made France the hub of the universe. Mr. Lloyd George
+harbored schemes which naturally identified the welfare of mankind with
+the hegemony of the English-speaking races. Signor Orlando was inspired
+by the "sacred egotism" which had actuated all Italian Cabinets since
+Italy entered the war, and President Wilson was burning to associate his
+name and also that of his country with the vastest and noblest
+enterprise inscribed in the annals of history. And each one moved over
+his own favorite route toward his own goal. It was an apt illustration
+of the Russian fable of the swan, the crab, and the pike being harnessed
+together in order to remove a load. The swan flew upward, the crab
+crawled backward, the pike made with all haste for the water, and the
+load remained where it was.
+
+A lesser but also a serious disadvantage of the delegation of government
+chiefs made itself felt in the procedure. Embarrassing delays were
+occasioned by the unavoidable absences of the principal delegates whom
+pressure of domestic politics called to their respective capitals, as
+well as by their tactics, and their colleagues profited by their absence
+for the sake of the good cause. Thus all Paris, as we saw, was aware
+that the European chiefs, whose faith in Wilsonian orthodoxy was still
+feeble at that time, were prepared to take advantage of the President's
+sojourn in Washington to speed up business in their own sense and to
+confront him on his return with accomplished facts. But when, on his
+return, he beheld their handiwork he scrapped it, and a considerable
+loss of time ensued for which the world has since had to pay very
+heavily.
+
+Again, when Premier Orlando was in Rome after Mr. Wilson's appeal to
+the Italian people, a series of measures was passed by the delegates in
+Paris affecting Italy, diminishing her importance at the Conference, and
+modifying the accepted interpretation of the Treaty of London. Some of
+these decisions had to be canceled when the Italians returned. These
+stratagems had an undesirable effect on the Italians.
+
+Not the least of the Premiers' disabilities lay in the circumstance that
+they were the merest novices in international affairs. Geography,
+ethnography, psychology, and political history were sealed books to
+them. Like the rector of Louvain University who told Oliver Goldsmith
+that, as he had become the head of that institution without knowing
+Greek, he failed to see why it should be taught there, the chiefs of
+state, having attained the highest position in their respective
+countries without more than an inkling of international affairs, were
+unable to realize the importance of mastering them or the impossibility
+of repairing the omission as they went along.
+
+They displayed their contempt for professional diplomacy and this
+feeling was shared by many, but they extended that sentiment to certain
+diplomatic postulates which can in no case be dispensed with, because
+they are common to all professions. One of them is knowledge of the
+terms of the problems to be solved. No conjuncture could have been less
+favorable for an experiment based on this theory. The general situation
+made a demand on the delegates for special knowledge and experience,
+whereas the Premiers and the President, although specialists in nothing,
+had to act as specialists in everything. Traditional diplomacy would
+have shown some respect for the law of causality. It would have sent to
+the Conference diplomatists more or less acquainted with the issues to
+be mooted and also with the mentality of the other negotiators, and it
+would have assigned to them a number of experts as advisers. It would
+have formed a plan similar to that proposed by the French authorities
+and rejected by the Anglo-Saxons. In this way at least the technical
+part of the task would have been tackled on right lines, the war would
+have been liquidated and normal relations quickly re-established among
+the belligerent states. It may be objected that this would have been a
+meager contribution to the new politico-social fabric. Undoubtedly it
+would, but, however meager, it would have been a positive gain. Possibly
+the first stone of a new world might have been laid once the ruins of
+the old were cleared away. But even this modest feat could not be
+achieved by amateurs working in desultory fashion and handicapped by
+their political parties at home. The resultant of their apparent
+co-operation was a sum in subtraction because dispersal or effort was
+unavoidably substituted for concentration.
+
+Whether one contemplates them in the light of their public acts or
+through the prism of gossip, the figures cut by the delegates of the
+Great Powers were pathetic. Giants in the parliamentary sphere, they
+shrank to the dimensions of dwarfs in the international. In matters of
+geography, ethnography, history, and international politics they were
+helplessly at sea, and the stories told of certain of their efforts to
+keep their heads above water while maintaining a simulacrum of dignity
+would have been amusing were the issues less momentous. "Is it after
+Upper or Lower Silesia that those greedy Poles are hankering?" one
+Premier is credibly reported to have asked some months after the Polish
+delegation had propounded and defended its claims and he had had time to
+familiarize himself with them. "Please point out to me Dalmatia on the
+map," was another characteristic request, "and tell me what connection
+there is between it and Fiume." One of the principal plenipotentiaries
+addressed a delegate who is an acquaintance of mine approximately as
+follows: "I cannot understand the spokesmen of the smaller states. To me
+they seem stark mad. They single out a strip of territory and for no
+intelligible reason flock round it like birds of prey round a corpse on
+the field of battle. Take Silesia, for example. The Poles are clamoring
+for it as if the very existence of their country depended on their
+annexing it. The Germans are still more crazy about it. But for their
+eagerness I suppose there is some solid foundation. But how in Heaven's
+name do the Armenians come to claim it? Just think of it, the Armenians!
+The world has gone mad. No wonder France has set her foot down and
+warned them off the ground. But what does France herself want with it?
+What is the clue to the mystery?" My acquaintance, in reply, pointed out
+as considerately as he could that Silesia was the province for which
+Poles and Germans were contending, whereas the Armenians were pleading
+for Cilicia, which is farther east, and were, therefore, frowned upon by
+the French, who conceive that they have a civilizing mission there and
+men enough to accomplish it.
+
+It is characteristic of the epoch, and therefore worthy of the
+historian's attention, that not only the members of the Conference, but
+also other leading statesmen of Anglo-Saxon countries, were wont to make
+a very little knowledge of peoples and countries go quite a far way. Two
+examples may serve to familiarize the reader with the phenomenon and to
+moderate his surprise at the defects of the world-dictators in Paris.
+One English-speaking statesman, dealing with the Italian government[61]
+and casting around for some effective way of helping the Italian people
+out of their pitiable economic plight, fancied he hit upon a felicitous
+expedient, which he unfolded as follows. "I venture," he said, "to
+promise that if you will largely increase your cultivation of bananas
+the people of my country will take them all. No matter how great the
+quantities, our market will absorb them, and that will surely make a
+considerable addition to your balance on the right side." At first the
+Italians believed he was joking. But finding that he really meant what
+he said, they ruthlessly revealed his idea to the nation under the
+heading, "Italian bananas!"
+
+Here is the other instance. During the war the Polish people was
+undergoing unprecedented hardships. Many of the poorer classes were
+literally perishing of hunger. A Polish commission was sent to an
+English-speaking country to interest the government and people in the
+condition of the sufferers and obtain relief. The envoys had an
+interview with a Secretary of State, who inquired to what port they
+intended to have the foodstuffs conveyed for distribution in the
+interior of Poland. They answered: "We shall have them taken to Dantzig.
+There is no other way." The statesman reflected a little and then said:
+"You may meet with difficulties. If you have them shipped to Dantzig you
+must of course first obtain Italy's permission. Have you got it?" "No.
+We had not thought of that. In fact, we don't yet see why Italy need be
+approached." "Because it is Italy who has command of the Mediterranean,
+and if you want the transport taken to Dantzig it is the Italian
+government that you must ask!"[62]
+
+The delegates picked up a good deal of miscellaneous information about
+the various countries whose future they were regulating, and to their
+credit it should be said that they put questions to their informants
+without a trace of false pride. One of the two chief delegates wending
+homeward from a sitting at which M. Jules Cambon had spoken a good deal
+about those Polish districts which, although they contained a majority
+of Germans, yet belonged of right to Poland, asked the French delegate
+why he had made so many allusions to Frederick the Great. "What had
+Frederick to do with Poland?" he inquired. The answer was that the
+present German majority of the inhabitants was made up of colonists who
+had immigrated into the districts since the time of Frederick the Great
+and the partition of Poland. "Yes, I see," exclaimed the statesman, "but
+what had Frederick the Great to do with the partition of Poland?" ... In
+the domain of ethnography there were also many pitfalls and accidents.
+During an official _expose_ of the Oriental situation before the Supreme
+Council, one of the Great Four, listening to a narrative of Turkish
+misdeeds, heard that the Kurds had tortured and killed a number of
+defenseless women, children, and old men. He at once interrupted the
+speaker with the query: "You now call them Kurds. A few minutes ago you
+said they were Turks. I take it that the Kurds and the Turks are the
+same people?" Loath to embarrass one of the world's arbiters, the
+delegate respectfully replied, "Yes, sir, they are about the same, but
+the worse of the two are the Kurds."[63]
+
+Great Britain's first delegate, with engaging candor sought to disarm
+criticism by frankly confessing in the House of Commons that he had
+never before heard of Teschen, about which such an extraordinary fuss
+was then being made, and by asking: "How many members of the House have
+ever heard of Teschen? Yet," he added significantly, "Teschen very
+nearly produced an angry conflict between two allied states."[64]
+
+The circumstance that an eminent parliamentarian had never heard of
+problems that agitate continental peoples is excusable. Less so was his
+resolve, despite such a capital disqualification, to undertake the task
+of solving those problems single-handed, although conscious that the
+fate of whole peoples depended on his succeeding. It is no adequate
+justification to say that he could always fall back upon special
+commissions, of which there was no lack at the Conference. Unless he
+possessed a safe criterion by which to assess the value of the
+commissions' conclusions, he must needs himself decide the matter
+arbitrarily. And the delegates, having no such criterion, pronounced
+very arbitrary judgments on momentous issues. One instance of this
+turned upon Poland's claims to certain territories incorporated in
+Germany, which were referred to a special commission under the
+presidency of M. Cambon. Commissioners were sent to the country to study
+the matter on the spot, where they had received every facility for
+acquainting themselves with it. After some weeks the commission reported
+in favor of the Polish claim with unanimity. But Mr. Lloyd George
+rejected their conclusions and insisted on having the report sent back
+to them for reconsideration. Again the commissioners went over the
+familiar ground, but felt obliged to repeat their verdict anew. Once
+more, however, the British Premier demurred, and such was his tenacity
+that, despite Mr. Wilson's opposition, the final decision of the
+Conference reversed that of the commission and non-suited the Poles. By
+what line of argument, people naturally asked, did the first British
+delegate come to that conclusion? That he knew more about the matter
+than the special Inter-Allied commission is hardly to be supposed.
+Indeed, nobody assumed that he was any better informed on that subject
+than about Teschen. The explanation put in circulation by interested
+persons was that, like Socrates, he had his own familiar demon to prompt
+him, who, like all such spirits, chose to flourish, like the violet, in
+the shade. That this source of light was accessible to the Prime
+Minister may, his apologists hold, one day prove a boon to the peoples
+whose fate was thus being spun in darkness and seemingly at haphazard.
+Possibly. But in the meanwhile it was construed as an affront to their
+intelligence and a violation of the promise made to them of "open
+covenants openly arrived at." The press asked why the information
+requisite for the work had not been acquired in advance as these
+semi-mystical ways of obtaining it commended themselves to nobody.
+Wholly mystical were the methods attributed to one or other of the men
+who were preparing the advent of the new era. For superstition of
+various kinds was supposed to be as well represented at the Paris
+Conference as at the Congress of Vienna. Characteristic of the epoch was
+the gravity with which individuals otherwise well balanced exercised
+their ingenuity in finding out the true relation of the world's peace to
+certain lucky numbers. For several events connected with the Conference
+the thirteenth day of the month was deliberately, and some occultists
+added felicitously, chosen. It was also noticed that an effort was made
+by all the delegates to have the Allies' reply to the German
+counter-proposals presented on the day of destiny, Friday, June 13th.
+When it miscarried a flutter was caused in the dovecotes of the
+illuminated. The failure was construed as an inauspicious omen and it
+caused the spirits of many to droop. The principal clairvoyante of
+Paris, Madame N----, who plumes herself on being the intermediary
+between the Fates that rule and some of their earthly executors, was
+consulted on the subject, one knows not with what result.[65] It was
+given out, however, as the solemn utterance of the oracle in vogue that
+Mr. Wilson's enterprise was weighted with original sin; he had made one
+false step before his arrival in Europe, and that had put everything out
+of gear. By enacting fourteen commandments he had countered the magic
+charm of his lucky thirteen. One of the fourteen, it was soothsaid, must
+therefore be omitted--it might be, say, that of open covenants openly
+arrived at, or the freedom of the seas--in a word, any one so long as
+the mystic number thirteen remained intact. But should that be
+impossible, seeing that the Fourteen Points had already become
+house-hold words to all nations and peoples, then it behooved the
+President to number the last of his saving points 13a.[66]
+
+This odd mixture of the real and the fanciful--a symptom, as the
+initiated believed, of a mood of fine spiritual exaltation--met with
+little sympathy among the impatient masses whose struggle for bare life
+was growing ever fiercer. Stagnation held the business world, prices
+were rising to prohibitive heights, partly because of the dawdling of
+the world's conclave; hunger was stalking about the ruined villages of
+the northern departments of France, destructive wars were being waged in
+eastern Europe, and thousands of Christians were dying of hunger in
+Bessarabia.[67] Epigrammatic strictures and winged words barbed with
+stinging satire indicated the feelings of the many. And the fact remains
+on record that streaks of the mysticism that buoyed up Alexander I at
+the Congress of Vienna, and is supposed to have stimulated Nicholas II
+during the first world-parliament at The Hague, were noticeable from
+time to time in the environment of the Paris Conference. The disclosure
+of these elements of superstition was distinctly harmful and might have
+been hindered easily by the system of secrecy and censorship which
+effectively concealed matters much less mischievous.
+
+The position of the plenipotentiaries was unenviable at best and they
+well deserve the benefit of extenuating circumstances. For not even a
+genius can efficiently tackle problems with the elements of which he
+lacks acquaintanceship, and the mass of facts which they had to deal
+with was sheer unmanageable. It was distressing to watch them during
+those eventful months groping and floundering through a labyrinth of
+obstacles with no Ariadne clue to guide their tortuous course, and
+discovering that their task was more intricate than they had imagined.
+The ironic domination of temper and circumstance over the fitful
+exertions of men struggling with the partially realized difficulties of
+a false position led to many incongruities upon which it would be
+ungracious to dwell. One of them, however, which illustrates the
+situation, seems almost incredible. It is said to have occurred in
+January. According to the current narrative, soon after the arrival of
+President Wilson in Paris, he received from a French publicist named
+M.B. a long and interesting memorandum about the island of Corsica,
+recounting the history, needs, and aspirations of the population as well
+as the various attempts they had made to regain their independence, and
+requesting him to employ his good offices at the Conference to obtain
+for them complete autonomy. To this demand M.B. is said to have received
+a reply[68] to the effect that the President "is persuaded that this
+question will form the subject of a thorough examination by the
+competent authorities of the Conference" Corsica, the birthplace of
+Napoleon, and as much an integral part of France as the Isle of Man is
+of England, seeking to slacken the ties that link it to the Republic and
+receiving a promise that the matter would be carefully considered by the
+delegates sounds more like a mystification than a sober statement of
+fact. The story was sent to the newspapers for publication, but the
+censor very wisely struck it out.
+
+These and kindred occurrences enable one better to appreciate the
+motives which prompted the delegates to shroud their conversations and
+tentative decisions in a decorous veil of secrecy.
+
+It is but fair to say that the enterprise to which they set their hands
+was the vastest that ever tempted lofty ambitions since the
+tower-builders of Babel strove to bring heaven within reach of the
+earth. It transcended the capacity of the contemporary world's greatest
+men.[69] It was a labor for a wonder-worker in the pristine days of
+heroes. But although to solve even the main problems without residue was
+beyond the reach of the most genial representatives of latter-day
+statecraft, it needed only clearness of conception, steadiness of
+purpose, and the proper adjustment of means to ends, to begin the work
+on the right lines and give it an impulse that might perhaps carry it to
+completion in the fullness of time.
+
+But even these postulates were wanting. The eminent parliamentarians
+failed to rise to the gentle height of average statecraft. They appeared
+in their new and august character of world-reformers with all the roots
+still clinging to them of the rank electoral soil from which they
+sprang. Their words alone were redolent of idealism, their deeds were
+too often marred by pettifogging compromises or childish
+blunders--constructive phrases and destructive acts. Not only had they
+no settled method of working, they lacked even a common proximate aim.
+For although they all employed the same phraseology when describing the
+objects for which their countries had fought and they themselves were
+ostensibly laboring, no two delegates attached the same ideas to the
+words they used. Yet, instead of candidly avowing this root-defect and
+remedying it, they were content to stretch the euphemistic terms until
+these covered conflicting conceptions and gratified the ears of every
+hearer. Thus, "open covenants openly arrived at" came to mean arbitrary
+ukases issued by a secret conclave, and "the self-determination of
+peoples" connoted implicit obedience to dictatorial decrees. The new
+result was a bewildering phantasmagoria.
+
+And yet it was professedly for the purpose of obviating such
+misunderstandings that Mr. Wilson had crossed the Atlantic. Having
+expressed in plain terms the ideals for which American soldiers had
+fought, and which became the substance of the thoughts and purposes of
+the associated statesmen, "I owe it to them," he had said, "to see to
+it, in so far as in me lies, that no false or mistaken interpretation is
+put upon them and no possible effort omitted to realize them." And that
+was the result achieved.
+
+No such juggling with words as went on at the Conference had been
+witnessed since the days of medieval casuistry. New meanings were
+infused into old terms, rendering the help of "exegesis" indispensable.
+Expressions like "territorial equilibrium" and "strategic frontiers"
+were stringently banished, and it is affirmed that President Wilson
+would wince and his expression change at the bare mention of these
+obnoxious symbols of the effete ordering which it was part of his
+mission to do away with forever. And yet the things signified by those
+words were preserved withal under other names. Nor could it well be
+otherwise. One can hardly conceive a durable state system in Europe
+under the new any more than the old dispensation without something that
+corresponds to equilibrium. An architect who should boastingly discard
+the law of gravitation in favor of a different theory would stand little
+chance of being intrusted with the construction of a palace of peace.
+Similarly, a statesman who, while proclaiming that the era of wars is
+not yet over, would deprive of strategic frontiers the pivotal states of
+Europe which are most exposed to sudden attack would deserve to find few
+disciples and fewer clients. Yet that was what Mr. Wilson aimed at and
+what some of his friends affirm he has achieved. His foreign colleagues
+re-echoed his dogmas after having emasculated them. It was instructive
+and unedifying to watch how each of the delegates, when his own
+country's turn came to be dealt with on the new lines, reversed his
+tactics and, sacrificing sound to substance, insisted on safeguards,
+relied on historic rights, invoked economic requirements, and appealed
+to common sense, but all the while loyally abjured "territorial
+equilibrium" and "strategic guarantees." Hence the fierce struggles
+which MM. Orlando, Dmowski, Bratiano, Venizelos, and Makino had to carry
+on with the chief of that state which is the least interested in
+European affairs in order to obtain all or part of the territories which
+they considered indispensable to the security and well-being of their
+respective countries.
+
+At the outset Mr. Wilson stood for an ideal Europe of a wholly new and
+undefined type, which would have done away with the need for strategic
+frontiers. Its contours were vague, for he had no clear mental picture
+of the concrete Europe out of which it was to be fashioned. He spoke,
+indeed, and would fain have acted, as though the old Continent were like
+a thinly inhabited territory of North America fifty years ago,
+unencumbered by awkward survivals of the past and capable of receiving
+any impress. He seemingly took no account of its history, its peoples,
+or their interests and strivings. History shared the fate of Kolchak's
+government and the Ukraine; it was not recognized by the delegates. What
+he brought to Europe from America was an abstract idea, old and
+European, and at first his foreign colleagues treated it as such. Some
+of them had actually sneered at it, others had damned it with faint
+praise, and now all of them honestly strove to save their own countries'
+vital interests from its disruptive action while helping to apply it to
+their neighbors. Thus Britain, who at that time had no territorial
+claims to put forward, had her sea-doctrine to uphold, and she upheld it
+resolutely. Before he reached Europe the President was notified in plain
+terms that his theory of the freedom of the seas would neither be
+entertained nor discussed. Accordingly, he abandoned it without
+protest. It was then explained away as a journalistic misconception.
+That was the first toll paid by the American reformer in Europe, and it
+spelled failure to his entire scheme, which was one and indivisible. It
+fell to my lot to record the payment of the tribute and the abandonment
+of that first of the fourteen commandments. The mystic thirteen
+remained. But soon afterward another went by the board. Then there were
+twelve. And gradually the number dwindled.
+
+This recognition of hard realities was a bitter disappointment to all
+the friends of the spiritual and social renovation of the world. It was
+a spectacle for cynics. It rendered a frank return to the ancient system
+unavoidable and brought grist to the mill of the equilibrists. And yet
+the conclusion was shriked. But even the tough realities might have been
+made to yield a tolerable peace if they had been faced squarely. If the
+new conception could not be realized at once, the old one should have
+been taken back into favor provisionally until broader foundations could
+be laid, but it must be one thing or the other. From the political angle
+of vision at which the European delegates insisted on placing
+themselves, the Old World way of tackling the various problems was alone
+admissible. Their program was coherent and their reasoning strictly
+logical. The former included strategic frontiers and territorial
+equilibrium. Doubtless this angle of vision was narrow, the survey it
+allowed was inadequate, and the results attainable ran the risk of being
+ultimately thrust aside by the indignant peoples. For the world problem
+was not wholly nor even mainly political. Still, the method was
+intelligible and the ensuing combinations would have hung coherently
+together. They would have satisfied all those--and they were many--who
+believed that the second decade of the twentieth century differs in no
+essential respect from the first and that latter-day world problems may
+be solved by judicious territorial redistribution. But even that
+conception was not consistently acted on. Deviations were permitted here
+and insisted upon there, only they were spoken of unctuously as
+sacrifices incumbent on the lesser states to the Fourteen Points. For
+the delegates set great store by their reputation for logic and
+coherency. Whatever other charges against the Conference might be
+tolerated, that of inconsistency was bitterly resented, especially by
+Mr. Wilson. For a long while he contended that he was as true to his
+Fourteen Points as is the needle to the pole. It was not until after his
+return to Washington, in the summer, that he admitted the perturbations
+caused by magnetic currents--sympathy for France he termed them.
+
+The effort of imagination required to discern consistency in such of the
+Council's decisions as became known from time to time was so far beyond
+the capacity of average outsiders that the ugly phrase "to make the
+world safe for hypocrisy" was early coined, uttered, and propagated.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[46] Cf. _Le Temps_, May 23, 1919. It is an adaptation of the
+inscription over the Pantheon, "Aux grands hommes, la Patrie
+reconnaissante."
+
+[47] _The Daily Mail_, April 25, 1919 (Paris edition).
+
+[48] In Germany.
+
+[49] General Petain is said to have rejected the suggestion.
+
+[50] Cf. _Bulletin des Droits de l'Homme_, 19eme annee, p. 461.
+
+[51] It was either Friday, the 4th, or Saturday, the 5th of July.
+
+[52] At the end of August, 1919.
+
+[53] One delegate from a poor and friendless country had to take the
+maps of a rival state and retouch them in accordance with the
+ethnographical data, which he considered alone correct.
+
+[54] _L'Homme Enchatne_, December 14, 1914.
+
+[55] "With its causes and objects we have no concern." Speech delivered
+by Mr. Wilson before the League to Enforce Peace in Washington on May
+24, 1916.
+
+[56] The testimony of a leading French press organ is worth reproducing
+here: "La situation du President Wilson dans nos democraties est
+magnifique, souveraine et extremement perilleuse. On ne connait pas
+d'hommes, dans les temps contemporains, ayant eu plus d'autorite et de
+puissance; la popularite lui a donne ce que le droit divin ne conferait
+pas toujours aux monarques hereditaires. En revanche et par le fait du
+choc en retour, sa responsabilite est superieure a celle du prince le
+plus absolu. S'il reussit a organiser le monde d'apres ses reves, sa
+gloire dominera les plus hautes gloires; mais il faut dire hardiment que
+s'il echouait il plongerait le monde dans un chaos dont le bolchevisme
+russe ne nous offre qu'une faible image; et sa responsabilite devant la
+conscience humaine depasserait ce que peut supporter un simple mortel.
+Redoutable alternative!"--Cf. _Le Figaro_, February 10, 1919.
+
+[57] From Mr. Wilson's address to Congress read on December 2, 1918. Cf.
+_The Times_, December 4, 1918.
+
+[58] Cf. Secretary Lansing's evidence before the Senate Foreign
+Relations Committee, _The Chicago Tribune_, August 27, 1919.
+
+[59] _La Democratie Nouvelle_, May 27, 1919
+
+[60] _Le Figaro_, March 26, 1919.
+
+[61] Both of them occurred before the armistice, but during the war.
+
+[62] For the accuracy of this and the preceding story I vouch
+absolutely. I have the names of persons, places, and authorities, which
+are superfluous here.
+
+[63] The Kurds are members of the great Indo-European family to which
+the Greeks, Italians, Celts, Teutons, Slavs, Hindus, Persians, and
+Afghans belong, whereas the Turks are a branch of a wholly different
+stock, the Ural-Altai group, of which the Mongols, Turks, Tartars,
+Finns, and Magyars are members.
+
+[64] April 16, 1919.
+
+[65] Madame N---- showed a friend of mine an autograph letter which she
+claims to have received from one of her clients, "a world's famous man."
+I was several times invited to inspect it at the clairvoyante's abode,
+or at my own, if I preferred.
+
+[66] Articles on the subject appeared in the French press. To the best
+of my recollection there was one in _Bonsoir_.
+
+[67] The American Red Cross buried sixteen hundred of them in August,
+1919. _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 30, 1919.
+
+[68] The reply, of which I possess what was given to me as a copy, is
+dated Paris, January 9, 1919, and is in French.
+
+[69] Imagine, for instance, the condition of mind into which the
+following day's work must have thrown the American statesman, beset as
+he was with political worries of his own. The extract quoted is taken
+from _The Daily Mail_ of April 18, 1919 (Paris edition).
+
+President Wilson had a busy day yesterday, as the following list of
+engagements shows: 11 A.M. Dr. Wellington Koo, to present the Chinese
+Delegation to the Peace Conference. 11.10 A.M. Marquis de Vogue had a
+delegation of seven others, representing the Congres Francais, to
+present their view as to the disposition of the left bank of the Rhine.
+11.30 A.M. Assyrian and Chaldean Delegation, with a message from the
+Assyrian-Chaldean nation. 11.45 A.M. Dalmatian Delegation, to present to
+the President the result of the plebiscite of that part of Dalmatia
+occupied by Italians. _Noon_. M. Bucquet, Charge d'Affaires of San
+Marino, to convey the action of the Grand Council of San Marino,
+conferring on the President Honorary Citizenship in the Republic of San
+Marino. 12.10 P.M. M. Colonder, Swiss Minister of Foreign Affairs. 12.20
+P.M. Miss Rose Schneiderman and Miss Mary Anderson, delegates of the
+National Women's Trade Union League of the United States. 12.30 P.M. The
+Patriarch of Constantinople, the head of the Orthodox Eastern Church.
+12.45 P.M. Essad Pasha, delegate of Albania, to present the claims of
+Albania. 1 P.M. M.M.L. Coromilas, Greek Minister at Rome, to pay his
+respects. _Luncheon_. Mr. Newton D. Baker, Secretary for War. 4 P.M. Mr.
+Herbert Hoover. 4.15 P.M. M. Bratiano, of the Rumanian Delegation. 4.30
+P.M. Dr. Affonso Costa, former Portuguese Minister, Portuguese Delegate
+to the Peace Conference. 4.45 P.M. Boghos Nubar Pasha, president of the
+Armenian National Delegation, accompanied by M.A. Aharoman and Professor
+A. Der Hagopian, of Robert College. 5.15 P.M. M. Pasitch, of the Serbian
+Delegation. 5.30 P.M. Mr. Frank Walsh, of the Irish-American Delegation.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+CENSORSHIP AND SECRECY
+
+
+Never was political veracity in Europe at a lower ebb than during the
+Peace Conference. The blinding dust of half-truths cunningly mixed with
+falsehood and deliberately scattered with a lavish hand, obscured the
+vision of the people, who were expected to adopt or acquiesce in the
+judgments of their rulers on the various questions that arose. Four and
+a half years of continuous and deliberate lying for victory had
+disembodied the spirit of veracity and good faith throughout the world
+of politics. Facts were treated as plastic and capable of being shaped
+after this fashion or that, according to the aim of the speaker or
+writer. Promises were made, not because the things promised were seen to
+be necessary or desirable, but merely in order to dispose the public
+favorably toward a policy or an expedient, or to create and maintain a
+certain frame of mind toward the enemies or the Allies. At elections and
+in parliamentary discourses, undertakings were given, some of which were
+known to be impossible of fulfilment. Thus the ministers in some of the
+Allied countries bound themselves to compel the Germans not only to pay
+full compensation for damage wantonly done, but also to defray the
+entire cost of the war.
+
+The notion that the enemy would thus make good all losses was manifestly
+preposterous. In a century the debt could not be wiped out, even though
+the Teutonic people could be got to work steadily and selflessly for
+the purpose. For their productivity would be unavailing if their
+victorious adversaries were indisposed to admit the products to their
+markets. And not only were the governments unwilling, but some of the
+peoples announced their determination to boycott German wares on their
+own initiative. None the less the nations were for months buoyed up with
+the baleful delusion that all their war expenses would be refunded by
+the enemy.[70]
+
+It was not the governments only, however, who, after having for over
+four years colored and refracted the truth, now continued to twist and
+invent "facts." The newspapers, with some honorable exceptions,
+buttressed them up and even outstripped them. Plausible unveracity thus
+became a patriotic accomplishment and a recognized element of politics.
+Parties and states employed it freely. Fiction received the hall-mark of
+truth and fancies were current as facts. Public men who had solemnly
+hazarded statements belied by subsequent events denied having ever
+uttered them. Never before was the baleful theory that error is helpful
+so systematically applied as during the war and the armistice. If the
+falsehoods circulated and the true facts suppressed were to be collected
+and published in a volume, one would realize the depth to which the
+standard of intellectual and moral integrity was lowered.[71]
+
+The censorship was retained by the Great Powers during the Conference as
+a sort of soft cushion on which the self-constituted dispensers of Fate
+comfortably reposed. In Paris, where it was particularly severe and
+unreasoning, it protected the secret conclave from the harsh strictures
+of the outside world, concealing from the public, not only the
+incongruities of the Conference, but also many of the warnings of
+contemporary history. In the opinion of unbiased Frenchmen no such
+rigorous, systematic, and short-sighted repression of press liberty had
+been known since the Third Empire as was kept up under the rule of the
+great tribune whose public career had been one continuous campaign
+against every form of coercion. This twofold policy of secrecy on the
+part of the delegates and censorship on the part of the authorities
+proved incongruous as well as dangerous, for, upheld by the eminent
+statesmen who had laid down as part of the new gospel the principle of
+"open covenants openly arrived at," it furnished the world with a fairly
+correct standard by which to interpret the entire phraseology of the
+latter-day reformers. Events showed that only by applying that criterion
+could the worth of their statements of fact and their promises of
+amelioration be gaged. And it soon became clear that most of their
+utterances like that about open covenants were to be construed according
+to the maxim of _lucus a non lucendo_.
+
+It was characteristic of the system that two American citizens were
+employed to read the cablegrams arriving from the United States to
+French newspapers. The object was the suppression of such messages as
+tended to throw doubt on the useful belief that the people of the great
+American Republic were solid behind their President, ready to approve
+his decisions and acts, and that his cherished Covenant, sure of
+ratification, would serve as a safe guarantee to all the states which
+the application of his various principles might leave strategically
+exposed. In this way many interesting items of intelligence from the
+United States were kept out of the newspapers, while others were
+mutilated and almost all were delayed. Protests were unavailing. Nor was
+it until several months were gone by that the French public became aware
+of the existence of a strong current of American opinion which favored a
+critical attitude toward Mr. Wilson's policy and justified misgivings as
+to the finality of his decisions. It was a sorry expedient and an
+unsuccessful one.
+
+On another occasion strenuous efforts are reported to have been made
+through the intermediary of President Wilson to delay the publication in
+the United States of a cablegram to a journal there until the Prime
+Minister of Britain should deliver a speech in the House of Commons. An
+accident balked these exertions and the message appeared.
+
+Publicity was none the less strongly advocated by the plenipotentiaries
+in their speeches and writings. These were as sign-posts pointing to
+roads along which they themselves were incapable of moving. By their own
+accounts they were inveterate enemies of secrecy and censorship. The
+President of the United States had publicly said that he "could not
+conceive of anything more hurtful than the creation of a system of
+censorship that would deprive the people of a free republic such as ours
+of their undeniable right to criticize public officials." M. Clemenceau,
+who suffered more than most publicists from systematic repression, had
+changed the name of his newspaper from the _L'Homme Libre_ to _L'Homme
+Enchaine_, and had passed a severe judgment on "those friends of
+liberty" (the government) who tempered freedom with preventive
+repression measured out according to the mood uppermost at the
+moment.[72] But as soon as he himself became head of the government he
+changed his tactics and called his journal _L'Homme Libre_ again. In
+the Chamber he announced that "publicity for the 'debates' of the
+Conference was generally favored," but in practice he rendered the
+system of gagging the press a byword in Europe. Drawing his own line of
+demarcation between the permissible and the illicit, he informed the
+Chamber that so long as the Conference was engaged on its arduous work
+"it must not be said that the head of one government had put forward a
+proposal which was opposed by the head of another government."[73] As
+though the disagreements, the bickerings, and the serious quarrels of
+the heads of the governments could long be concealed from the peoples
+whose spokesmen they were!
+
+That bargainings went on at the Conference which a plain-dealing world
+ought to be apprised of is the conclusion which every unbiased outsider
+will draw from the singular expedients resorted to for the purpose of
+concealing them. Before the Foreign Relations Committee in Washington,
+State-Secretary Lansing confessed that when, after the treaty had been
+signed, the French Senate called for the minutes of the proceedings on
+the Commission of the League of Nations, President Wilson telegraphed
+from Washington to the Peace Commission requesting it to withhold them.
+He further admitted that the only written report of the discussions in
+existence was left in Paris, outside the jurisdiction of the United
+States Senate. When questioned as to whether, in view of this system of
+concealment, the President's promise of "open covenants openly arrived
+at" could be said to have been honestly redeemed, Mr. Lansing answered,
+"I consider that was carried out."[74] It seems highly probable that in
+the same and only in the same sense will the Treaty and the Covenant be
+carried out in the spirit or the letter.
+
+During the fateful days of the Conference preventive censorship was
+practised with a degree of rigor equaled only by its senselessness. As
+late as the month of June, the columns of the newspapers were checkered
+with blank spaces. "Scarcely a newspaper in Paris appears uncensored at
+present," one press organ wrote. "Some papers protest, but protests are
+in vain."[75]
+
+"Practically not a word as to the nature of the Peace terms that France
+regards as most vital to her existence appears in the French papers this
+morning," complained a journal at the time when even the Germans were
+fully informed of what was being enacted. On one occasion _Bonsoir_ was
+seized for expressing the view that the Treaty embodied an Anglo-Saxon
+peace;[76] on another for reproducing an interview with Marshal Foch
+that had already appeared in a widely circulated Paris newspaper.[77] By
+way of justifying another of these seizures the French censor alleged
+that an article in the paper was deemed uncomplimentary to Mr. Lloyd
+George. The editor replied in a letter to the British Premier affirming
+that there was nothing in the article but what Mr. Lloyd George could
+and should be proud of. In fact, it only commended him "for having
+served the interests of his country most admirably and having had
+precedence given to them over all others." The letter concluded: "We are
+apprehensive that in the whole business there is but one thing truly
+uncomplimentary, and that is that the French censorship, for the purpose
+of strangling the French press, should employ your name, the name of him
+who abolished censorship many weeks ago."[78]
+
+Even when British journalists were dealing with matters as unlikely to
+cause trouble as a description of the historic proceedings at Versailles
+at which the Germans received the Peace Treaty, the censor held back
+their messages, from five o'clock in the afternoon till three the next
+morning.[79] Strange though it may seem, it was at first decided that no
+newspaper-men should be allowed to witness the formal handing of the
+Treaty to the enemy delegates! For it was deemed advisable in the
+interests of the world that even that ceremonial should be secret.[80]
+These singular methods were impressively illustrated and summarized in a
+cartoon representing Mr. Wilson as "The new wrestling champion,"
+throwing down his adversary, the press, whose garb, composed of
+journals, was being scattered in scraps of paper to the floor, and under
+the picture was the legend: "It is forbidden to publish what Marshal
+Foch says. It is forbidden to publish what Mr. George thinks. It is
+forbidden to publish the Treaty of Peace with Germany. It is forbidden
+to publish what happened at ... and to make sure that nothing else will
+be published, the censor systematically delays the transmission of every
+telegram."[81]
+
+In the Chamber the government was adjured to suppress the institution of
+censorship once the Treaty was signed by the Germans, and Ministers were
+reminded of the diatribes which they had pronounced against that
+institution in the years of their ambitions and strivings. In vain
+Deputies described and deplored the process of demoralization that was
+being furthered by the methods of the government. "In the provinces as
+well as in the capital the journals that displease are seized,
+eavesdroppers listen to telephonic conversations, the secrets of private
+letters are violated. Arrangements are made that certain telegrams shall
+arrive too late, and spies are delegated to the most private meetings.
+At a recent gathering of members of the National Press, two spies were
+surprised, and another was discovered at the Federation of the Radical
+Committees of the Oise."[82] But neither the signature of the Treaty nor
+its ratification by Germany occasioned the slightest modification in the
+system of restrictions. Paris continued in a state of siege and the
+censors were the busiest bureaucrats in the capital.
+
+One undesirable result of this regime of keeping the public in the dark
+and indoctrinating it in the views always narrow, and sometimes
+mischievous, which the authorities desired it to hold, was that the
+absurdities which were allowed to appear with the hall-mark of
+censorship were often believed to emanate directly from the government.
+Britons and Americans versed in the books of the New Testament were
+shocked or amused when told that the censor had allowed the following
+passage to appear in an eloquent speech delivered by the ex-Premier, M.
+Painleve: "As Hall Caine, the great American poet, has put it, 'O death,
+where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?'"[83]
+
+Every conceivable precaution was taken against the leakage of
+information respecting what was going on in the Council of Ten.
+Notwithstanding this, the French papers contrived now and again, during
+the first couple of months, to publish scraps of news calculated to
+convey to the public a faint notion of the proceedings, until one day a
+Nationalist organ boldly announced that the British Premier had
+disagreed with the expert commission and with his own colleagues on the
+subject of Dantzig and refused to give way. This paragraph irritated the
+British statesman, who made a scene at the next meeting of the Council.
+"There is," he is reported to have exclaimed, "some one among us here
+who is unmindful of his obligations," and while uttering these and other
+much stronger words he eyed severely a certain mild individual who is
+said to have trembled all over during the philippic. He also launched
+out into a violent diatribe against various French journals which had
+criticized his views on Poland and his method of carrying them in
+council, and he went so far as to threaten to have the Conference
+transferred to a neutral country. In conclusion he demanded an
+investigation into the origin of the leakage of information and the
+adoption of severe disciplinary measures against the journalists who
+published the disclosures.[84] Thenceforward the Council of Ten was
+suspended and its place taken by a smaller and more secret conclave of
+Five, Four, or Three, according as the state of the plenipotentiaries'
+health, the requirements of their home politics, or their relations
+among themselves caused one or two to quit Paris temporarily.
+
+This measure insured relative secrecy, fostered rumors and gossip, and
+rendered criticism, whether helpful or captious, impossible. It also
+drove into outer darkness those Allied states whose interests were
+described as limited, as though the interests of Italy, whose delegate
+was nominally one of the privileged five, were not being treated as more
+limited still. But the point of this last criticism would be blunted if,
+as some French and Italian observers alleged, the deliberate aim of the
+"representatives of the twelve million soldiers" was indeed to enable
+peace to be concluded and the world resettled congruously with the
+conceptions and in harmony with the interests of the Anglo-Saxon
+peoples. But the supposition is gratuitous. There was no such deliberate
+plan. After the establishment of the Council of Five, Mr. Lloyd George
+and Mr. Wilson made short work of the reports of the expert commissions
+whenever these put forward reasoned views differing from their own. In a
+word, they became the world's supreme and secret arbiters without
+ceasing to be the official champions of the freedom of the lesser states
+and of "open covenants openly arrived at." They constituted, so to say,
+the living synthesis of contradictories.
+
+The Council of Five then was a superlatively secret body. No secretaries
+were admitted to its gatherings and no official minutes of its
+proceedings were recorded. Communications were never issued to the
+press. It resembled a gang of benevolent conspirators, whose debates and
+resolutions were swallowed up by darkness and mystery. Even the most
+modest meeting of a provincial taxpayers' association keeps minutes of
+its discussions. The world parliament kept none. Eschewing traditional
+usages, as became naive shapers of the new world, and ignoring history,
+the Five, Four, or Three shut themselves up in a room, talked informally
+and disconnectedly without a common principle, program, or method, and
+separated again without having reached a conclusion. It is said that
+when one put forth an idea, another would comment upon it, a third might
+demur, and that sometimes an appeal would be made to geography, history,
+or ethnography, and as the data were not immediately accessible either
+competent specialists were sent for or the conversation took another
+turn. They very naturally refused to allow these desultory proceedings
+to be put on record, the only concession which they granted to the
+curiosity of future generations being the fixation of their own physical
+features by photography and painting. When the sitting was over,
+therefore, no one could be held to aught that he had said; there was
+nothing to bind any of the individual delegates to the views he had
+expressed, nor was there anything to mark the line to which the Council
+as a whole had advanced. Each one was free to dictate to his secretary
+his recollections of what had gone on, but as these _precis_ were given
+from memory they necessarily differed one from the other on various
+important points. On the following morning, or a few days later, the
+world's workers would meet again, and either begin at the beginning,
+traveling over the same familiar field, or else break fresh ground. In
+this way in one day they are said to have skimmed the problems of
+Spitzbergen, Morocco, Dantzig, and the feeding of the enemy populations,
+leaving each problem where they had found it. The moment the discussion
+of a contentious question approached a climax, the specter of
+disagreement deterred them from pursuing it to a conclusion, and they
+passed on quickly to some other question. And when, after months had
+been spent in these Penelopean labors, definite decisions respecting the
+peace had to be taken lest the impatient people should rise up and wrest
+matters into their own hands, the delegates referred the various
+problems which they had been unable to solve to the wisdom and tact of
+the future League of Nations.
+
+When misunderstandings arose as to what had been said or done it was the
+official translator, M. Paul Mantoux--one of the most brilliant
+representatives of Jewry at the Conference--who was wont to decide, his
+memory being reputed superlatively tenacious. In this way he attained
+the distinction of which his friends are justly proud, of being a living
+record--indeed, the sole available record--of what went on at the
+historic council. He was the recipient and is now the only repository of
+all the secrets of which the plenipotentiaries were so jealous, lest,
+being a kind of knowledge which is in verity power, it should be used
+one day for some dubious purpose. But M. Mantoux enjoyed the esteem and
+confidence not only of Mr. Wilson, but also of the British Prime
+Minister, who, it was generally believed, drew from his entertaining
+narratives and shrewd appreciations whatever information he possessed
+about French politics and politicians. It was currently affirmed that,
+being a man of method and foresight, M. Mantoux committed everything to
+writing for his own behoof. Doubts, however, were entertained and
+publicly expressed as to whether affairs of this magnitude, involving
+the destinies of the world, should have been handled in such secret and
+unbusiness-like fashion. But on the supposition that the general
+outcome, if not the preconceived aim, of the policy of the Anglo-Saxon
+plenipotentiaries was to confer the beneficent hegemony of the world
+upon its peoples, there could, it was argued, be no real danger in the
+procedure followed. For, united, those nations have nothing to fear.
+
+Although the translations were done rapidly, elegantly, and lucidly,
+allegations were made that they lost somewhat by undue compression and
+even by the process of toning down, of which the praiseworthy object was
+to spare delicate susceptibilities. For a limited number of delicate
+susceptibilities were treated considerately by the Conference. A
+defective rendering made a curious impression on the hearers once, when
+a delegate said: "My country, unfortunately, is situated in the midst of
+states which are anything but peace-loving--in fact, the chief danger to
+the peace of Europe emanates from them." M. Mantoux's translation ran,
+"The country represented by M. X. unhappily presents the greatest danger
+to the peace of Europe."
+
+On several occasions passages of the discourses of the plenipotentiaries
+underwent a certain transformation in the well-informed brain of M.
+Mantoux before being done into another language. They were plunged, so
+to say, in the stream of history before their exposure to the light of
+day. This was especially the case with the remarks of the
+English-speaking delegates, some of whom were wont to make extensive use
+of the license taken by their great national poet in matters of
+geography and history. One of them, for example, when alluding to the
+ex-Emperor Franz Josef and his successor, said: "It would be unjust to
+visit the sins of the father on the head of his innocent son. Charles I
+should not be made to suffer for Franz Josef." M. Mantoux rendered the
+sentence, "It would be unjust to visit the sins of the uncle on the
+innocent nephew," and M. Clemenceau, with a merry twinkle in his eye,
+remarked to the ready interpreter, "You will lose your job if you go on
+making these wrong translations."
+
+But those details are interesting, if at all, only as means of eking out
+a mere sketch which can never become a complete and faithful picture. It
+was the desire of the eminent lawgivers that the source of the most
+beneficent reforms chronicled in history should be as well hidden as
+those of the greatest boon bestowed by Providence upon man. And their
+motives appear to have been sound enough.
+
+The pains thus taken to create a haze between themselves and the peoples
+whose implicit confidence they were continuously craving constitute one
+of the most striking ethico-psychological phenomena of the Conference.
+They demanded unreasoning faith as well as blind obedience. Any
+statement, however startling, was expected to carry conviction once it
+bore the official hall-mark. Take, for example, the demand made by the
+Supreme Four to Bela Kuhn to desist from his offensive against the
+Slovaks. The press expressed surprise and disappointment that he, a
+Bolshevist, should have been invited even hypothetically by the "deadly
+enemies of Bolshevism" to delegate representatives to the Paris
+Conference from which the leaders of the Russian constructive elements
+were excluded. Thereupon the Supreme Four, which had taken the step in
+secret, had it denied categorically that such an invitation had been
+issued. The press was put up to state that, far from making such an
+undignified advance, the Council had asserted its authority and
+peremptorily summoned the misdemeanant Kuhn to withdraw his troops
+immediately from Slovakia under heavy pains and penalties.
+
+Subsequently, however, the official correspondence was published, when
+it was seen that the implicit invitation had really been issued and that
+the denial ran directly counter to fact. By this exposure the Council of
+Four, which still sued for the full confidence of their peoples, was
+somewhat embarrassed. This embarrassment was not allayed when what
+purported to be a correct explanation of their action was given out and
+privately circulated by a group which claimed to be initiated. It was
+summarized as follows: "The Israelite, Bela Kuhn, who is leading Hungary
+to destruction, has been heartened by the Supreme Council's indulgent
+message. People are at a loss to understand why, if the Conference
+believes, as it has asserted, that Bolshevism is the greatest scourge of
+latter-day humanity, it ordered the Rumanian troops, when nearing
+Budapest for the purpose of overthrowing it in that stronghold, first to
+halt, and then to withdraw.[85] The clue to the mystery has at last been
+found in a secret arrangement between Kuhn and a certain financial group
+concerning the Banat. About this more will be said later. In one of my
+own cablegrams to the United States I wrote: "People are everywhere
+murmuring and whispering that beneath the surface of things powerful
+undercurrents are flowing which invisibly sway the policy of the secret
+council, and the public believes that this accounts for the sinister
+vacillation and delay of which it complains."[86]
+
+In the fragmentary utterances of the governments and their press organs
+nobody placed the slightest confidence. Their testimony was discredited
+in advance, on grounds which they were unable to weaken. The following
+example is at once amusing and instructive. The French Parliamentary
+Committee of the Budget, having asked the government for communication
+of the section of the Peace Treaty dealing with finances, were told that
+their demand could not be entertained, every clause of the Treaty being
+a state secret. The Committee on Foreign Affairs made a like request,
+with the same results. The entire Chamber next expressed a similar wish,
+which elicited a firm refusal. The French Premier, it should be added,
+alleged a reason which was at least specious. "I should much like," he
+said, "to communicate to you the text you ask for, but I may not do so
+until it has been signed by the President of the Republic. For such is
+the law as embodied in Article 8 of the Constitution." Now nobody
+believed that this was the true ground for his refusal. His explanation,
+however, was construed as a courteous conventionality, and as such was
+accepted. But once alleged, the fiction should have been respected, at
+any rate by its authors. It was not. A few weeks later the Premier
+ordered the publication of the text of the Treaty, although, in the
+meantime, it had not been signed by M. Poincare. "The excuse founded
+upon Article 8 was, therefore, a mere humbug," flippantly wrote an
+influential journal.[87]
+
+An amusing joke, which tickled all Paris was perpetrated shortly
+afterward. The editor of the _Bonsoir_ imported six hundred copies of
+the forbidden Treaty from Switzerland, and sent them as a present to
+the Deputies of the Chamber, whereupon the parliamentary authorities
+posted up a notice informing all Deputies who desired a copy to call at
+the questor's office, where they would receive it gratuitously as a
+present from the _Bonsoir._ Accordingly the Deputies, including the
+Speaker, Deschanel, thronged to the questor's office. Even solemn-faced
+Ministers received a copy of the thick volume which I possessed ever
+since the day it was issued.
+
+Another glaring instance of the lack of straightforwardness which
+vitiated the dealings of the Conference with the public turned upon the
+Bullitt mission to Russia. Mr. Wilson, who in the depths of his heart
+seems to have cherished a vague fondness for the Bolshevists there,
+which he sometimes manifested in utterances that startled the foreigners
+to whom they were addressed, despatched through Colonel House some
+fellow-countrymen of his to Moscow to ask for peace proposals which,
+according to the Moscow government, were drafted by himself and Messrs.
+House and Lansing. Mr. Bullitt, however, who must know, affirms that the
+draft was written by Mr. Lloyd George's secretary, Mr. Philip Kerr, and
+himself and presented to Lenin by Messrs. Bullitt, Steffins, and Petit.
+If the terms of this document should prove acceptable the American
+envoys were empowered to promise that an official invitation to a new
+peace conference would be sent to them as well as to their opponents by
+April 15th. The conditions--eleven in number--with a few slight
+modifications in which the Americans acquiesced--were accepted by the
+dictator, who was bound, however, not to permit their publication. The
+facts remained secret until Mr. Bullitt, thrown over by Mr. Wilson, who
+recoiled from taking the final and decisive step, resigned, and in a
+letter reproduced by the press set forth the reasons for his
+decision.[88]
+
+Now, vague reports that there was such a mission had found its way into
+the Paris newspapers at a relatively early date. But an authoritative
+denial was published without delay. The statement, the public was
+assured, was without foundation. And the public believed the assurance,
+for it was confirmed authoritatively in England. Sir Samuel Hoare, in
+the House of Commons, asked for information about a report that "two
+Americans have recently returned from Russia bringing offers of peace
+from Lenin," and received from Mr. Bonar Law this noteworthy reply: "I
+have said already that there is not the shadow of foundation for this
+information, otherwise I would have known it. Moreover, I have
+communicated with Mr. Lloyd George in Paris, who also declares that he
+knows nothing about the matter."[89] _E pur si muove_. Mr. Lloyd George
+knew nothing about President Wilson's determination to have the Covenant
+inserted in the Peace Treaty, even after the announcement was published
+to the world by the Havas Agency, and the confirmation given to pressmen
+by Lord Robert Cecil. The system of reticence and concealment, coupled
+with the indifference of this or that delegation to questions in which
+it happened to take no special interest, led to these unseemly air-tight
+compartments.
+
+From this rank soil of secrecy, repression, and unveracity sprang
+noxious weeds. False reports and mendacious insinuations were launched,
+spread, and credited, impairing such prestige as the Conference still
+enjoyed, while the fragmentary announcements ventured on now and again
+by the delegates, in sheer self-defense, were summarily dismissed as
+"eye-wash" for the public.
+
+For a time the disharmony between words and deeds passed unnoticed by
+the bulk of the masses, who were edified by the one and unacquainted
+with the other. But gradually the lack of consistency in policy and of
+manly straightforwardness and moral wholeness in method became apparent
+to all and produced untoward consequences. Mr. Wilson, whose authority
+and influence were supposed to be paramount, came in for the lion's
+share of criticism, except in the Polish policy of the Conference, which
+was traced to Mr. Lloyd George and his unofficial prompters. The
+American press was the most censorious of all. One American journal
+appearing in Paris gave utterance to the following comments on the
+President's role:[90]
+
+     President Wilson is conscious of his power of persuasion. That
+     power enables him to say one thing, do another, describe the act as
+     conforming to the idea, and, with act and idea in exact
+     contradiction to each other, convince the people, not only that he
+     has been consistent throughout, but that his act cannot be altered
+     without peril to the nation and danger to the world.
+
+     We do not know which Mr. Wilson to follow--the Mr. Wilson who says
+     he will not do a thing or the Mr. Wilson who does that precise
+     thing.
+
+     A great many Americans have one fixed idea. That idea is that the
+     President is the only magnanimous, clear-visioned, broad-minded
+     statesman in the United States, or the entire world, for that
+     matter.
+
+     When he uses his powers of persuasion Americans become as the
+     children of Hamelin Town. Inasmuch as Mr. Wilson of the word and
+     Mr. Wilson of the deed seem at times to be two distinct identities,
+     some of his most enthusiastic supporters for the League of Nations,
+     being unfortunately gifted with memory and perception, are fairly
+     standing on their heads in dismay.
+
+And yet Mr. Wilson himself was a victim of the policy of reticence and
+concealment to which the Great Powers were incurably addicted. At the
+time when they were moving heaven and earth to induce him to break with
+Germany and enter the war, they withheld from him the existence of their
+secret treaties. Possibly it may not be thought fair to apply the test
+of ethical fastidiousness to their method of bringing the United States
+to their side and to their unwillingness to run the risk of alienating
+the President. But it appears that until the close of hostility the
+secret was kept inviolate, nor was it until Mr. Wilson reached the
+shores of Europe for the purpose of executing his project that he was
+faced with the huge obstacles to his scheme arising out of those
+far-reaching commitments. With this depressing revelation and the
+British _non possumus_ to his demand for the freedom of the seas, Mr.
+Wilson's practical difficulties began. It was probably on that occasion
+that he resolved, seeing that he could not obtain everything he wanted,
+to content himself with the best he could get. And that was not a
+society of peoples, but a rough approximation to the hegemony of the
+Anglo-Saxon nations.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[70] The French Minister of Finances made this the cornerstone of his
+policy and declared that the indemnity to be paid by the vanquished
+Teutons would enable him to set the finances of France on a permanently
+sound basis. In view of this expectation new taxation was eschewed.
+
+[71] A selection of the untruths published in the French press during
+the war has been reproduced by the Paris journal, _Bonsoir_. It contains
+abundant pabulum for the cynic and valuable data for the psychologist.
+The example might be followed in Great Britain. The title is:
+"Anthologie du Bourrage de Crane." It began in the month of July, 1919.
+
+[72] Cf. _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), June 2, 1919.
+
+[73] Cf. _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), January 17, 1919.
+
+[74] Cf. _The Chicago Tribune_, August 27, 1919.
+
+[75] Cf. _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), June 10, 1919.
+
+[76] Cf. _Bonsoir_, June 20, 1919.
+
+[77] On April 27th.
+
+[78] _Bonsoir_, June 21, 1919.
+
+[79] _The New York Herald_, May 15. 1919.
+
+[80] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), May 3,1919.
+
+[81] _The New York Herald_, June 6, 1919.
+
+[82] Cf. _Le Matin_, July 9, 1919. The chief speakers alluded to were
+MM. Renaudel, Deshayes, Lafont, Paul Meunier, Vandame.
+
+[83] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), April 29, 1919.
+
+[84] Quoted in the Paris _Temps_ of March 28,1919.
+
+[85] This explanation deals exclusively with the first advance of the
+Rumanian army into Hungary.
+
+[86] Cabled to _The Public Ledger_ of Philadelphia, April 20,1919.
+
+[87] _Bonsoir_, June 21, 1919.
+
+[88] Cf. _The Daily News_, July 5,1919. _L'Humanite_, July 8, 1919.
+
+[89] Cf. _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), April 4, 1919.
+
+[90] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), July 31, 1919.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+AIMS AND METHODS
+
+
+The policy of the Anglo-Saxon plenipotentiaries was never put into
+words. For that reason it has to be judged by their acts, despite the
+circumstance that these were determined by motives which varied greatly
+at different times, and so far as one can conjecture were not often
+practical corollaries of fundamental principles. From these acts one may
+draw a few conclusions which will enable us to reconstruct such policy
+as there was. One is that none of the sacrifices imposed upon the
+members of the League of Nations was obligatory on the Anglo-Saxon
+peoples. These were beyond the reach of all the new canons which might
+clash with their interests or run counter to their aspirations. They
+were the givers and administrators of the saving law rather than its
+observers. Consequently they were free to hold all that was theirs,
+however doubtful their title; nay, they were besought to accept a good
+deal more under the mandatory system, which was molded on their own
+methods of governance. It was especially taken for granted that the
+architects would be called to contribute naught to the new structure but
+their ideas, and that they need renounce none of their possessions,
+however shady its origin, however galling to the population its
+retention. It was in deference to this implicit doctrine that President
+Wilson withdrew without protest or discussion his demand for the freedom
+of the seas, on which he had been wont to lay such stress.
+
+Another way of putting the matter is this. The principal aim of the
+Conference was to create conditions favorable to the progress of
+civilization on new lines. And the seed-bearers of true, as
+distinguished from spurious, civilization and culture being the
+Anglo-Saxons, it is the realization of their broad conceptions, the
+furtherance of their beneficent strivings, that are most conducive to
+that ulterior aim. The men of this race in the widest sense of the term
+are, therefore, so to say, independent ends in themselves, whereas the
+other peoples are to be utilized as means. Hence the difference of
+treatment meted out to the two categories. In the latter were implicitly
+included Italy and Russia. Unquestionably the influence of
+Anglo-Saxondom is eminently beneficial. It tends to bring the rights and
+the dignity as well as the duties of humanity into broad day. The
+farther it extends by natural growth, therefore, the better for the
+human race. The Anglo-Saxon mode of administering colonies, for
+instance, is exemplary, and for this reason was deemed worthy to receive
+the hall-mark of the Conference as one of the institutions of the future
+League. But even benefits may be transformed into evils if imposed by
+force.
+
+That, in brief, would seem to be the clue--one can hardly speak of any
+systematic conception--to the unordered improvisations and incongruous
+decisions of the Conference.
+
+I am not now concerned to discuss whether this unformulated maxim, which
+had strong roots that may not always have reached the realm of
+consciousness, calls for approval as an instrument of ethico-political
+progress or connotes an impoverishment of the aims originally propounded
+by Mr. Wilson. Excellent reasons may be assigned why the two
+English-speaking statesmen proceeded without deliberation on these lines
+and no other. The matter might have been raised to a higher plane, but
+for that the delegates were not prepared. All that one need retain at
+present is the orientation of the Supreme Council, inasmuch as it
+imparts a sort of relative unity to seemingly heterogeneous acts. Thus,
+although the conditions of the Peace Treaty in many respects ran
+directly counter to the provisions of the Covenant, none the less the
+ultimate tendency of both was to converge in a distant point, which,
+when clearly discerned, will turn out to be the moral guidance of the
+world by Anglo-Saxondom as represented at any rate in the incipient
+stage by both its branches. Thus the discussions among the members of
+the Conference were in last analysis not contests about mere
+abstractions. Beneath the high-sounding principles and far-resonant
+reforms which were propounded but not realized lurked concrete racial
+strivings which a patriotic temper and robust faith might easily
+identify with the highest interests of humanity.
+
+When the future historian defines, as he probably will, the main result
+of the Conference's labors as a tendency to place the spiritual and
+political direction of the world in the hands of the Anglo-Saxon race,
+it is essential to a correct view of things that he should not regard
+this trend as the outcome of a deliberate concerted policy. It was
+anything but this. Nobody who conversed with the statesmen before and
+during the Conference could detect any sure tokens of such ultimate
+aims, nor, indeed, of a thorough understanding of the lesser problems to
+be settled. Circumstance led, and the statesmen followed. The historian
+may term the process drift, and the humanitarian regret that such
+momentous issues should ever have been submitted to a body of uninformed
+politicians out of touch with the people for whose behoof they claimed
+to be legislating. To liquidate the war should have been the first, as
+it was the most urgent, task. But it was complicated, adjourned, and
+finally botched by interweaving it with a mutilated scheme for the
+complete readjustment of the politico-social forces of the planet. The
+result was a tangled skein of problems, most of them still unsolved, and
+some insoluble by governments alone. Out of the confusion of clashing
+forces towered aloft the two dominant Powers who command the economic
+resources of the world, and whose democratic institutions and internal
+ordering are unquestionably more conducive to the large humanitarian end
+than those of any other, and gradually their overlordship of the world
+began to assert itself. But this tendency was not the outcome of
+deliberate endeavor. Each representative of those vast states was
+solicitous in the first place about the future of his own country, and
+then about the regeneration of the human race. One would like to be able
+to add that all were wholly inaccessible to the promptings of party
+interests and personal ambitions.
+
+Planlessness naturally characterized the exertions of the Anglo-Saxon
+delegates from start to finish. It is a racial trait. Their hosts, who
+were experts in the traditions of diplomacy, had before the opening of
+the Conference prepared a plan for their behoof, which at the lowest
+estimate would have connoted a vast improvement on their own desultory
+way of proceeding. The French proposed to distribute all the preparatory
+work among eighteen commissions, leaving to the chief plenipotentiaries
+the requisite time to arrange preliminaries and become acquainted with
+the essential elements of the problems. But Messrs. Wilson and Lloyd
+George are said to have preferred their informal conversations,
+involving the loss of three and a half months, during which no results
+were reached in Paris, while turmoil, bloodshed, and hunger fed the
+smoldering fires of discontent throughout the World.
+
+The British Premier, like his French colleague, was solicitous chiefly
+about making peace with the enemy and redeeming as far as possible his
+election pledges to his supporters. To that end everything else would
+appear to have been subordinated. To the ambitious project of a world
+reform he and M. Clemenceau gave what was currently construed as a
+nominal assent, but for a long time they had no inkling of Mr. Wilson's
+intention to interweave the peace conditions with the Covenant. So far,
+indeed, were they both from entertaining the notion that the two
+Premiers expressly denied--and allowed their denial to be circulated in
+the press--that the two documents were or could be made mutually
+interdependent. M. Pichon assured a group of journalists that no such
+intention was harbored.[91] Mr. Lloyd George is understood to have gone
+farther and to have asked what degree of relevancy a Covenant for the
+members of the League could be supposed to possess to a treaty concluded
+with a nation which for the time being was denied admission to that
+sodality. And as we saw, he was incurious enough not to read the
+narrative of what had been done by his own American colleagues even
+after the Havas Agency announced it.
+
+To President Wilson, on the other hand, the League was the _magnum opus_
+of his life. It was to be the crown of his political career, to mark the
+attainment of an end toward which all that was best in the human race
+had for centuries been consciously or unconsciously wending without
+moving perceptibly nearer. Instinctively he must have felt that the
+Laodicean support given to him by his colleagues would not carry him
+much farther and that their fervor would speedily evaporate once the
+Conference broke up and their own special aims were definitely achieved
+or missed. With the shrewdness of an experienced politician he grasped
+the fact that if he was ever to present his Covenant to the world
+clothed with the authority of the mightiest states, now was his
+opportunity. After the Conference it would be too late. And the only
+contrivance by which he could surely reckon on success was to insert the
+Covenant in the Peace Treaty and set before his colleagues an
+irresistible incentive for elaborating both at the same time.
+
+He had an additional motive for these tactics in the attitude of a
+section of his own countrymen. Before starting for Paris he had, as we
+saw, made an appeal to the electorate to return to the legislature only
+candidates of his own party to the exclusion of Republicans, and the
+result fell out contrary to his expectations. Thereupon the oppositional
+elements increased in numbers and displayed a marked combative
+disposition. Even moderate Republicans complained in terms akin to those
+employed by ex-President Taft of Mr. Wilson's "partizan exclusion of
+Republicans in dealing with the highly important matter of settling the
+results of the war. He solicited a commission in which the Republicans
+had no representation and in which there were no prominent Americans of
+any real experience and leadership of public opinion."[92]
+
+The leaders of this opposition sharply watched the policy of the
+President at the Conference and made no secret of their resolve to
+utilize any serious slip as a handle for revising or rejecting the
+outcome of his labors. Seeing his cherished cause thus trembling in the
+scale, Mr. Wilson hit upon the expedient of linking the Covenant with
+the Peace Treaty and making of the two an inseparable whole. He
+announced this determination in a forcible speech[93] to his own
+countrymen, in which he said, "When the Treaty comes back, gentlemen on
+this side will find the Covenant not only in it, but so many threads of
+the Treaty tied to the Covenant that you cannot dissect the Covenant
+from the Treaty without destroying the whole vital structure." This
+scheme was denounced by Mr. Wilson's opponents as a trick, but the
+historian will remember it as a maneuver, which, however blameless or
+meritorious its motive, was fraught with lamentable consequences for all
+the peoples for whose interests the President was sincerely solicitous.
+To take but one example. The misgivings generated by the Covenant
+delayed the ratification of the Peace Treaty by the United States
+Senate, in consequence of which the Turkish problem had to be postponed
+until the Washington government was authorized to accept or compelled to
+refuse a mandate for the Sultan's dominions, and in the meanwhile mass
+massacres of Greeks and Armenians were organized anew.
+
+A large section of the press and the majority of the delegates strongly
+condemned the interpolation of the Covenant. What they demanded was
+first the conclusion of a solid peace and then the establishment of
+suitable international safeguards. For to be safeguarded, peace must
+first exist. "A suit of armor without the warrior inside is but a
+useless ornament," wrote one of the American journals.[94]
+
+But the course advocated by Mr. Wilson was open to another direct and
+telling objection. Peace between the belligerent adversaries was, in the
+circumstances, conceivable only on the old lines of strategic frontiers
+and military guaranties. The Supreme Council implied as much in its
+official reply to the criticisms offered by the Austrians to the
+conditions imposed on them, making the admission that Italy's new
+northern frontiers were determined by considerations of strategy. The
+plan for the governance of the world by a league of pacific peoples, on
+the other hand, postulated the abolition of war preparations, including
+strategic frontiers. Consequently the more satisfactory the Treaty the
+more unfavorable would be the outlook for the moral reconstitution of
+the family of nations, and _vice versa_. And to interlace the two would
+be to necessitate a compromise which would necessarily mar both.
+
+In effect the split among the delegates respecting their aims and
+interests led to a tacit understanding among the leaders on the basis of
+give-and-take, the French and British acquiescing in Mr. Wilson's
+measures for working out his Covenant--the draft of which was
+contributed by the British--and the President, giving way to them on
+matters said to affect their countries' vital interests. How smoothly
+this method worked when great issues were not at stake may be inferred
+from the perfunctory way in which it was decided that the Kaiser's trial
+should take place in London. A few days before the Treaty was signed
+there was a pause in the proceedings of the Supreme Council during which
+the secretary was searching for a mislaid document. Mr. Lloyd George,
+looking up casually and without addressing any one in particular,
+remarked, "I suppose none of you has any objection to the Kaiser being
+tried in London?" M. Clemenceau shrugged his shoulders, Mr. Wilson
+raised his hand, and the matter was assumed to be settled. Nothing more
+was said or written on the subject. But when the news was announced,
+after the President's departure from France, it took the other American
+delegates by surprise and they disclaimed all knowledge of any such
+decision. On inquiry, however, they learned that the venue had in truth
+been fixed in this offhand way.[95]
+
+Mr. Wilson found it a hard task at first to obtain acceptance for his
+ill-defined tenets by France, who declined to accept the protection of
+his League of Nations in lieu of strategic frontiers and military
+guaranties. Insurmountable obstacles barred his way. The French
+government and people, while moved by decent respect for their American
+benefactors[96] to assent to the establishment of a league, flatly
+refused to trust themselves to its protection against Teuton aggression.
+But they were quite prepared to second Mr. Wilson's endeavors to oblige
+some of the other states to content themselves with the guaranties it
+offered, only, however, on condition that their own country was first
+safeguarded in the traditional way. Territorial equilibrium and military
+protection were the imperative provisos on which they insisted. And as
+France was specially favored by Mr. Wilson on sentimental grounds which
+outweighed his doctrine, and as she was also considered indispensable to
+the Anglo-Saxon peoples as their continental executive, she had no
+difficulty in securing their support. On this point, too, therefore, the
+President found himself constrained to give way. And only did he abandon
+his humanitarian intentions and his strongest arguments to be lightly
+brushed aside, he actually recoiled so far into the camp of his
+opponents that he gave his approval to an indefensible clause in the
+Treaty which would have handed over to France the German population of
+the Saar as the equivalent of a certain sum in gold. Coming from the
+world-reformer who, a short time before, had hurled the thunderbolts of
+his oratory against those who would barter human beings as chattels,
+this amazing compromise connoted a strange falling off. Incidentally it
+was destructive of all faith in the spirit that had actuated his
+world-crusade. It also went far to convince unbiased observers that the
+only framework of ideas with decisive reference to which Mr. Wilson
+considered every project and every objection as it arose, was that which
+centered round his own goal--the establishment, if not of a league of
+nations cemented by brotherhood and fellowship, at least of the nearest
+approach to that which he could secure, even though it fell far short of
+the original design. These were the first-fruits of the interweaving of
+the Covenant with the Treaty.
+
+In view of this readiness to split differences and sacrifice principles
+to expediency it became impossible even to the least observant of Mr.
+Wilson's adherents in the Old World to cling any longer to the belief
+that his cosmic policy was inspired by firm intellectual attachment to
+the sublime ideas of which he had made himself the eloquent exponent and
+had been expected to make himself the uncompromising champion. In every
+such surrender to the Great Powers, as in every stern enforcement of his
+principles on the lesser states, the same practical spirit of the
+professional politician visibly asserted itself. One can hardly acquit
+him of having lacked the moral courage to disregard the veto of
+interested statesmen and governments and to appeal directly to the
+peoples when the consequence of this attitude would have been the
+sacrifice of the makeshift of a Covenant which he was ultimately content
+to accept as a substitute for the complete reinstatement of nations in
+their rights and dignity.
+
+The general tendency of the labors of the Conference then was shaped by
+those two practical maxims, the immunity of the Anglo-Saxon peoples and
+of their French ally from the restrictions to be imposed by the new
+politico-social ordering in so far as these ran counter to their
+national interests, and the determination of the American President to
+get and accept such a league of nations as was feasible under extremely
+inauspicious conditions and to content himself with that.
+
+To this estimate exception may be taken on the ground that it underrates
+an effort which, however insufficient, was well meant and did at any
+rate point the way to a just resettlement of secular problems which the
+war had made pressing and that it fails to take account of the
+formidable obstacles encountered. The answer is, that like efforts had
+proceeded more than once before from rulers of men whose will, seeing
+that they were credited with possessing the requisite power, was assumed
+to be adequate to the accomplishment of their aim, and that they had led
+to nothing. The two Tsars, Alexander I at the Congress of Vienna, and
+Nicholas II at the first Conference of The Hague, are instructive
+instances. They also, like Mr. Wilson, it is assumed, would fain have
+inaugurated a golden age of international right and moral fellowship if
+verbal exhortations and arguments could have done it. The only kind of
+fresh attempt, which after the failure of those two experiments could
+fairly lay claim to universal sympathy, was one which should withdraw
+the proposed politico-social rearrangement from the domain alike of
+rhetoric and of empiricism and substitute a thorough systematic reform
+covering all the aspects of international intercourse, including all the
+civilized peoples on the globe, harmonizing the vital interests of these
+and setting up adequate machinery to deal with the needs of this
+enlarged and unified state system. And it would be fruitless to seek for
+this in Mr. Wilson's handiwork. Indeed, it is hardly too much to affirm
+that empiricism and opportunism were among the principal characteristics
+of his policy in Paris, and that the outcome was what it must be.
+
+Disputes and delays being inevitable, the Conference began its work at
+leisure and was forced to terminate it in hot haste. Having spent months
+chaffering, making compromises, and unmaking them again while the
+peoples of the world were kept in painful suspense, all of them
+condemned to incur ruinous expenditure and some to wage sanguinary wars,
+the springs of industrial and commercial activity being kept sealed, the
+delegates, menaced by outbreaks, revolts, and mutinies, began, after
+months had been wasted, to speed up and get through their work without
+adequate deliberation. They imagined that they could make up for the
+errors of hesitancy and ignorance by moments of lightning-like
+improvisation. Improvisation and haphazard conclusions were among their
+chronic failings. Even in the early days of the Conference they had
+promulgated decisions, the import and bearings of which they missed, and
+when possible they canceled them again. Sometimes, however, the error
+committed was irreparable. The fate reserved for Austria was a case in
+point. By some curious process of reasoning it was found to be not
+incompatible with the Wilsonian doctrine that German-Austria should be
+forbidden to throw in her lot with the German Republic, this prohibition
+being in the interest of France, who could not brook a powerful united
+Teuton state. The wishes of the Austrian-Germans and the principle of
+self-determination accordingly went for nothing. The representations of
+Italy, who pleaded for that principle, were likewise brushed aside.
+
+But what the delegates appear to have overlooked was the decisive
+circumstance that they had already "on strategic grounds" assigned the
+Brenner line to Italy and together with it two hundred and twenty
+thousand Tyrolese of German race living in a compact mass--although a
+much smaller alien element was deemed a bar to annexation in the case of
+Poland. And what was more to the point, this allotment deprived Tyrol of
+an independent economic existence, cutting it off from the southern
+valley and making it tributary to Bavaria. Mr. Wilson, the public was
+credibly informed, "took this grave decision without having gone deeply
+into the matter, and he repents it bitterly. None the less, he can no
+longer go back."[97]
+
+Just as Tyrol's loss of Botzen and Meran made it dependent on Bavaria,
+so the severance of Vienna from southern Moravia--- the source of its
+cereal supplies, situated at a distance of only thirty-six
+miles--transformed the Austrian capital into a head without a body. But
+on the eminent anatomists who were to perform a variety of unprecedented
+operations on other states, this spectacle had no deterrent effect.
+
+Whenever a topic came up for discussion which could not be solved
+offhand, it was referred to a commission, and in many cases the
+commission was assisted by a mission which proceeded to the country
+concerned and within a few weeks returned with data which were assumed
+to supply materials enough for a decision, even though most of its
+members were unacquainted with the language of the people whose
+condition they had been studying. How quick of apprehension these envoys
+were supposed to be may be inferred from the task with which the
+American mission under General Harbord was charged, and the space of
+time accorded him for achieving it. The members of this mission started
+from Brest in the last decade of August for the Caucasus, making a stay
+at Constantinople on the way, and were due back in Paris early in
+October. During the few intervening weeks "the mission," General Harbord
+said, "will go into every phase of the situation, political, racial,
+economic, financial, and commercial. I shall also investigate highways,
+harbors, agricultural and mining conditions, the question of raising an
+Armenian army, policing problems, and the raw materials of Armenia."[98]
+Only specialists who have some practical acquaintanceship with the
+Caucasus, its conditions, peoples, languages, and problems, can
+appreciate the herculean effort needed to tackle intelligently any one
+of the many subjects all of which this improvised commission under a
+military general undertook to master in four weeks. Never was a chaotic
+world set right and reformed at such a bewildering pace.
+
+Bad blood was caused by the distribution of places on the various
+commissions. The delegates of the lesser nations, deeming themselves
+badly treated, protested vehemently, and for a time passion ran high.
+Squabbles of this nature, intensified by fierce discussions within the
+Council, tidings of which reached the ears of the public outside,
+disheartened those who were anxious for the speedy restoration of normal
+conditions in a world that was fast decomposing. But the optimism of the
+three principal plenipotentiaries was beyond the reach of the most
+depressing stumbles and reverses. Their buoyant temper may be gaged from
+Mr. Balfour's words, reported in the press: "It is true that there is a
+good deal of discussion going on, but there is no real discord about
+ideas or facts. We are agreed on the principal questions and there only
+remains to find the words that embody the agreements."[99] These tidings
+were welcomed at the time, because whatever defects were ascribed to the
+distinguished statesmen of the Conference by faultfinders, a lack of
+words was assuredly not among them. This cheery outlook on the future
+reminded me of the better grounded composure of Pope Pius IX during the
+stormy proceedings at the Vatican Council. A layman, having expressed
+his disquietude at the unruly behavior of the prelates, the Pontiff
+replied that it had ever been thus at ecclesiastical councils. "At the
+outset," he went on to explain, "the members behave as men, wrangle and
+quarrel, and nothing that they say or do is worth much. That is the
+first act. The second is ushered in by the devil, who intensifies the
+disorder and muddles things bewilderingly. But happily there is always a
+third act in which the Holy Ghost descends and arranges everything for
+the best."
+
+The first two phases of the Conference's proceedings bore a strong
+resemblance to the Pope's description, but as, unlike ecclesiastical
+councils, it had no claim to infallibility, and therefore no third act,
+the consequences to the world were deplorable. The Supreme Council never
+knew how to deal with an emergency and every week unexpected incidents
+in the world outside were calling for prompt action. Frequently it
+contradicted itself within the span of a few days, and sometimes at one
+and the same time its principal representatives found themselves in
+complete opposition to one another. To give but one example: In April M.
+Clemenceau was asked whether he approved the project of relieving
+famine-stricken Russia. His answer was affirmative, and he signed the
+document authorizing it. His colleagues, Messrs. Wilson, Lloyd George,
+and Orlando, followed suit, and the matter seemed to be settled
+definitely. But at the same time Mr. Hoover, who had been the ardent
+advocate of the plan, officially received a letter from the French
+Minister of Foreign Affairs signifying the refusal of the French
+government to acquiesce in it.[100] On another occasion[101] the Supreme
+Council thought fit to despatch a mission to Asia Minor in order to
+ascertain the views of the populations of Syria and Mesopotamia on the
+regime best suited to them. France, whose secular relations with Syria,
+where she maintains admirable educational establishments, are said to
+have endeared her to the population, objected to this expedient as
+superfluous and mischievous. Superfluous because the Francophil
+sentiments of the people are supposed to be beyond all doubt, and
+mischievous because plebiscites or substitutes for plebiscites could
+have only a bolshevizing effect on Orientals. Seemingly yielding to
+these considerations, the Supreme Council abandoned the scheme and the
+members of the mission made other plans.[102] After several weeks'
+further reflection, however, the original idea was carried out, and the
+mission visited the East.
+
+The reader may be glad of a momentary glimpse of the interior of the
+historic assembly afforded by those who were privileged to play a part
+in it before it was transformed into a secret conclave of five, four, or
+three. Within the doors of the chambers whence fateful decrees were
+issued to the four corners of the earth the delegates were seated,
+mostly according to their native languages, within earshot of the
+special pleaders. M. Clemenceau, at the head of the table, has before
+him a delegate charged with conducting the case, say, of Greece, Poland,
+Serbia, or Czechslovakia. The delegate, standing in front of the stern
+but mobile Premier, and encircled by other more or less attentive
+plenipotentiaries, looks like a nervous schoolboy appearing before
+exacting examiners, struggling with difficult questions and eager to
+answer them satisfactorily. Suppose the first language spoken is French.
+As many of the plenipotentiaries do not understand it, they cannot be
+blamed for relaxing attention while it is being employed, and keeping up
+a desultory conversation among themselves in idiomatic English, which
+forms a running bass accompaniment to the voice, often finely modulated,
+of the orator. Owing to this embarrassing language difficulty, as soon
+as a delegate pauses to take his breath, his arguments and appeals are
+done by M. Mantoux into English, and then it is the turn of the French
+plenipotentiaries to indulge in a quiet chat until some question is put
+in English, which has forthwith to be rendered into French, after which
+the French reply is translated into English, and so on unendingly, each
+group resuming its interrupted conversations alternately.
+
+One delegate who passed several hours undergoing this ordeal said that
+he felt wholly out of sympathy with the atmosphere at the Conference
+Hall, adding: "While arguing or appealing to my country's arbiters I
+felt I was addressing only a minority of the distinguished judges, while
+the thoughts of the others were far away. And when the interpreter was
+rendering, quickly, mechanically, and summarily, my ideas without any of
+the explosive passion that shot them from my heart, I felt discouraged.
+But suddenly it dawned on me that no judgment would be uttered on the
+strength of anything that I had said or left unsaid. I remembered that
+everything would be referred to a commission, and from that to a
+sub-commission, then back again to the distinguished plenipotentiaries,"
+
+Another delegate remarked: "Many years have elapsed since I passed my
+last examination, but it came back to me in all its vividness when I
+walked up to Premier Clemenceau and looked into his restless, flashing
+eyes. I said to myself: When last I was examined I was painfully
+conscious that my professors knew a lot more about the subject than I
+did, but now I am painfully aware that they know hardly anything at all
+and I am fervently desirous of teaching them. The task is arduous. It
+might, however, save time and labor if the delegates would receive our
+typewritten dissertations, read them quietly in their respective hotels,
+and endeavor to form a judgment on the data they supply. Failing that,
+I should like at least to provide them with a criterion of truth, for
+after me will come an opponent who will flatly contradict me, and how
+can they sift truth from error when the winnow is wanting? It is hard to
+feel that one is in the presence of great satraps of destiny, but I made
+an act of faith in the possibilities of genial quantities lurking behind
+those everyday faces and of a sort of magic power of calling into being
+new relations of peace and fellowship between individual classes and
+peoples. It was an act of faith."
+
+If the members of the Supreme Council lacked the graces with which to
+draw their humbler colleagues and were incapable of according
+hospitality to any of the more or less revolutionary ideas floating in
+the air, they were also utterly powerless to enforce their behests in
+eastern Europe against serious opposition. Thus, although they kept
+considerable Inter-Allied forces in Germany, they failed to impose their
+decrees there, notwithstanding the circumstance that Germany was
+disorganized, nearly disarmed, and distracted by internal feuds. The
+Conference gave way when Germany refused to let the Polish troops
+disembark at Dantzig, although it had proclaimed its resolve to insist
+on their using that port. It allowed Odessa to be evacuated and its
+inhabitants to be decimated by the bloodthirsty Bolsheviki. It ordered
+the Ukrainians and the Poles to cease hostilities,[103] but hostilities
+went on for months afterward. An American general was despatched to the
+warring peoples to put an end to the fighting, but he returned
+despondent, leaving things as he had found them. General Smuts was sent
+to Budapest to strike up an agreement with Kuhn and the Magyar
+Bolshevists, but he, too, came back after a fruitless conversation. The
+Supreme Council's writ ran in none of those places.
+
+About March 19th the Inter-Allied commission gave Erzberger twenty-four
+hours in which to ratify the convention between Germany and Poland and
+to carry out the conditions of the armistice. But Erzberger declined to
+ratify it and the Allies were unable or unwilling to impose their will
+on him. From this state of things the Rumanian delegates drew the
+obvious corollary. Exasperated by the treatment they received, they
+quitted the Conference, pursued their own policy, occupied Budapest,
+presented their own peace conditions to Hungary, and relegated, with
+courteous phrases and a polite bow to the Council, the directions
+elaborated for their guidance to the region of pious counsels.
+
+In these ways the well-meant and well-advertised endeavors to substitute
+a moral relationship of nations for the state of latent warfare known as
+the balance of power were steadily wasted. On the one side the subtle
+skill of Old World diplomacy was toiling hard and successfully to revive
+under specious names its lost and failing causes, while on the other
+hand the New World policy, naively ignoring historical forces and
+secular prejudices, was boldly reaching out toward rough and ready modes
+of arranging things and taking no account of concrete circumstances.
+Generous idealists were thus pitted against old diplomatic stagers and
+both secretly strove to conclude hastily driven bargains outside the
+Council chamber with their opponents. As early as the first days of
+January I was present at some informal meetings where such transactions
+were being talked over, and I afterward gave it as my impression that
+"if things go forward as they are moving to-day the outcome will fall
+far short of reasonable expectations. The first striking difference
+between the transatlantic idealists and the Old World politicians lies
+in their different ways of appreciating expeditiousness, on the one
+hand, and the bases of the European state-system, on the other hand. A
+statesman when dealing with urgent, especially revolutionary,
+emergencies should never take his eyes from the clock. The politicians
+in Paris hardly ever take account of time or opportunity. The overseas
+reformers contend that the territorial and political balance of forces
+has utterly broken down and must be definitely scrapped in favor of a
+league of nations, and the diplomatists hold that the principle of
+equilibrium, far from having spent its force, still affords the only
+groundwork of international stability and requires to be further
+intensified."[104]
+
+Living in the very center of the busy world of destiny-weavers, who were
+generously, if unavailingly, devoting time and labor to the fabrication
+of machinery for the good government of the entire human race out of
+scanty and not wholly suitable materials, a historian in presence of the
+manifold conflicting forces at work would have found it difficult to
+survey them all and set the daily incidents and particular questions in
+correct perspective. The earnestness and good-will of the
+plenipotentiaries were highly praiseworthy and they themselves, as we
+saw, were most hopeful. Nearly all the delegates were characterized by
+the spirit of compromise, so valuable in vulgar politics, but so
+perilous in embodying ideals. Anxious to reach unanimous decisions even
+when unanimity was lacking, the principal statesmen boldly had recourse
+to ingenious formulas and provisional agreements, which each party might
+construe in its own way, and paid scant attention to what was going on
+outside. I wrote at the time:[105]
+
+"But parallel with the Conference and the daily lectures which its
+members are receiving on geography, ethnography, and history there are
+other councils at work, some publicly, others privately, which represent
+the vast masses who are in a greater hurry than the political world to
+have their urgent wants supplied. For they are the millions of Europe's
+inhabitants who care little about strategic frontiers and much about
+life's necessaries which they find it increasingly difficult to obtain.
+Only a visitor from a remote planet could fully realize the significance
+of the bewildering phenomena that meet one's gaze here every day without
+exciting wonder.... The sprightly people who form the rind of the
+politico-social world ... are wont to launch winged words and coin witty
+epigrams when characterizing what they irreverently term the efforts of
+the Peace Conference to square the circle; they contrast the noble
+intentions of the delegates with the grim realities of the workaday
+world, which appear to mock their praiseworthy exertions. They say that
+there never were so many wars as during the deliberations of these
+famous men of peace. Hard fighting is going on in Siberia; victories and
+defeats have just been reported from the Caucasus; battles between
+Bolshevists and peace-lovers are raging in Esthonia; blood is flowing in
+streams in the Ukraine; Poles and Czechs have only now signed an
+agreement to sheath swords until the Conference announces its verdict;
+the Poles and the Germans, the Poles and the Ukrainians, the Poles and
+the Bolshevists, are still decimating each other's forces on territorial
+fragments of what was once Russia, Germany, or Austria."
+
+Sinister rumors were spread from time to time in Paris, London, and
+elsewhere, which, wherever they were credited, tended to shake public
+confidence not only in the dealings of the Supreme Council with the
+smaller countries, but also in the nature of the occult influences that
+were believed to be occasionally causing its decisions to swerve from
+the orthodox direction. And these reports were believed by many even in
+Conference circles. Time and again I was visited by delegates
+complaining that this or that decision was or would be taken in response
+to the promptings not of land-grabbing governments, but of wealthy
+capitalists or enterprising captains of industry. "Why do you suppose
+that there is so much talk now of an independent little state centering
+around Klagenfurt?" one of them asked me. "I will tell you: for the sake
+of some avaricious capitalists. Already arrangements are being pushed
+forward for the establishment of a bank of which most of the shares are
+to belong to X." Another said: "Dantzig is needed for
+politico-commercial reasons. Therefore it will not be made part of
+Poland.[106] Already conversations have begun with a view to giving the
+ownership of the wharves and various lucrative concessions to
+English-speaking pioneers of industry. If the city were Polish no such
+liens could be held on it because the state would provide everything
+needful and exploit its resources." The part played in the Banat
+Republic by motives of a money-making character is described elsewhere.
+
+A friend and adviser of President Wilson publicly affirmed that the
+Fiume problem was twice on the point of being settled satisfactorily for
+all parties, when the representatives of commercial interests cleverly
+interposed their influence and prevented the scheme from going through
+in the Conference. I met some individuals who had been sent on a secret
+mission to have certain subjects taken into consideration by the Supreme
+Council, and a man was introduced to me whose aim was to obtain through
+the Conference a modification of financial legislation respecting the
+repayment of debts in a certain republic of South America. This
+optimist, however, returned as he had come and had nothing to show for
+his plans. The following significant passage appeared in a leading
+article in the principal American journal published in Paris[107] on the
+subject of the Prinkipo project and the postponement of its execution:
+
+"From other sources it was learned that the doubts and delays in the
+matter are not due so much to the declination [_sic_] of several of the
+Russian groups to participate in a conference with the Bolshevists, but
+to the pulling against one another of the several interests represented
+by the Allies. Among the Americans a certain very influential group
+backed by powerful financial interests which hold enormously rich oil,
+mining, railway, and timber concessions, obtained under the old regime,
+and which purposes obtaining further concessions, is strongly in favor
+of recognizing the Bolshevists as a _de facto_ government. In
+consideration of the _visa_ of these old concessions by Lenin and
+Trotzky and the grant of new rights for the exploitation of rich mineral
+territory, they would be willing to finance the Bolshevists to the tune
+of forty or fifty million dollars. And the Bolshevists are surely in
+need of money. President Wilson and his supporters, it is declared, are
+decidedly averse from this pretty scheme."
+
+That President Wilson would naturally set his face against any such
+deliberate compromise between Mammon and lofty ideals it was superfluous
+to affirm. He stood for a vast and beneficent reform and by exhorting
+the world to embody it in institutions awakened in some people--in the
+masses were already stirring--thoughts and feelings that might long have
+remained dormant. But beyond this he did not go. His tendencies, or,
+say, rather velleities--for they proved to be hardly more--were
+excellent, but he contrived no mechanism by which to convert them into
+institutions, and when pressed by gainsayers abandoned them.
+
+An economist of mark in France whose democratic principles are well
+known[108] communicated to the French public the gist of certain curious
+documents in his possession. They let in an unpleasant light on some of
+the whippers-up of lucre at the expense of principle, who flocked around
+the dwelling-places of the great continent-carvers and lawgivers in
+Paris. His article bears this repellent heading: "Is it true that
+English and American financiers negotiated during the war in order to
+secure lucrative concessions from the Bolsheviki? Is it true that these
+concessions were granted to them on February 4, 1919? Is it true that
+the Allied governments played into their hands?"[109]
+
+The facts alleged as warrants for these questions are briefly as
+follows: On February 4, 1919, the Soviet of the People's Commissaries in
+Moscow voted the bestowal of a concession for a railway linking
+Ob-Kotlass-Saroka and Kotlass-Svanka, in a resolution which states "(1)
+that the project is feasible; (2) that the transfer of the concession to
+representatives of foreign capital may be effected if production will be
+augmented thereby; (3) that the execution of this scheme is
+indispensable; and (4) that in order to accelerate this solution of the
+question the persons desirous of obtaining the concession shall be
+obliged to _produce proofs of their contact with Allied_ and neutral
+enterprises, and of their capacity to financing the work and supply the
+materials requisite for the construction of the said line." On the other
+hand, it appears from an _official_ document bearing the date of June
+26, 1918, that a demand for the concession of this line was lodged by
+two individuals--the painter A.A. Borissoff (who many years ago received
+from me a letter of introduction to President Roosevelt asking him to
+patronize this gentleman's exhibition of paintings in the United
+States), and Herr Edvard Hannevig. Desirous of ascertaining whether
+these petitioners possessed the qualifications demanded, the Bolshevist
+authorities made inquiries and received from the Royal Norwegian
+Consulate at Moscow a certificate[110] setting forth that "citizen
+Hannevig was a co-associate of the large banks Hannevig situated in
+London and in America." Consequently negotiations might go forward. The
+document adds: "In October Borissoff and Hannevig renewed their request,
+whereupon the journals _Pravda_, _Izevestia_, and _Ekonomitsheskaya
+Shizn_ discussed the subject with animation. At a sitting held on
+October 12th the project was approved with certain modifications, and on
+February 1, 1919, the Supreme Soviet of National Economy approved it
+anew."
+
+The magnitude of the concession may be inferred from the circumstance
+that one of its clauses conceded "_the exploitation of eight millions of
+forest land_ which even to-day, _despite existing conditions, can bring
+in a revenue of three hundred million rubles a year_."
+
+What it comes to, therefore, assuming that these official documents are
+as they seem, based on facts, is that from June 26th, that is to say
+during the war, the Bolshevist government was petitioned to accord an
+important railway concession and also the exploitation of a forest
+capable of yielding three hundred million rubles a year to a Russian
+citizen who alleged that he was acting on behalf of English and American
+capitalists, and that Edvard Hannevig, having proved that he was really
+the mandatory of these great allied financiers, the concession was
+first approved by two successive commissions[111] and then definitely
+conferred by the Soviet of the People's Commissaries.[112]
+
+The eminent author of the article proceeds to ask whether this can
+indeed be true; whether English and American capitalists petitioned the
+Bolsheviki for vast concessions during the war; whether they obtained
+them while the Conference was at its work and soldiers of their
+respective countries were fighting in Russia against the Bolsheviki who
+were bestowing them. "Is it true," he makes bold to ask further, "that
+that is the explanation of the incredible friendliness displayed by the
+Allied governments toward the Bolshevist bandits with whom they were
+willing to strike up a compromise, whom they were minded to recognize by
+organizing a conference on the Princes' Island?... Many times already
+rank-smelling whiffs of air have blown upon us; they suggested the
+belief that behind the Peace Conference there lurked not merely what
+people feared, but something still worse or an immense political Panama.
+If this is not true, gentlemen, deny it. Otherwise one day you will
+surely have an explosion."[113]
+
+Whether these grave innuendoes, together with the statement made by Mr.
+George Herron,[114] the incident of the Banat Republic and the
+ultimatum respecting the oil-fields unofficially presented to the
+Rumanians suffice to establish a _prima facie_ case may safely be left
+to the judgment of the public. The conscientious and impartial
+historian, however firm his faith in the probity of the men representing
+the powers, both of unlimited and limited interests, cannot pass them
+over in silence.
+
+One of the shrewdest delegates in Paris, a man who allowed himself to be
+breathed upon freely by the old spirit of nationalism, but was capable
+withal of appreciating the passionate enthusiasm of others for a more
+altruistic dispensation, addressed me one evening as follows: "Say what
+you will, the Secret Council is a Council of Two, and the Covenant a
+charter conferred upon the English-speaking peoples for the government
+of the world. The design--if it be a design--may be excellent, but it is
+not relished by the other peoples. It is a less odious hegemony than
+that of imperialist Germany would have been, but it is a hegemony and
+odious. Surely in a quest of this kind after the most effectual means of
+overcoming the difficulties and obviating the dangers of international
+intercourse, more even than in the choice of a political regime, the
+principle of self-determination should be allowed free play. Was that
+not to have been one of the choicest fruits of victory? But no; force is
+being set in motion, professedly for the good of all, but only as their
+good is understood by the 'all-powerful Two.' And to all the others it
+is force and nothing more. Is it to be wondered at that there are so
+many discontented people or that some of them are already casting about
+for an alternative to the Anglo-Saxon hegemony misnamed the Society of
+Nations?"
+
+It cannot be gainsaid that the two predominant partners behaved
+throughout as benevolent despots, to whom despotism came more easily
+than benevolence. As we saw, they kept their colleagues of the lesser
+states as much in the dark as the general public and claimed from them
+also implicit obedience to all their behests. They went farther and
+demanded unreasoning acquiescence in decisions to be taken in the
+future, and a promise of prompt acceptance of their injunctions--a
+pretension such as was never before put forward outside the Catholic
+Church, which, at any rate, claims infallibility. Asked why he had not
+put up a better fight for one of the states of eastern Europe, a
+sharp-tongued delegate irreverently made answer, "What more could you
+expect than I did, seeing that I was opposed by one colleague who looks
+upon himself as Napoleon and by another who believes himself to be the
+Messiah."
+
+Among the many epigrammatic sayings current in Paris about the
+Conference, the most original was ascribed to the Emir Faissal, the son
+of the King of the Hedjaz. Asked what he thought of the world's
+areopagus, he is said to have answered: "It reminds me somewhat of one
+of the sights of my own country. My country, as you know, is the desert.
+Caravans pass through it that may be likened to the armies of delegates
+and experts at the Conference--caravans of great camels solemnly
+trudging along one after the other, each bearing its own load. They all
+move not whither they will, but whither they are led. For they have no
+choice. But between the two there is this difference: that whereas the
+big caravan in the desert has but one leader--a little ass--the
+Conference in Paris is led by two delegates who are the great Ones of
+the earth." In effect, the leaders were two, and no one can say which
+of them had the upper hand. Now it seemed to be the British Premier, now
+the American President. The former scored the first victory, on the
+freedom of the seas, before the Conference opened. The latter won the
+next, when Mr. Wilson firmly insisted on inserting the Covenant in the
+Treaty and finally overrode the objections of Mr. Lloyd George and M.
+Clemenceau, who scouted the idea for a while as calculated to impair the
+value of both charters. There was also a moment when the two were
+reported to have had a serious disagreement and Mr. Lloyd George, having
+suddenly quitted Paris for rustic seclusion, was likened to Achilles
+sulking in his tent. But one of the two always gave way at the last
+moment, just as both had given way to M. Clemenceau at the outset. When
+the difference between Japan and China cropped up, for example, the
+other delegates made Mr. Wilson their spokesman. Despite M. Clemenceau's
+resolve that the public should not "be apprized that the head of one
+government had ever put forward a proposal which was opposed by the head
+of another government," it became known that they occasionally disagreed
+among themselves, were more than once on the point of separating, and
+that at best their unanimity was often of the verbal order, failing to
+take root in identity of views. To those who would fain predicate
+political tact or statesmanship of the men who thus undertook to set
+human progress on a new and ethical basis, the story of these
+bickerings, hasty improvisations, and amazing compromises is
+distressing. The incertitude and suspense that resulted were
+disconcerting. Nobody ever knew what was coming. A subcommission might
+deliver a reasoned judgment on the question submitted to it, and this
+might be unanimously confirmed by the commission, but the Four or Three
+or Two or even One could not merely quash the report, but also reverse
+the practical consequences that followed. This was done over and over
+again.
+
+And there were other performances still more amazing. When, for example,
+the Polish problem became so pressing that it could not be safely
+postponed any longer, the first delegates were at their wits' ends.
+Unable to agree on any of the solutions mooted, they conceived the idea
+of obtaining further data and a lead from a special commission. The
+commission was accordingly appointed. Among its members were Sir Esme
+Howard, who has since become Ambassador in Rome, the American General
+Kernan, and M. Noulens, the ex-Ambassador of France in Petrograd. These
+envoys and their colleagues set out for Poland to study the problem on
+the spot. They exerted themselves to the utmost to gather data for a
+serious judgment, and returned to Paris after a sojourn of some two
+months, legitimately proud of the copious and well-sifted results of
+their research. And then they waited. Days passed and weeks, but nobody
+took the slightest interest in the envoys. They were ignored. At last
+the chief of the commission, M. Noulens, taking the initiative, wrote
+direct to M. Clemenceau, informing him that the task intrusted to him
+and his colleagues had been achieved, and requesting to be permitted to
+make their report to the Conference. The reply was an order dissolving
+the commission unheard.
+
+Once when the relations between Messrs. Wilson and Lloyd George were
+somewhat spiced by antagonism of purpose and incompatibility of methods,
+a political friend of the latter urged him to make a firm stand. But the
+British Premier, feeling, perhaps, that there were too many
+unascertained elements in the matter, or identifying the President with
+the United States, drew back. More than once, too, when a certain
+delegate was stating his case with incisive emphasis Mr. Wilson, who
+was listening with attention and in silence, would suddenly ask, "Is
+this an ultimatum?" The American President himself never shrank from
+presenting an ultimatum when sure of his ground and morally certain of
+victory. On one such occasion a proposal had been made to Mr. Lloyd
+George, who approved it whole-heartedly. But it failed to receive the
+_placet_ of the American statesman. Thereupon the British Premier was
+strongly urged to stand firm. But he recoiled, his plea being that he
+had received an ultimatum from his American colleague, who spoke of
+quitting France and withdrawing the American troops unless the point
+were conceded. And Mr. Wilson had his way. One might have thought that
+this success would hearten the President to other and greater
+achievements. But the leader who incarnated in his own person the
+highest strivings of the age, and who seemed destined to acquire
+pontifical ascendancy in a regenerated world, lacked the energy to hold
+his own when matters of greater moment and high principle were at stake.
+
+These battles waged within the walls of the palace on the Quai d'Orsay
+were discussed out-of-doors by an interested and watchful public, and
+the conviction was profound and widespread that the President, having
+set his hand to the plow so solemnly and publicly, and having promised a
+harvest of far-reaching reforms, would not look back, however
+intractable the ground and however meager the crop. But confronted with
+serious obstacles, he flinched from his task, and therein, to my
+thinking, lay his weakness. If he had come prepared to assert his
+personal responsibility, to unfold his scheme, to have it amply and
+publicly discussed, to reject pusillanimous compromise in the sphere of
+execution, and to appeal to the peoples of the world to help him to
+carry it out, the last phase of his policy would have been worthy of
+the first, and might conceivably have inaugurated the triumph of the
+ideas which the indolent and the men of little faith rejected as
+incapable of realization. To this hardy course, which would have
+challenged the approbation of all that is best in the world, there was
+an alternative: Mr. Wilson might have confessed that his judgment was at
+fault, mankind not being for the moment in a fitting mood to practise
+the new tenets, that a speedy peace with the enemy was the first and
+most pressing duty, and that a world-parliament should be convened for a
+later date to prepare the peoples of the universe for the new ordering.
+But he chose neither alternative. At first it was taken for granted that
+in the twilight of the Conference hall he had fought valiantly for the
+principles which he had propounded as the groundwork of the new
+politico-social fabric, and that it was only when he found himself
+confronted with the insuperable antagonism of his colleagues of France
+and Britain that he reluctantly receded from his position and resolved
+to show himself all the more unbending to the envoys of the lesser
+countries. But this assumption was refuted by State-Secretary Lansing,
+who admitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the
+President's Fourteen Points, which he had vowed to carry out, were not
+even discussed at the Conference. The outcome of this attitude--one
+cannot term it a policy--was to leave the best of the ideas which he
+stood for in solution, to embitter every ally except France and Britain,
+and to scatter explosives all over the world.
+
+To this dwarfing parliamentary view of world-policy Mr. Lloyd George
+likewise fell a victim. But his fault was not so glaring. For it should
+in fairness be remembered that it was not he who first preached the
+advent of the millennium. He had only given it a tardy and cold assent,
+qualified by an occasional sally of keen pleasantry. Down to the last
+moment, as we saw, he not only was unaware that the Covenant would be
+inserted in the Peace Treaty, but he was strongly of the opinion, as
+indeed were M. Pichon and others, that the two instruments were
+incompatible. He also apparently inclined to the belief that spiritual
+and moral agencies, if not wholly impotent to bring about the requisite
+changes in the politico-social world, could not effect the
+transformation for a long while to come, and that in the interval it
+behooved the governments to fall back upon the old system of so-called
+equilibrium, which, after Germany's collapse, meant an informal kind of
+Anglo-Saxon overlordship of the world and a _pax Britannica_ in Europe.
+As for his action at the Conference, in so far as it did not directly
+affect the well-being of the British Empire, which was his first and
+main care, one might describe it as one of general agreement with Mr.
+Wilson. He actually threw it into that formula when he said that
+whenever the interests of the British Empire permitted he would like to
+find himself at one with the United States. It was on that occasion that
+the person addressed warned him against identifying the President with
+the people of the United States.
+
+In truth, it was difficult to follow the distinguished American
+idealist, because one seldom knew whither he would lead. Neither,
+apparently, did he himself. Some of his own countrymen in Paris held
+that he had always been accustomed to follow, never to guide. Certainly
+at the Conference his practice was to meet the more powerful of his
+contradictors on their own ground and come to terms with them, so as to
+get at least a part of what he aimed at, and that he accepted, even when
+the instalment was accorded to him not as such, but as a final
+settlement. So far as one can judge by his public acts and by the
+admissions of State-Secretary Lansing, he cannot have seriously
+contemplated staking the success of his mission on the realization of
+his Fourteen Points. The manner in which he dealt with his Covenant,
+with the French demand for concrete military guaranties and with secret
+treaties, all afford striking illustrations of his easy temper. Before
+quitting Paris for Washington he had maintained that the Covenant as
+drafted was satisfactory, nay, he contended that "not even a period
+could be changed in the agreement." The Monroe Doctrine, he held, needed
+no special stipulation. But as soon as Senator Lodge and others took
+issue with him on the subject, he shifted his position and hedged that
+doctrine round with defenses which cut off a whole continent from the
+purview of the League, which is nothing if not cosmic in its
+functions.[115] Again, there was to be no alliance. The French Premier
+foretold that there would be one. Mr. Wilson, who was in England at the
+time, answered him in a speech declaring that the United States would
+enter into no alliance which did not include all the world: "no
+combination of power which is not a combination of all of us." Well,
+since then he became a party to a kind of triple alliance and in the
+judgment of many observers it constitutes the main result of the
+Conference. In the words of an American press organ: "Clemenceau got
+virtually everything he asked. President Wilson virtually dropped his
+own program, and adopted the French and British, both of them
+imperialistic."[116]
+
+Again, when the first commission of experts reported upon the frontiers
+of Poland, the British Premier objected to a section of the "corridor,"
+on the ground that as certain districts contained a majority of Germans
+their annexation would be a danger to the future peace and therefore to
+Poland herself, and also on the ground that it would run counter to one
+of Mr. Wilson's fundamental points; the President, who at that time
+dissented from Mr. Lloyd George, rose and remarked that his principles
+must not be construed too literally. "When I said that Poland must be
+restored, I meant that everything indispensable to her restoration must
+be accorded. Therefore, if that should involve the incorporation of a
+number of Germans in Polish territory, it cannot be helped, for it is
+part of the restoration. Poland must have access to the sea by the
+shortest route, and everything else which that implies." None the less,
+the British Premier, whose attitude toward the claims of the Poles was
+marked by a degree of definiteness and persistency which could hardly be
+anticipated in one who had never even heard of Teschen before the year
+1919, maintained his objections with emphasis and insistence, until Mr.
+Wilson and M. Clemenceau gave in.
+
+Or take the President's way of dealing with the non-belligerent states.
+Before leaving Paris for Washington, Mr. Wilson, officially questioned
+by one of his colleagues at an official sitting as to whether the
+neutrals would also sign the Covenant, replied that only the Allies
+would be admitted to affix their signatures. "Don't you think it would
+be more conducive to the firm establishment of the League if the
+neutrals were also made parties to it now?" insisted the
+plenipotentiary. "No, I do not," answered the President. "I think that
+it would be conferring too much honor on them, and they don't deserve
+it." The delegate was unfavorably impressed by this reply. It seemed
+lacking in breadth of view. Still, it was tenable on certain narrow,
+formal grounds. But what he could not digest was the eagerness with
+which Mr. Wilson, on his return from Washington, abandoned his way of
+thinking and adopted the opposite view. Toward the end of April the
+delegates and the world were surprised to learn that not only would
+Spain be admitted to the orthodox fold, but that she would have a voice
+in the management of the flock with a seat in the Council. The chief of
+the Portuguese delegation[117] at once delivered a trenchant protest
+against this abrupt departure from principle, and as a jurisconsult
+stigmatized the promotion of Spain to a voice in the Council as an
+irregularity, and then retired in high dudgeon.
+
+Thus the grave reproach cannot be spared Mr. Wilson of having been weak,
+vague, and inconsistent with himself. He constituted himself the supreme
+judge of a series of intricate questions affecting the organization and
+tranquillity of the European Continent, as he had previously done in the
+case of Mexico, with the results we know. This authority was accorded to
+him--with certain reservations--in virtue of the exalted position which
+he held in a state disposing of vast financial and economic resources,
+shielded from some of the dangers that continually overhang European
+nations, and immune from the immediate consequences of the mistakes it
+might commit in international politics. For every continental people in
+Europe is in some measure dependent on the good-will of the United
+States, and therefore anxious to deserve it by cultivating the most
+friendly relations with its chief. This predisposition on the part of
+his wards was an asset that could have been put to good account. It was
+a guaranty of a measure of success which would have satisfied a generous
+ambition; it would have enabled him to effect by a wise policy what
+revolution threatened to accomplish by violence, and to canalize and
+lead to fruitful fields the new-found strength of the proletarian
+masses.
+
+The compulsion of working with others is often a wholesome corrective.
+It helps one to realize the need of accommodating measures to people's
+needs. But Mr. Wilson deliberately segregated himself from the nations
+for whose behoof he was laboring, and from some of their authorized
+representatives. And yet the aspirations and conceptions of a large
+section of the masses differed very considerably from those of the two
+statesmen with whom he was in close collaboration. His avowed aims were
+at the opposite pole to those of his colleagues. To reconcile
+internationalism and nationalism was sheer impossible. Yet instead of
+upholding his own, taking the peoples into his confidence, and sowing
+the good seed which would certainly have sprouted up in the fullness of
+time, he set himself, together with his colleagues, to weld
+contradictories and contributed to produce a synthesis composed of
+disembodied ideas, disintegrated communities, embittered nations,
+conflicting states, frenzied classes, and a seething mass of discontent
+throughout the world.
+
+Mr. Wilson has fared ill with his critics, who, when in quest of
+explanations of his changeful courses, sought for them, as is the wont
+of the average politician, in the least noble parts of human nature. In
+his case they felt especially repelled by his imperial aloofness, the
+secrecy of his deliberations, and the magisterial tone of his judgments,
+even when these were in flagrant contradiction with one another.
+Obstinacy was also included among the traits which were commonly
+ascribed to him. As a matter of fact he was a very good listener, an
+intelligent questioner, and amenable to argument whenever he felt free
+to give practical effect to the conclusions. When this was not the case,
+arguments necessarily failed of their effect, and on these occasions
+considerations of expediency proved a lever sufficient to sway his
+decision. But, like his more distinguished colleagues, he had to rely
+upon counsel from outside, and in his case, as in theirs, the official
+adviser was not always identical with the real prompter. He, too, as we
+saw, set aside the findings of the commissions when they disagreed with
+his own. In a word, Mr. Wilson's fatal stumble was to have sacrificed
+essentials in order to score on issues of secondary moment; for while
+success enabled him to obtain his paper Covenant from his co-delegates
+in Paris, and to bring back tangible results to Washington, it lost him
+the leadership of the world. The cost of this deplorable weakness to
+mankind can be estimated only after its worst effects have been added up
+and appraised.
+
+In matters affecting the destinies of the lesser states Mr. Wilson was
+firm as a rock. Prom the position once taken up nothing could move him.
+Their economic dependence on his own country rendered their arguments
+pointless and lent irresistible force to his injunctions. Greece's
+dispute with Bulgaria was a classic instance. The Bulgars repaired to
+Paris more as claimants in support of indefeasible rights than as
+vanquished enemies summoned to learn the conditions imposed on them by
+the nations which they had betrayed and assailed. Victory alone could
+have justified their territorial pretensions; defeat made them
+grotesque. All at once, however, it was bruited abroad that President
+Wilson had become Bulgaria's intercessor and favored certain of her
+exorbitant claims. One of these was for the annexation of part of the
+coast of western Thrace, together with a seaport at the expense of the
+Greeks, the race which had resided on the seaboard for twenty-five
+hundred consecutive years. M. Venizelos offered them instead one
+commercial outlet[118] and special privileges in another, and the
+plenipotentiaries of Great Britain, France, and Japan considered the
+offer adequate.
+
+But Mr. Wilson demurred. A commercial outlet through foreign territory,
+he said, might possibly be as good as a direct outlet through one's own
+territory in peace-time, but not in time of war, and, after all, one
+must bear in mind the needs of a country during hostilities. In the
+mouth of the champion of universal peace that was an unexpected
+argument. It had been employed by Italy in favor of her claim to Fiume.
+Mr. Wilson then met it by invoking the economic requirements of
+Jugoslavia, and by declaring that the Treaty was being devised for
+peace, not for war, that the League of Nations would hinder wars, or at
+the very least supply the deficiencies of those states which had
+sacrificed strategical positions for humanitarian aims. But in the case
+of Bulgaria he was taking what seems the opposite position and
+transgressing his own principle of nationality in order to maintain it.
+
+Mr. Wilson, pursuing his line of argument, further pointed out that the
+Supreme Council had not accepted as sufficient for Poland an outlet
+through German territory, but had created the city-state of Dantzig in
+order to confer a greater degree of security upon the Polish republic.
+To that M. Venizelos replied that there was no parity between the two
+instances. Poland had no outlet to the sea except through Dantzig, and
+could not, therefore, allow that one to remain in the hands of an
+unfriendly nation, whereas Bulgaria already possessed two very
+commodious ports, Varna and Burgas, on the Black Sea, which becomes a
+free sea in virtue of the internationalization of the straits. The
+possession of a third outlet on the AEgean could not, therefore, be
+termed a vital question for his protegee. Thus the comparison with
+Poland was irrelevant.
+
+If Poland, which is a very much greater state than Bulgaria, can live
+and prosper with a single port, and that not her own--if Rumania, which
+is also a much more numerous and powerful nation, can thrive with a
+single issue to the sea, by what line of argument, M. Venizelos asked,
+can one prove that little Bulgaria requires three or four exits, and
+that her need justifies the abandonment to her tender mercies of seven
+hundred and fifty thousand Greeks and the violation of one of the
+fundamental principles underlying the new moral ordering.
+
+Compliance with Bulgaria's demand would prevent Greece from including
+within her boundaries the three-quarters of a million Greeks who have
+dwelt in Thrace for twenty-five centuries, preserving their nationality
+intact through countless disasters and tremendous cataclysms. Further,
+the Greek Premier, taking a leaf from Wilson's book, turned to the
+aspect which the problem would assume in war-time. Bulgaria, he argued,
+is essentially a continental state, whose defense does not depend upon
+naval strength, whereas Greece contains an island population of nearly a
+million and a half and looks for protection against aggression chiefly
+to naval precautions. In case of war, Bulgaria, if her claim to an issue
+on the AEgean were allowed, could with her submarines delay or hinder the
+transport and concentration in Macedonia of Greek forces from the
+islands and thus place Greece in a position of dangerous inferiority.
+
+Lastly, if Greece's claims in Thrace were rejected, she would have a
+population of 1,790,000 souls outside her national boundaries--that is
+to say, more than one-third of the population which is within her state.
+Would this be fair? Of the total population of Bulgarian and Turkish
+Thrace the Turks and Greeks together form 85 per cent., the Bulgars only
+6 per cent., and the latter nowhere in compact masses. Moreover--and
+this ought to have clinched the matter--the Hellenic population formed
+an absolute as well as a relative majority in the year 1919.
+
+These arguments and various other considerations drawn from the
+inordinate ambitions, the savage cruelty,[119] and the Punic faith of
+the Bulgars convinced the British, French, and Japanese delegates of the
+soundness of Greece's pleas, and they sided with M. Venizelos. But Mr.
+Wilson clung to his idea with a tenacity which could not be justified by
+argument, and was concurrently explained by motives irrelevant to the
+merits of the case. Whether the influence of Bulgarophil American
+missionaries and strong religious leanings were at the root of his
+insistence, as was generally assumed, or whether other considerations
+weighed with him, is immaterial. And yet it is worth recording that a
+Bulgarian journal[120] announced with the permission of the governmental
+censor that the American missionaries in Bulgaria and the professors of
+Robert College of Constantinople had so primed the American delegates at
+the Conference on the question of Thrace, and generally on the Bulgarian
+problem, that all M. Venizelos's pains to convince them of the justice
+of his contention would be lost labor."[121]
+
+However this may be, Mr. Wilson's attitude was the subject of adverse
+comment throughout Europe. His implied claim to legislate for the world
+and to take over its moral leadership earned for him the epithet of
+"Dictator," and provoked such epigrammatic comments among his own
+countrymen and the French as this: "Louis XIV said, 'I am the state!'
+Mr. Wilson, outdoing him, exclaimed, 'I am all the states!'"
+
+The necessity of winning over dissentient colleagues to his grandiose
+scheme of world reorganization and of satisfying their demands, which
+were of a nature to render that scheme abortive, was the most
+influential agency in impairing his energies and upsetting his plans.
+This remark assumes what unhappily seems a fact, that those plans were
+mainly mechanical. It is certain that they made no provision for
+directly influencing the masses, for giving them sympathetic guidance,
+and enabling them to suffuse with social sentiments the aspirations and
+strivings which were chiefly of the materialistic order, with a view to
+bringing about a spiritual transformation of the social basis. Indeed we
+have no evidence that the need of such a transformation of the basis of
+political thought, which was still rooted in the old order, was grasped
+by any of those who set their hand to the legislative part of the work.
+
+These unfavorable impressions were general. Almost every step
+subsequently taken by the Conference confirmed them, and long before the
+Treaty was presented to the Germans, public confidence was gone in the
+ability of the Supreme Council to attain any of the moral victories over
+militarism, race-hatred, and secret intrigues which its leaders had
+encouraged the world to expect.
+
+"The leaders of the Conference," wrote an influential press organ,[122]
+"are under suspicion. They may not know it, but it is true. The
+suspicion is doubtless unjust, but it exists. What exists is a fact; and
+men who ignore facts are not statesmen. The only way to deal with facts
+is to face them. The more unpleasant they are the more they need to be
+faced.
+
+"Some of the Conference leaders are suspected of having, at various
+times and in various circumstances, thought more of their own personal
+and political positions and ambitions than of the rapid and practical
+making of peace. They are suspected, in a word, of a tendency to
+subordinate policy to politics.
+
+"In regard to some important matters they are suspected of having no
+policy. They are also suspected of unwillingness to listen to their own
+competent advisers, who could lay down for them a sound policy. Some of
+them are even suspected of being under the spell of some benumbing
+influence that paralyzes their will and befogs their minds, when high
+resolve and clear visions are needful."
+
+Another accusation of the same tenor was thus formulated: "In various
+degrees[123] and with different qualities of guilt all the Allied and
+Associated leaders have dallied with dishonesty. While professing to
+seek naught save the welfare of mankind, they have harbored thoughts of
+self-interest. The result has been a progressive loss of faith in them
+by their own peoples severally, and by the Allied, Associated, and
+neutral peoples jointly. The tide of public trust in them has reached
+its lowest ebb."
+
+At the Conference, as we saw, the President of the United States
+possessed what was practically a veto on nearly all matters which left
+the vital interests of Britain and France intact. And he frequently
+exercised it. Thus the dispute about the Thracian settlement lay not
+between Bulgaria and Greece, nor between Greece and the Supreme Council,
+but between Greece and Mr. Wilson. In the quarrel over Fiume and the
+Dalmatian coast it was the same. When the Shantung question came up for
+settlement it was Mr. Wilson alone who dealt with it, his colleagues,
+although bound by their promises to support Japan, having made him their
+mouthpiece. The rigor he displayed in dealing with some of the smaller
+countries was in inverse ratio to the indulgence he practised toward the
+Great Powers. Not only were they peremptorily bidden to obey without
+discussion the behests which had been brought to their cognizance, but
+they were ordered, as we saw, to promise to execute other injunctions
+which might be issued by the Supreme Council on certain matters in the
+future, the details of which were necessarily undetermined.
+
+In order to stifle any velleities of resistance on the part of their
+governments, they were notified that America's economic aid, of which
+they were in sore need, would depend on their docility. It is important
+to remember that it was the motive thus clearly presented that
+determined their formal assent to a policy which they deprecated. A
+Russian statesman summed up the situation in the words: "It is an
+illustration of one of our sayings, 'Whose bread I eat, his songs I
+sing.'" Thus it was reported in July that an agreement come to by the
+financial group Morgan with an Italian syndicate for a yearly advance to
+Italy of a large sum for the purchase of American food and raw stuffs
+was kept in abeyance until the Italian delegation should accept such a
+solution of the Adriatic problem as Mr. Wilson could approve. The
+Russian and anti-Bolshevists were in like manner compelled to give their
+assent to certain democratic dogmas and practices. It is also fair,
+however, to bear in mind that whatever one may think of the wisdom of
+the policy pursued by the President toward these peoples, the motives
+that actuated it were unquestionably admirable, and the end in view was
+their own welfare, as he understood it. It is all the more to be
+regretted that neither the arguments nor the example of the autocratic
+delegates were calculated to give these the slightest influence over the
+thought or the unfettered action of their unwilling wards. The
+arrangements carried out were entirely mechanical.
+
+In the course of time after the vital interests of Britain, France, and
+Japan had been disposed of, and only those of the "lesser states," in
+the more comprehensive sense of this term, remained, President Wilson
+exercised supreme power, wielding it with firmness and encountering no
+gainsayer. Thus the peace between Italy and Austria was put off from
+month to month because he--and only he--among the members of the Supreme
+Council rejected the various projects of an arrangement. Into the merits
+of this dispute it would be unfruitful to enter. That there was much to
+be said for Mr. Wilson's contention, from the point of view of the
+League of Nations, and also from that of the Jugoslavs, will not be
+denied. That some of the main arguments to which he trusted his case
+were invalidated by the concessions which he had made to other countries
+was Italy's contention, and it cannot be thrust aside as untenable.
+
+At last Mr. Wilson ventured on a step which challenged the attention and
+stirred the disquietude of his friends. He despatched a note[124] to
+Turkey, warning her that if the massacres of Armenians were not
+discontinued he would withdraw the twelfth of his Fourteen Points, which
+provides for the maintenance of Turkish sovereignty over undeniable
+Turkish territories. The intention was excellent, but the necessary
+effects of his action were contrary to what the President can have aimed
+at. He had not consulted the Conference on the important change which he
+was about to make respecting a point which was supposed to be part of
+the groundwork of the new ordering. This from the Conference point of
+view was a momentous decision, which could be taken only with the
+consent of the Supreme Council. Even as a mere threat it was worthless
+if it did not stand for the deliberate will of that body which the
+President had deemed it superfluous to consult. As it happened, the
+British authorities were just then organizing a body of gendarmes to
+police the Turkish territories in question, and they were engaged in
+this work with the knowledge and approval of the Supreme Council. Mr.
+Wilson's announcement could therefore only be construed--and was
+construed--as the act of an authority superior to that of the
+Council.[125] The Turks, who are shrewd observers, must have drawn the
+obvious conclusion from these divergent measures as to the degree of
+harmony prevailing among the Allied and Associated Powers.
+
+M. Clemenceau had a conversation on the subject with Mr. Polk, who
+explained that the note was informal and given verbally, and conveyed
+the idea only of one nation in connection with the Armenian situation.
+This explanation, accepted by the French government, did not commend
+itself to public opinion, either in France or elsewhere. Moreover, the
+French were struck by another aspect of this arbitrary exercise of
+supreme power. "President Wilson," wrote an eminent French publicist,
+"throws himself into the attitude of a man who can bind and loose the
+Turkish Empire at the very moment when the Senate appears opposed to
+accepting any mandate, European or Asiatic, at the moment when Mr.
+Lansing declares to the Congress that the government of which he is a
+member does not desire to accept any mandate. But is it not obvious that
+if Mr. Wilson sovereignly determines the lot of Turkey he can be held in
+consequence to the performance of certain duties? We have often had to
+deplore the absence of policy common to the Allies. But has each one of
+them, considered separately, at least a policy of its own? Does it take
+action otherwise than at haphazard, yielding to the impulse of a
+general, a consul, or a missionary?"[126]
+
+It soon became manifest even to the most obtuse that whenever the
+Supreme Council, following its leaders and working on such lines as
+these, terminated its labors, the ties between the political communities
+of Europe would be just as flimsy as in the unregenerate days of secret
+diplomacy, secret alliances, and secret intrigues, unless in the
+meanwhile the peoples themselves intervened to render them stronger and
+more enduring. It would, however, be the height of unfairness to make
+Mr. Wilson alone answerable for this untoward ending to a far resonant
+beginning. He had been accused by the press of most countries of
+enwrapping personal ambition in the attractive covering of
+disinterestedness and altruism, just as many of his foreign colleagues
+were said to go in fear of the "malady of lost power." But charges of
+this nature overstep the bounds of legitimate criticism. Motive is
+hardly ever visible, nor is it often deducible from deliberate action.
+If, for example, one were to infer from the vast territorial
+readjustments and the still vaster demands of the various belligerents
+at the Conference, the motives that had determined them to enter the
+war, the conclusion--except in the case of the American people, whose
+disinterestedness is beyond the reach of cavil--would indeed be
+distressing. The President of the United States merited well of all
+nations by holding up to them an ideal for realization, and the mere
+announcement of his resolve to work for it imparted an appreciable if
+inadequate incentive to men of good-will. The task, however, was so
+gigantic that he cannot have gaged its magnitude, discerned the defects
+of the instruments, nor estimated aright the force of the hindrances
+before taking the world to witness that he would achieve it. Even with
+the hearty co-operation of ardent colleagues and the adoption of a sound
+method he could hardly have hoped to do more than clear the
+ground--perhaps lay the foundation-stone--of the structure he dreamt of.
+But with the partners whom circumstance allotted him, and the gainsayers
+whom he had raised up and irritated in his own country, failure was a
+foregone conclusion from the first. The aims after which most of the
+European governments strove were sheer incompatible with his own.
+Doubtless they all were solicitous about the general good, but their
+love for it was so general and so diluted with attachment to others'
+goods as to be hardly discernible. The reproach that can hardly be
+spared to Mr. Wilson, however, is that of pusillanimity. If his faith in
+the principles he had laid down for the guidance of nations were as
+intense as his eloquent words suggested, he would have spurned the offer
+of a sequence of high-sounding phrases in lieu of a resettlement of the
+world. And his appeal to the peoples would most probably have been
+heard. The beacon once lighted in Paris would have been answered in
+almost every capital of the world. One promise he kept religiously: he
+did not return to Washington without a paper covenant. Is it more? Is it
+merely a paradox to assert that as war was waged in order to make war
+impossible, so a peace was made that will render peace impossible?
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[91] In March.
+
+[92] Quoted by _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 10, 1919.
+
+[93] Delivered at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York on March 4,
+1919.
+
+[94] _The New York Herald_, March 19, 1919 (Paris edition).
+
+[95] Cf. _The New York Herald_, July 8, 1919.
+
+[96] The semi-official journals manifested a steady tendency to lean
+toward the Republican opposition in the United States, down to the month
+of August, when the amendments proposed by various Senators bade fair to
+jeopardize the Treaties and render the promised military succor
+doubtful.
+
+[97] _Journal de Geneve_, May 18, 1919.
+
+[98] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), August 14, 1919.
+
+[99] Cf. Paris papers of February 2, 1919, and _The Public Ledger_
+(Philadelphia), February 4, 1919.
+
+[100] Cf. _L'Echo de Paris_, April 19, 1919.
+
+[101] In April, 1919.
+
+[102] About April 10,1919.
+
+[103] On March 19, 1919.
+
+[104] Cf. my cablegram published in _The Public Ledger_ (Philadelphia),
+January 12, 1919.
+
+[105] Cf. _The Public Ledger_ (Philadelphia), February 5, 1919.
+
+[106] Doctor Bunke, Councilor at the court of Dantzig, endeavors in _The
+Dantzig Neueste Nachrichten_ to prove that the problem of Dantzig was
+solved exclusively in the interests of the Naval Powers, America and
+Britain, who need it as a basis for their commerce with Poland, Russia,
+and Germany. Cf. also _Le Temps_, August 23, 1919
+
+[107] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), March 1, 1919.
+
+[108] Lysis, author of _Demain_, and many other remarkable studies of
+economic problems, and editor of _Le Democratie Nouvelle_, May 30, 1919.
+
+[109] For an account of analogous bargainings with Bela Kuhn, see the
+Chapter on Rumania.
+
+[110] Bearing the number 3882.
+
+[111] On October 12, 1918, and February 1, 1919
+
+[112] On February 4, 1919.
+
+[113] _La Democratie Nouvelle_, May 30, 1919
+
+[114] See his admirable article in _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition)
+of May 21, 1919, from which the following extract is worth quoting: "I
+have said that certain great forces have steadily and occultly worked
+for a German peace. But I mean, in fact, one force--an international
+finance to which all other forces hostile to the freedom of nations and
+of the individual soul are contributory. The influence of this finance
+had permeated the Conference, delaying the decisions as long as
+possible, increasing divisions between people and people, between class
+and class, between peace-makers and peace-makers, in order to achieve
+two definite ends, which two ends are one and the same.
+
+"The first end was so to manipulate the minds of the peace-makers, of
+their hordes of retainers and 'experts,' as to bring about, if possible,
+a peace that would not be destructive to industrial Germany. The second
+end was so to delay the Russian question, so to complicate and thwart
+every proposed solution, that, at last, either during or after the Peace
+Conference, a recognition of the Bolshevist power as the _de facto_
+government of Russia would be the only possible solution."
+
+[115] "What confidence can be commanded by men who, asserting one week
+that the ultimate of human wisdom has been attained in a document,
+confess the next week that the document is frail? When are we to believe
+that their confessions are at an end?"--_The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris
+edition), August 23, 1919.
+
+[116] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), July 31, 1919.
+
+[117] M. Affonso Costa, who shortly before had succeeded the Minister of
+Foreign Affairs, M. Monas Egiz.
+
+[118] Dedeagatch.
+
+[119] See _Rapports et Enquetes de la Commission Interalliee sur les
+Violations du droit des gens commises en Macedoine Orientale par les
+armees bulgares_. The conclusion of the report is one of the most
+terrible indictments ever drawn up by impartial investigators against
+what is practically a whole people.
+
+[120] _Zora_, August 11th. Cf. _Le Temps_, August 28, 1919.
+
+[121] Mr. Charles House published a statement in the press of Saloniki
+to the effect that the Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
+forbids missionaries to take an active part in politics. He added that
+if this injunction was transgressed--and in Paris the current belief was
+that it had been--it would not be tolerated by the Missionary Board, nor
+recognized by the American government.
+
+[122] _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), March 31, 1919.
+
+[123] _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), April 6, 1919.
+
+[124] Somewhere between August 17 and 20, 1919. It was transmitted by
+Admiral Bristol, American member of the Inter-Allied Inquiry Mission at
+Smyrna.
+
+[125] Cf. _L'Echo de Paris_, August 28, 1919. Article by Pertinax.
+
+[126] _L'Echo de Paris_, August 28, 1919. Article by Pertinax.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE LESSER STATES
+
+
+Before the Anglo-Saxon statesmen thus set themselves to rearrange the
+complex of interests, forces, policies, nationalities, rights, and
+claims which constituted the politico-social world of 1919, they were
+expected to deal with all the Allied and Associated nations, without
+favor or prejudice, as members of one family. This expectation was not
+fulfilled. It may not have been warranted. From the various discussions
+and decisions of which we have knowledge, a number of delegates drew the
+inference that France was destined for obvious reasons to occupy the
+leading position in continental Europe, under the protection of
+Anglo-Saxondom; and that a privileged status was to be conferred on the
+Jews in eastern Europe and in Palestine, while the other states were to
+be in the leading-strings of the Four. This view was not lightly
+expressed, however inadequately it may prove to have been then supported
+by facts. As to the desirability of forming this rude hierarchy of
+states, the principal plenipotentiaries were said to have been in
+general agreement, although responding to different motives. There was
+but one discordant voice--that of France--who was opposed to the various
+limitations set to Poland's aggrandizement, and also to the clause
+placing the Jews under the direct protection of the League of Nations,
+and investing them with privileges in which the races among whom they
+reside are not allowed to participate. Bulgaria had a position unique
+in her class, for she was luckier than most of her peers in having
+enlisted on her side the American delegation and Mr. Wilson as leading
+counsel and special pleader for her claim to an outlet to the AEgean Sea.
+
+At the Conference each state was dealt with according to its class.
+Entirely above the new law, as we saw, stood its creators, the
+Anglo-Saxons. To all the others, including the French, the Wilsonian
+doctrine was applied as fully as was compatible with its author's main
+object, the elaboration of an instrument which he could take back with
+him to the United States as the great world settlement. Within these
+limits the President was evidently most anxious to apply his Fourteen
+Points, but he kept well within these. Thus he would, perhaps, have been
+quite ready to insist on the abandonment by Britain of her supremacy on
+the seas, on a radical change in the international status of Egypt and
+Ireland, and much else, had these innovations been compatible with his
+own special object. But they were not. He was apparently minded to test
+the matter by announcing his resolve to moot the problem of the freedom
+of the seas, but when admonished by the British government that it would
+not even brook its mention, he at once gave it up and, presumably
+drawing the obvious inference from this downright refusal, applied it to
+the Irish, Egyptian, and other issues, which were forthwith eliminated
+from the category of open or international problems. But France's
+insistent demand, on the other hand, for the Rhine frontier met with an
+emphatic refusal.[127]
+
+The social reformer is disheartened by the one-sided and inexorable way
+in which maxims proclaimed to be of universal application were
+restricted to the second-class nations.
+
+Russia's case abounds in illustrations of this arbitrary, unjust, and
+impolitic pressure. The Russians had been our allies. They had fought
+heroically at the time when the people of the United States were,
+according to their President, "too proud to fight." They were essential
+factors in the Allies' victory, and consequently entitled to the
+advantages and immunities enjoyed by the Western Powers. In no case
+ought they to have been placed on the same level as our enemies, and in
+lieu of recompense condemned to punishment. And yet this latter
+conception of their deserts was not wholly new. Soon after their
+defection, and when the Allies were plunged in the depths of
+despondency, a current of opinion made itself felt among certain
+sections of the Allied peoples tending to the conclusion of peace on the
+basis of compensations to Germany, to be supplied by the cession of
+Russian territory. This expedient was advocated by more than one
+statesman, and was making headway when fresh factors arose which bade
+fair to render it needless.
+
+At the Paris Conference the spirit of this conception may still have
+survived and prompted much that was done and much that was left
+unattempted. Russia was under a cloud. If she was not classed as an
+enemy she was denied the consideration reserved for the Allies and the
+neutrals. Her integrity was a matter of indifference to her former
+friends; almost every people and nationality in the Russian state which
+asked for independence found a ready hearing at the Supreme Council. And
+some of them before they had lodged any such claim were encouraged to
+lose no time in asking for separation. In one case a large sum of money
+and a mission were sent to "create the independent state of the
+Ukraine," so impatient were peoples in the West to obtain a substitute
+for the Russian ally whom they had lost in the East, and great was their
+consternation when their proteges misspent the funds and made common
+cause with the Teutons.
+
+Disorganized Russia was in some ways a godsend to the world's
+administrators in Paris. To the advocate of alliances, territorial
+equilibrium, and the old order of things it offered a facile means of
+acquiring new helpmates in the East by emancipating its various peoples
+in the name of right and justice. It held out to the capitalists who
+deplored the loss of their milliards a potential source whence part of
+that loss might be made good.[128] To the zealots of the League of
+Nations it offered an unresisting body on which all the requisite
+operations from amputation to trepanning might be performed without the
+use of anesthetics.
+
+The various border states of Russia were thus quietly lopped off without
+even the foreknowledge, much less the assent, of the patient, and
+without any pretense at plebiscites. Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Georgia
+were severed from the chaotic Slav state offhandedly, and the warrant
+was the doctrine propounded by President Wilson--that every people shall
+be free to choose its own mode of living and working. Every people?
+Surely not, remarked unbiased onlookers. The Egyptians, the Irish, the
+Austrians, the Persians, to name but four among many, are disqualified
+for the exercise of these indefeasible rights. Perhaps with good reason?
+Then modify the doctrine. Why this difference of treatment? they
+queried. Is it not because the supreme judge knows full well that Great
+Britain would not brook the discussion of the Egyptian or the Irish
+problem, and that France, in order to feel quite secure, must hinder the
+Austrian-Germans from coalescing with their brethren of the Reich? But
+if Britain and France have the right to veto every self-denying measure
+that smacks of disruption or may involve a sacrifice, why is Russia
+bereft of it? If the principle involved be of any value at all, its
+application must be universal. To an equal all-round distribution of
+sacrifice the only alternative is the supremacy of force in the service
+of arbitrary rule. And to this force, accordingly, the Supreme Council
+had recourse. The only cases in which it seriously vindicated the rights
+of oppressed or dissatisfied peoples to self-determination against the
+will of the ruling race or nation were those in which that race or
+nation was powerless to resist. Whenever Britain or France's interests
+were deemed to be imperiled by the putting in force of any of the
+Fourteen Points, Mr. Wilson desisted from its application. Thus it came
+about that Russia was put on the same plane with Germany and received
+similar, in some respects, indeed, sterner, treatment. The Germans were
+at least permitted to file objections to the conditions imposed and to
+point out flaws in the arrangements drafted, and their representations
+sometimes achieved their end. It was otherwise with the Russians. They
+were never consulted. And when their representatives in Paris
+respectfully suggested that all such changes as might be decided upon by
+the Great Powers during their country's political disablement should be
+taken to be provisional and be referred for definite settlement to the
+future constituent assembly, the request was ignored.
+
+Of psychological rather than political interest was Mr. Wilson's
+conscientious hesitation as to whether the nationalities which he was
+preparing to liberate were sufficiently advanced to be intrusted with
+self-government. As stated elsewhere, his first impulse would seem to
+have been to appoint mandatories to administer the territories severed
+from Russia. The mandatory arrangement under the ubiquitous League is
+said to have been his own. Presumably he afterward acquired the belief
+that the system might be wisely dispensed with in the case of some of
+Russia's border states, for they soon afterward received promises of
+independence and implicitly of protection against future encroachments
+by a resuscitated Russia.
+
+In this connection a scene is worth reproducing which was enacted at the
+Peace Table before the system of administering certain territories by
+proxy was fully elaborated. At one of the sittings the delegates set
+themselves to determine what countries should be thus governed,[129] and
+it was understood that the mandatory system was to be reserved for the
+German colonies and certain provinces of the Turkish Empire. But in the
+course of the conversation Mr. Wilson casually made use of the
+expression, "The German colonies, the territories of the Turkish Empire
+and other territories." One of the delegates promptly put the question,
+"What other territories?" to which the President replied,
+unhesitatingly, "Those of the late Russian Empire." Then he added by way
+of explanation: "We are constantly receiving petitions from peoples who
+lived hitherto under the scepter of the Tsars--Caucasians, Central
+Asiatic peoples, and others--who refuse to be ruled any longer by the
+Russians and yet are incapable of organizing viable independent states
+of their own. It is meet that the desires of these nations should be
+considered." At this the Czech delegate, Doctor Kramarcz, flared up and
+exclaimed: "Russia? Cut up Russia? But what about her integrity? Is that
+to be sacrificed?" But his words died away without evoking a response.
+"Was there no one," a Russian afterward asked, "to remind those
+representatives of the Great Powers of their righteous wrath with
+Germany when the Brest-Litovsk treaty was promulgated?"
+
+Toward Italy, who, unlike Russia, was not treated as an enemy, but as
+relegated to the category of lesser states, the attitude of President
+Wilson was exceptionally firm and uncompromising. On the subject of
+Fiume and Dalmatia he refused to yield an inch. In vain the Italian
+delegation argued, appealed, and lowered its claims. Mr. Wilson was
+adamant. It is fair to admit that in no other way could he have
+contrived to get even a simulacrum of a League. Unless the weak states
+were awed into submitting to sacrifices for the great aim which he had
+made his own, he must return to Washington as the champion of a
+manifestly lost cause. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that his
+thesis was not destitute of arguments to support it. Accordingly the
+deadlock went on for months, until the Italian Cabinet fell and people
+wearied of the Adriatic problems.
+
+Poland was another of the communities which had to bend before
+Anglo-Saxon will, represented in her case mainly by Mr. Lloyd George,
+not, however, without the somewhat tardy backing of his colleague from
+Washington. It is important for the historian and the political student
+to observe that as the British Premier was not credited with any
+profound or original ideas about the severing or soldering of east
+European territories, the authorship of the powerful and successful
+opposition to the allotting of Dantzig to Poland was rightly or wrongly
+ascribed not to him, but to what is euphemistically termed
+"international finance" lurking in the background, whose interest in
+Poland was obviously keen, and whose influence on the Supreme Council,
+although less obvious, was believed to be far-reaching. The same
+explanation was currently suggested for the fixed resolve of Mr. Lloyd
+George not to assign Upper Silesia to Poland without a plebiscite. His
+own account of the matter was that although the inhabitants were
+Polish--they are as two to one compared with the Germans--it was
+conceivable that they entertained leanings toward the Germans, and might
+therefore desire to throw in their lot with these. When one compares
+this scrupulous respect for the likes and dislikes of the inhabitants of
+that province with the curt refusal of the same men at first to give ear
+to the ardent desire of the Austrians to unite with the Germans, or to
+abide by a plebiscite of the inhabitants of Fiume or Teschen, one is
+bewildered. The British Premier's wish was opposed by the official body
+of experts appointed to report on the matter. Its members had no
+misgivings. The territory, they said, belonged of right to Poland, the
+great majority of its population was unquestionably Polish, and the
+practical conclusion was that it should be handed over to the Polish
+government as soon as feasible. Thereupon the staff of the commission
+was changed and new members were substituted for the old.[130] But that
+was not enough. The British Premier still encountered such opposition
+among his foreign colleagues that it was only by dint of wordy warfare
+and stubbornness that he finally won his point.
+
+The stipulation for which the first British delegate toiled thus
+laboriously was that within a fortnight after the ratification of the
+Treaty the German and Polish forces should evacuate the districts in
+which the plebiscite was to be held, that the Workmen's Councils there
+should be dissolved, and that the League of Nations should take over the
+government of the district so as to allow the population to give full
+expression to its will. But the League of Nations did not exist and
+could not be constituted for a considerable time. It was therefore
+decided[131] that some temporary substitute for the League should be
+formed at once, and the Supreme Council decided that Inter-Allied troops
+should occupy the districts. That was the first instalment of the price
+to be paid for the British Premier's tenderness for plebiscites, which
+the expert commissions deprecated as unnecessary, and which, as events
+proved in this case, were harmful.
+
+In the meanwhile Bolshevist--some said German--agents were stirring up
+the population by suasion and by terrorism until it finally began to
+ferment. Thousands of working-men responded to the goad, "turned down"
+their tools and ceased work. Thereupon the coal-fields of Upper Silesia,
+the production of which had already dropped by 50 per cent, since the
+preceding November, ceased to produce anything. This consummation
+grieved the Supreme Council, which turned for help to the Inter-Allied
+armies. For the Silesian coal-fields represented about one-third of
+Germany's production, and both France and Italy were looking to Germany
+for part of their fuel-supply. The French press pertinently asked
+whether it would not have been cheaper, safer, and more efficacious to
+have forgone the plebiscite and relied on the Polish troops from the
+outset.[132] For, however ideal the intentions of Mr. Lloyd George may
+have been, the net result of his insistence on a plebiscite was to
+enable an ex-newspaper vender named Hoersing, who had undertaken to
+prevent the detachment of Upper Silesia from Germany, to set his
+machinery for agitation in motion and cause general unrest in the
+Silesian and Dombrova coal-mining districts. When the strike was
+declared the workmen, who are Poles to a man, rejected all suggestions
+that they should refer their grievances to arbitration courts. For these
+tribunals were conducted by Germans. The consequence of Mr. Lloyd
+George's spirited intervention was, in the words of an unbiased
+observer, to "raise the specters of starvation, freezing and Bolshevism
+in eastern Europe" during the ensuing winter--a heavy price to pay for
+pedantic adherence to the letter of an irrelevant ordinance, at a moment
+when the spirit of basic principles was being allowed to evaporate.
+
+Rumania was chastened and qualified in severer fashion for admission to
+the sodality of nations until her delegates quitted the Conference in
+disgust, struck out their own policy, and courteously ignored the Great
+Powers. Then the Supreme Council changed its note for the moment and
+abandoned the position which it had taken up respecting the armistice
+with Hungary, to revert to it shortly afterward.[133] The joy with which
+the upshot of this revolt was hailed by all the lesser states was an
+evil omen. For their antipathy toward the Supreme Council had long
+before hardened into a sentiment much more intense, and any stick seemed
+good enough to break the rod of the self-constituted governors of the
+planet.
+
+The concrete result of this tinkering and cobbling could only be a
+ramshackle structure, built without any reference to the canons of
+political architecture. It was shaped neither by the Fourteen Points nor
+by the canons of the balance of power and territory. It was hardly more
+than an abortive attempt to make a synthesis of the two. Created by
+force, it could be perpetuated only by force; but if symptoms are to be
+trusted, it is more likely to be broken up by force. As an American
+press organ remarked in August: "The Council of Five complains that no
+one now condescends to recognize the League of Nations. Even the small
+nations are buying war material, quite oblivious of the fact that there
+are to be no more wars, now that the League is there to prevent them.
+Sweden is buying large supplies from Germany, and Spain is sending a
+commission to Paris to negotiate for some of France's war
+equipment."[134]
+
+Belgium, too, was treated with scant consideration. The praise lavished
+on her courageous people during the war was apparently deemed an
+adequate recompense for the sacrifices she had made and the losses she
+endured. For the revision of the treaties of 1839, indispensable to the
+economic development of the country, no diplomatic preparation was made
+down to May, and among the Treaty clauses then drafted Belgium's share
+of justice was so slight and insufficient that the unbiased press
+published sharp strictures on the forgetfulness or egotism of the
+Supreme Council. "The little that has leaked out of the decisions taken
+regarding the conditions which affect Belgium," wrote one journal, "has
+caused not only bitter disappointment in Belgium, but also indignation
+everywhere.... The Allies having decided not to accord moral
+satisfaction to Belgium (they chose Geneva as the capital of the League
+of Nations), it was perhaps to be expected that they would not accord
+her material satisfaction. And such expectations are being fulfilled.
+The Limburg province, annexed to Holland in 1839, the province which
+gave the retreating enemy unlawful refuge in 1918, a rank violation of
+Dutch neutrality, is apparently not to be restored to Belgium. Even the
+right, vital to the safety and welfare of Belgium, the right of
+unimpeded navigation of the Scheldt between Antwerp and the sea, has not
+yet been conceded. And the raw material that is indispensable if Belgian
+industry is to be revived is withheld; the Allies, however, are quite
+willing to flood the country with manufactured articles."[135]
+
+And yet Belgium's demands were extremely modest.[136] They were
+formulated, not as the guerdon for her heroic defense of civilization,
+but as a plain corollary flowing direct from each and every principle
+officially recognized by the heads of the Conference--right,
+nationality, legitimate guarantees, and economic requirements. Tested by
+any or all of these accepted touchstones, everything asked for was
+reasonable and fair in itself, and seemingly indispensable to the
+durability of the new world-structure which the statesmen were
+endeavoring to raise on the ruins of the old. Belgium's forlorn
+political and territorial plight embodied all the worst vices of the old
+balance of power stigmatized by President Wilson: the mutilation of the
+country; the forcible separation of sections of its population from each
+other; the distribution of these lopped, ethnic fragments among alien
+states and dynasties; the control of her waterways handed over to
+commercial rivals; the transformation of cities and districts that were
+obviously destined to figure among her sources of national well-being
+and centers of culture into dead towns that paralyze her effort and
+hinder her progress. In a word, Belgium had had no political existence
+for her own behoof. She was not an organic unit in the sodality of
+nations, but a mere cog in the mechanism of European equilibrium.
+
+Ruined by the war, Belgium was sorely tried by the Peace Conference. She
+complained of two open wounds which poisoned her existence, stunted her
+economic growth, and rendered her self-defense an impossibility: the
+vast gap of Limburg on the east and the blocking of the Scheldt on the
+west. The great national _reduit_, Antwerp, cut off from the sea,
+inaccessible to succor in case of war, on the one side, and Limburg
+opening to Germany's armies the road through central Belgium, on the
+other--these were the two standing dangers which it was hoped would be
+removed. How dangerous they are events had demonstrated. In October,
+1914, Antwerp fell because Holland had closed the Scheldt and forbidden
+the entrance to warships and transports, and in November, 1918, a German
+army of over seventy thousand men eluded pursuit by the Allies by
+passing through Dutch Limburg, carrying with them vast war materials and
+booty. Militarily Belgium is exposed to mortal perils so long as the
+treaties which ordained this preposterous division of territories are
+maintained in vigor.
+
+Economically, too, the consequences, especially of the status of the
+Scheldt, are admittedly baleful. To Holland the river is practically
+useless--indeed, the only advantage it could confer would be the power
+of impeding the growth and prosperity of Antwerp for the benefit of its
+rival, Rotterdam. All that the Belgians desired there was the complete
+control of their national river, with the right of carrying out the
+works necessary to keep it navigable. A like demand was put forward for
+the canal of Terneuzen, which links the city of Ghent with the Scheldt;
+and the suppression of the checks and hindrances to Belgium's free
+communications with her hinterland--_i.e._, the basins of the Meuse and
+the Rhine. Prom every point of view, including that of international
+law, the claims made were at once modest and grounded. But the Supreme
+Council had no time to devote to such subsidiary matters, and, like more
+momentous issues, they were adjourned.
+
+The Belgian delegation did not ask that Holland's territory should be
+curtailed. On the contrary, they would have welcomed its increase by the
+addition of territory inhabited by people of her own idiom, under
+German sway.[137] But the Dutch demurred, as Denmark had done in the
+matter of the third Schleswig zone, for fear of offending Germany. And
+the Supreme Council acquiesced in the refusal. Again, when issues were
+under discussion that turned upon the Rhine country and affected Belgian
+interests, her delegates were never consulted. They were systematically
+ignored by the Conference. When the capital of the League of Nations was
+to be chosen, their hopes that Brussels would be deemed worthy of the
+honor were blasted by President Wilson himself. One of the American
+delegates informed a foreign colleague "that the capital of the League
+must be situate in a tranquil country, must have a steady, settled
+population and a really good climate." "A good climate?" asked a
+continental statesman. "Then why not choose Monte Carlo?"
+
+But the decision in favor of Geneva was sent by courier from Switzerland
+ready made to President Wilson. The chief grounds which lent color to
+the belief that religious bias played a larger part in the Conference's
+decisions than was apparent were the following: It was from Geneva that
+the spirit of religious and political liberty first went forth to be
+incarnated among the various nations of the world. It is to John Calvin,
+rather than to Martin Luther, that the birth of the Scotch Covenanters
+and of English Puritanism is traceable. Hence Geneva is the parent of
+New England. So, too, it was Rousseau--a true child of Calvin--who was
+the author of America's Declaration of Independence. Again, one of the
+first pacifists and advocates of international arbitration was born in
+Geneva. John Knox sat for two years at the feet of Calvin. Consequently
+the Puritan Revolution, the French Revolution, and the American
+Revolution all had their springs in Geneva.
+
+These were the considerations which weighed with President Wilson when
+he refused to fix his choice on Brussels. In vain the Belgians argued
+and pleaded, urging that if the Conference were to vote for London,
+Washington, or Paris, they would receive the announcement with
+respectful acquiescence, but that among the lesser states they conceived
+that their country's claims were the best grounded. To the Americans who
+objected that Switzerland's mountains and lakes, being free from hateful
+war memories, offer more fitting surroundings for the capital of the
+League of Peace than Brussels, where vestiges of the odious struggle
+will long survive, they answered that they could only regret that
+Belgium's resistance to the lawless invaders should be taken to
+disqualify her for the honor.
+
+It is worth while pursuing this matter a step farther. The Federal
+Council in Berne having soon afterward officially recommended[138] the
+nation to enter the League which guarantees it neutrality,[139] an
+illuminating discussion ensued. And it was elicited that as there is an
+obligation imposed on all member-states to execute the decrees of the
+League for the coercion of rebellious fellow-members, it follows that in
+such cases Switzerland, too, would be obliged to take an active part in
+the struggle between the League and the recalcitrant country. From
+military operations, however, Switzerland is dispensed, but it would
+certainly be bound to adopt economic measures of pressure, and to this
+extent abandon its neutrality. Now not only would that attitude be
+construed by the disobedient nation as unfriendly, and the usual
+consequences drawn from it, but as Switzerland is freed from military
+co-operation, it follows that the League could not fix the headquarters
+of its military command in its own capital, Geneva, as that would
+constitute a violation of Swiss neutrality. And, if it did, Switzerland
+would in self-defense be bound to oppose the decision!
+
+The Belgians were discouraged by the disdainful demeanor and grudging
+disposition of the Supreme Council, and irritated by the arbitrariness
+of its decrees and the indefensible way in which it applied principles
+that were propounded as sacred. Before restoring the diminutive cantons
+of Eupen and Malmedy to Belgium, for example, Mr. Wilson insisted on
+ascertaining the will of the population by plebiscite. In itself the
+measure was reasonable, but the position of these little districts was
+substantially on all-fours with Alsace-Lorraine, which was restored to
+France without any such test. In Fiume, also, the will of the
+inhabitants went for nothing, Mr. Wilson refusing to consult them.
+Further, Austria, whose people were known to favor union with Germany,
+was systematically jockeyed into ruinous isolation. "Now what, in the
+light of these conflicting judgments," asked the Belgians, "is the true
+meaning of the principle of self-determination?" The only reply they
+received was that Mr. Wilson was right when he told his
+fellow-countrymen that his principles stood in need of interpretation,
+and that, as he was the sole authorized interpreter, his presence was
+required in Europe.
+
+In money matters, too, the chief plenipotentiaries can hardly be
+acquitted of something akin to niggardliness toward the country which
+had saved theirs from a catastrophe. Down to the month of May, 1921, two
+and a half milliard francs was the maximum sum allotted to Belgium by
+the Supreme Council. And for the work of restoring the devastated
+country, which the Great Powers had spontaneously promised to
+accomplish, it was alleged by experts to be wholly inadequate. Other
+financial grievances were ignored--for a time. Further, it was decided
+that Germany should surrender her African colonies to the Great Powers;
+yet Belgium, who contributed materially to their conquest, was not to be
+associated with them.
+
+Irritated by this illiberality, the Belgian delegation, having consulted
+with M. Renkin, to whose judgment in these matters special weight
+attached, resolved to make a firm stand, and refused to sign the Treaty
+unless at least certain modest financial, economic, and colonial claims,
+which ought to have been settled spontaneously, were accorded under
+pressure. And the Supreme Council, rather than be arraigned before the
+world on the charge of behaving unjustly as well as ungenerously toward
+Belgium, ultimately gave way, leaving, however, an impression behind
+which seemed as indelible as it was profound....
+
+The domination which is now being exercised by the principal Powers over
+the remaining states of the world is fraught with consequences which
+were not foreseen, and have not yet been realized by those who
+established it. Among the least momentous, but none the less real, is
+one to which Belgium is exposed. Hitherto there was a language problem
+in that heroic country which, being an internal controversy, could be
+settled without noteworthy perturbations by the good-will of the
+Walloons and the Flemings. The danger, which one fervently hopes will be
+warded off, consists in the possible transformation of that dispute into
+an international question, in consequence of possible accords of a
+military or economic nature. The subject is too delicate to be handled
+by a foreigner, and the Belgian people are too practical and law-loving
+not to avoid unwary steps that might turn a linguistic problem into a
+racial issue.
+
+The Supreme Council soon came to be looked upon as the prototype of the
+future League, and in that light its action was sharply scrutinized by
+all whom the League concerned. Foremost among these were the
+representatives of the lesser states, or, as they were termed, "states
+with limited interests." This band of patriots had pilgrimaged to Paris
+full of hope for their respective countries, having drunk in avidly the
+unstinted praise and promises which had served as pabulum for their
+attachment to the Allied cause during the war. But their illusions were
+short-lived. At one of their first meetings with the delegates of the
+Great Powers a storm burst which scattered their expectations to the
+winds. When the sky cleared it was discovered that from indispensable
+fellow-workers they had shrunk to dwarfish protegees, mere units of an
+inferior category, who were to be told what to do and would be
+constrained to do it thoroughly if not unmurmuringly.
+
+At the historic sitting of January 26th, the delegates of the lesser
+states protested energetically against the purely decorative part
+assigned to them at a Conference in the decisions of which their peoples
+were so intensely interested. The Canadian Minister, having spoken of
+the "proposal" of the Great Powers, was immediately corrected by M.
+Clemenceau, who brusquely said that it was not a proposal, but a
+decision, which was therefore definitive and final. Thereupon the
+Belgian delegate, M. Hymans, delivered a masterly speech, pleading for
+genuine discussion in order to elucidate matters that so closely
+concerned them all, and he requested the Conference to allow the smaller
+belligerent Allies more than two delegates. Their demand was curtly
+rejected by the French Premier, who informed his hearers that the
+Conference was the creation of the Great Powers, who intended to keep
+the direction of its labors in their own hands. He added significantly
+that the smaller nations' representatives would probably not have been
+invited at all if the special problem of the League of Nations had not
+been mooted. Nor should it be forgotten, he added, that the five Great
+Powers represented no less than twelve million fighting-men.... In
+conclusion, he told them that they had better get on with their work in
+lieu of wasting precious time in speechmaking. These words produced a
+profound and lasting effect, which, however, was hardly the kind
+intended by the French statesman.
+
+"Conferential Tsarism" was the term applied to this magisterial method
+by one of the offended delegates. He said to me on the morrow: "My reply
+to M. Clemenceau was ready, but fear of impairing the prestige of the
+Conference prevented me from uttering it. I could have emphasized the
+need for unanimity in the presence of vigilant enemies, ready to
+introduce a wedge into every fissure of the edifice we are constructing.
+I could have pointed out that, this being an assembly of nations which
+had waged war conjointly, there is no sound reason why its membership
+should be diluted with states which never drew the sword at all. I might
+have asked what has become of the doctrine preached when victory was
+still undecided, that a league of nations must repose upon a free
+consent of all sovereign states. And above all things else I could have
+inquired how it came to pass that the architect-in-chief of the society
+of nations which is to bestow a stable peace on mankind should invoke
+the argument of force, of militarism, against the pacific peoples who
+voluntarily made the supreme sacrifice for the cause of humanity and now
+only ask for a hearing. Twelve million fighting-men is an argument to be
+employed against the Teutons, not against the peace-loving, law-abiding
+peoples of Europe.
+
+"Premier Clemenceau seemed to lay the blame for the waste of time on our
+shoulders, but the truth is that we were never admitted to the
+deliberations until yesterday; although two and one-half months have
+elapsed since the armistice was concluded, and although the progress
+made by these leading statesmen is manifestly limited, he grudged us
+forty-five minutes to give vent to our views and wishes.
+
+"The French Tiger was admirable when crushing the enemies of
+civilization with his twelve million fighting-men; but gestures and
+actions which were appropriate to the battlefield become sources of
+jarring and discord when imported into a concert of peoples."
+
+Much bitterness was generated by those high-handed tactics, whereupon
+certain slight concessions were made in order to placate the offended
+delegates; but, being doled out with a bad grace, they failed of the
+effect intended. Belgium received three delegates instead of two, and
+Jugoslavia three; but Rumania, whose population was estimated at
+fourteen millions, was allowed but two. This inexplicable decision
+caused a fresh wound, which was kept continuously open by friction,
+although it might readily have been avoided. Its consequences may be
+traced in Rumania's singular relations to the Supreme Council before and
+after the fall of Kuhn in Hungary.
+
+But even those drastic methods might be deemed warranted if the policy
+enforced were, in truth, conducive to the welfare of the nations on whom
+it was imposed. But hastily improvised by one or two men, who had no
+claim to superior or even average knowledge of the problems involved,
+and who were constantly falling into egregious and costly errors, it was
+inevitable that their intervention should be resented as arbitrary and
+mischievous by the leaders of the interested nations whose
+acquaintanceship with those questions and with the interdependent issues
+was extensive and precise. This resentment, however, might have been
+not, indeed, neutralized, but somewhat mitigated, if the temper and
+spirit in which the Duumvirate discharged its self-set functions had
+been free from hauteur and softened by modesty. But the magisterial
+wording in which its decisions were couched, the abruptness with which
+they were notified, and the threats that accompanied their imposition
+would have been repellent even were the authors endowed with
+infallibility.
+
+One of the delegates who unbosomed himself to me on the subject soon
+after the Germans had signed the Treaty remarked: "The Big Three are
+superlatively unsympathetic to most of the envoys from the lesser
+belligerent states. And it would be a wonder if it were otherwise, for
+they make no effort to hide their disdain for us. In fact, it is
+downright contempt. They never consult us. When we approach them they
+shove us aside as importunate intruders. They come to decisions unknown
+to us, and carry them out in secrecy, as though we were enemies or
+spies. If we protest or remonstrate, we are imperialists and ungrateful.
+
+"Often we learn only from the newspapers the burdens or the restrictions
+that have been imposed on us."
+
+A couple of days previously M. Clemenceau, in an unofficial reply to a
+question put by the Rumanian delegation, directed them to consult the
+financial terms of the Treaty with Austria, forgetting that the
+delegates of the lesser states had not been allowed to receive or read
+those terms. Although communicated to the Austrians, they were carefully
+concealed from the Rumanians, whom they also concerned. At the same
+time, the Rumanian government was called upon to take and announce a
+decision which presupposed acquaintanceship with those conditions,
+whereupon the Rumanian Premier telegraphed from Bucharest to Paris to
+have them sent. But his _locum tenens_ did not possess a copy and had no
+right to demand one.[140] Incongruities of this character were frequent.
+
+One statesman in Paris, who enjoys a world-wide reputation, dissented
+from those who sided with the lesser states. He looked at their protests
+and tactics from an angle of vision which the unbiased historian,
+however emphatically he may dissent from it, cannot ignore. He said:
+"All the smaller communities are greedy and insatiable. If the chiefs of
+the World Powers had understood their temper and ascertained their
+aspirations in 1914, much that has passed into history since then would
+never have taken place. During the war these miniature countries were
+courted, flattered, and promised the sun and the moon, earth and heaven,
+and all the glories therein. And now that these promises cannot be
+redeemed, they are wroth, and peevishly threaten the great states with
+disobedience and revolt. This, it is true, they could not do if the
+latter had not forfeited their authority and prestige by allowing their
+internal differences, hesitations, contradictions, and repentances to
+become manifest to all. To-day it is common knowledge that the Great
+Powers are amenable to very primitive incentives and deterrents. If in
+the beginning they had been united and said to their minor brethren:
+'These are your frontiers. These your obligations,' the minor brethren
+would have bowed and acquiesced gratefully. In this way the boundary
+problems might have been settled to the satisfaction of all, for each
+new or enlarged state would have been treated as the recipient of a free
+gift from the World Powers. But the plenipotentiaries went about their
+task in a different and unpractical fashion. They began by recognizing
+the new communities, and then they gave them representatives at the
+Conference. This they did on the ground that the League of Nations must
+first be founded, and that all well-behaved belligerents on the Allied
+side have a right to be consulted upon that. And, finally, instead of
+keeping to their program and liquidating the war, they mingled the
+issues of peace with the clauses of the League and debated them
+simultaneously. In these debates they revealed their own internal
+differences, their hesitancy, and the weakness of their will. And the
+lesser states have taken advantage of that. The general results have
+been the postponement of peace, the physical exhaustion of the Central
+Empires, and the spread of Bolshevism."
+
+It should not be forgotten that this mixture of the general and the
+particular of the old order and the new was objected to on other
+grounds. The Italians, for example, urged that it changed the status of
+a large number of their adversaries into that of highly privileged
+Allies. During the war they were enemies, before the peace discussions
+opened they had obtained forgiveness, after which they entered the
+Conference as cherished friends. The Italians had waged their war
+heroically against the Austrians, who inflicted heavy losses on them.
+Who were these Austrians? They were composed of the various
+nationalities which made up the Hapsburg monarchy, and in especial of
+men of Slav speech. These soldiers, with notable exceptions, discharged
+their duty to the Austrian Emperor and state conscientiously, according
+to the terms of their oath. Their disposition toward the Italians was
+not a whit less hostile than was that of the common German man against
+the French and the English. Why, then, argued the Italians, accord them
+privileges over the ally who bore the brunt of the fight against them?
+Why even treat the two as equals? It may be replied that the bulk of the
+people were indifferent and merely carried out orders. Well, the same
+holds good of the average German, yet he is not being spoiled by the
+victorious World Powers. But the Croats and others suddenly became the
+favorite children of the Conference, while the Germans and
+Teuton-Austrians, who in the meanwhile had accepted and fulfilled
+President Wilson's conditions for entry into the fellowship of nations,
+were not only punished heavily--which was perfectly just--but also
+disqualified for admission into the League, which was inconsistent.
+
+The root of all the incoherences complained of lay in the circumstance
+that the chiefs of the Great Powers had no program, no method; Mr.
+Wilson's pristine scheme would have enabled him to treat the gallant
+Serbs and their Croatian brethren as he desired. But he had failed to
+maintain it against opposition. On the other hand, the traditional
+method of the balance of power would have given Italy all that she could
+reasonably ask for, but Mr. Wilson had partially destroyed it. Nothing
+remained then but to have recourse to a _tertium quid_ which profoundly
+dissatisfied both parties and imperiled the peace of the world in days
+to come. And even this makeshift the eminent plenipotentiaries were
+unable to contrive single-handed. Their notion of getting the work done
+was to transfer it to missions, commissions, and sub-commissions, and
+then to take action which, as often as not, ran counter to the
+recommendations of these selected agents. Oddly enough, none of these
+bodies received adequate directions. To take a concrete example: a
+central commission was appointed to deal with the Polish frontier
+problems, a second commission under M. Jules Cambon had to study the
+report on the Polish Delimitation question, but although often
+consulted, it was seldom listened to. Then there was a third commission,
+which also did excellent work to very little purpose. Now all the
+questions which formed the subjects of their inquiries might be
+approached from various sides. There were historical frontiers,
+ethnographical frontiers, political and strategical and linguistic
+frontiers. And this does not exhaust the list. Among all these, then,
+the commissioners had to choose their field of investigation as the
+spirit moved them, without any guidance from the Supreme Council, which
+presumably did not know what it wanted.
+
+As an example of the Council's unmethodical procedure, and of its
+slipshod way of tackling important work, the following brief sketch of a
+discussion which was intended to be decisive and final, but ended in
+mere waste of time, may be worth recording. The topic mooted was
+disarmament. The Anglo-Saxon plenipotentiaries, feeling that they owed
+it to their doctrines and their peoples to ease the military burdens of
+the latter and lessen temptations to acts of violence, favored a measure
+by which armaments should be reduced forthwith. The Italian delegates
+had put forward the thesis, which was finally accepted, that if Austria,
+for instance, was to be forbidden to keep more than a certain number of
+troops under arms, the prohibition should be extended to all the states
+of which Austria had been composed, and that in all these cases the
+ratio between the population and the army should be identical.
+Accordingly, the spokesmen of the various countries interested were
+summoned to take cognizance of the decision and intimate their readiness
+to conform to it.
+
+M. Paderewski listened respectfully to the decree, and then remarked:
+"According to the accounts received from the French military
+authorities, Germany still has three hundred and fifty thousand soldiers
+in Silesia." "No," corrected M. Clemenceau, "only three hundred
+thousand." "I accept the correction," replied the Polish Premier. "The
+difference, however, is of no importance to my contention, which is that
+according to the symptoms reported we Poles may have to fight the
+Germans and to wage the conflict single-handed. As you know, we have
+other military work on hand. I need only mention our strife with the
+Bolsheviki. If we are deprived of effective means of self-defense, on
+the one hand, and told to expect no help from the Allies, on the other
+hand, the consequence will be what every intelligent observer foresees.
+Now three hundred thousand Germans is no trifle to cope with. If we
+confront them with an inadequate force and are beaten, what then?"
+"Undoubtedly," exclaimed M. Clemenceau, "if the Germans were victorious
+in the east of Europe the Allies would have lost the war. And that is a
+perspective not to be faced."
+
+M. Bratiano spoke next. "We too," he said, "have to fight the Bolsheviki
+on more than one front. This struggle is one of life and death to us.
+But it concerns, if only in a lesser degree, all Europe, and we are
+rendering services to the Great Powers by the sacrifices we thus offer
+up. Is it desirable, is it politic, to limit our forces without
+reference to these redoubtable tasks which await them? Is it not
+incumbent on the Powers to allow these states to grow to the dimensions
+required for the discharge of their functions?" "What you advance is
+true enough for the moment," objected M. Clemenceau; "but you forget
+that our limitations are not to be applied at once. We fix a term after
+the expiry of which the strength of the armies will be reduced. We have
+taken all the circumstances into account." "Are you prepared to affirm,"
+queried the Rumanian Minister, "that you can estimate the time with
+sufficient precision to warrant our risking the existence of our country
+on your forecast?" "The danger will have completely disappeared,"
+insisted the French Premier, "by January, 1921." "I am truly glad to
+have this assurance," answered M. Bratiano, "for I doubt not that you
+are quite certain of what you advance, else you would not stake the fate
+of your eastern allies on its correctness. But as we who have not been
+told the grounds on which you base this calculation are asked to
+manifest our faith in it by incurring the heaviest conceivable risks,
+would it be too much to suggest that the Great Powers should show their
+confidence in their own forecast by guaranteeing that if by the
+insurgence of unexpected events they proved to be mistaken and Rumania
+were attacked, they would give us prompt and adequate military
+assistance?" To this appeal there was no affirmative response; whereupon
+M. Bratiano concluded: "The limitation of armaments is highly desirable.
+No people is more eager for it than ours. But it has one limitation
+which must, I venture to think, be respected. So long as you have a
+restive or dubious neighbor, whose military forces are subjected neither
+to limitation nor control, you cannot divest yourself of your own means
+of self-defense. That is our view of the matter."
+
+Months later the same difficulty cropped up anew, this time in a
+concrete form, and was dealt with by the Supreme Council in its
+characteristic manner. Toward the end of August Rumania's doings in
+Hungary and her alleged designs on the Banat alarmed and angered the
+delegates, whose authority was being flouted with impunity; and by way
+of summarily terminating the scandal and preventing unpleasant surprises
+M. Clemenceau proposed that all further consignments of arms to Rumania
+should cease. Thereupon Italy's chief representative, Signor Tittoni,
+offered an amendment. He deprecated, he said, any measure leveled
+specially against Rumania, all the more that there existed already an
+enactment of the old Council of Four limiting the armaments of all the
+lesser states. The Military Council of Versailles, having been charged
+with the study of this matter, had reached the conclusion that the Great
+Powers should not supply any of the governments with war material.
+Signor Tittoni was of the opinion, therefore, that those conclusions
+should now be enforced.
+
+The Council thereupon agreed with the Italian delegate, and passed a
+resolution to supply none of the lesser countries with war material. And
+a few minutes later it passed another resolution authorizing Germany to
+cede part of her munitions and war material to Czechoslovakia and some
+more to General Yudenitch![141]
+
+When the commissions to which all the complex problems had to be
+referred were being first created,[142] the lesser states were allowed
+only five representatives on the Financial and Economic commissions, and
+were bidden to elect them. The nineteen delegates of these States
+protested on the ground that this arrangement would not give them
+sufficient weight in the councils by which their interests would be
+discussed. These malcontents were headed by Senhor Epistacio Pessoa, the
+President-elect of the United States of Brazil. The Polish delegate, M.
+Dmowski, addressing the meeting, suggested that they should not proceed
+to an election, the results of which might stand in no relation to the
+interests which the states represented had in matters of European
+finance, but that they should ask the Great Powers to appoint the
+delegates. To this the President-elect of Brazil demurred, taking the
+ground that it would be undignified for the lesser states to submit to
+have their spokesman nominated by the greater. Thereupon they elected
+five delegates, all of them from South American countries, to deal with
+European finance, leaving the Europeans to choose five from among
+themselves. This would have given ten in all to the communities whose
+interests were described as limited, and was an affront to the Great
+Powers.
+
+This comedy was severely judged and its authors reprimanded by the heads
+of the Conference, who, while quashing the elections, relented to the
+extent of promising that extra delegates might be appointed for the
+lesser nations later on. As a matter of fact, the number of commissions
+was of no real consequence, because on all momentous issues their
+findings, unless they harmonized with the decisions of the chief
+plenipotentiaries, were simply ignored.
+
+The curious attitude of the Supreme Council toward Rumania may be
+contemplated from various angles of vision. But the safest coign of
+vantage from which to look at it is that formed by the facts.
+
+Rumania's grievances were many, and they began at the opening of the
+Conference, when she was refused more than two delegates as against the
+five attributed to each of the Great Powers and three each for Serbia
+and Belgium, whose populations are numerically inferior to hers. Then
+her treaty with Great Britain, France, and Russia, on the strength of
+which she entered the war, was upset by its more powerful signatories as
+soon as the frontier question was mooted at the Conference. Further, the
+existence of the Rumanian delegation was generally ignored by the
+Supreme Council. Thus, when the treaty with Germany was presented to
+Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau, a mere journalist[143] at the Conference
+possessed a complete copy, whereas the Rumanian delegation, headed by
+the Prime Minister Bratiano, had cognizance only of an incomplete
+summary. When the fragmentary treaty was drafted for Austria, the
+Rumanian delegation saw the text only on the evening before the
+presentation, and, noticing inacceptable clauses, formulated
+reservations. These reservations were apparently acquiesced in by the
+members of the Supreme Council. That, at any rate, was the impression of
+MM. Bratiano and Misu. But on the following day, catching a glimpse of
+the draft, they discovered that the obnoxious provisions had been left
+intact. Then they lodged their reserves in writing, but to no purpose.
+One of the obligations imposed on Rumania by the Powers was a promise to
+accept in advance any and every measure that the Supreme Council might
+frame for the protection of minorities in the country, and for further
+restricting the sovereignty of the state in matters connected with the
+transit of Allied goods. And, lastly, the Rumanians complained that the
+action of the Supreme Council was creating a dangerous ferment in the
+Dobrudja, and even in Transylvania, where the Saxon minority, which had
+willingly accepted Rumanian sway, was beginning to agitate against it.
+In Bessarabia the non-Rumanian elements of the population were fiercely
+opposing the Rumanians and invoking the support of the Peace Conference.
+The cardinal fact which, in the judgment of the Rumanians, dominated the
+situation was the _quasi_ ultimatum presented to them in the spring,
+when they were summoned unofficially and privately to grant industrial
+concessions to a pushing body of financiers, or else to abide by the
+consequences, one of which, they were told, would be the loss of
+America's active assistance. They had elected to incur the threatened
+penalty after having carefully weighed the advantages and disadvantages
+of laying the matter before President Wilson himself, and inquiring
+officially whether the action in question was--as they felt sure it must
+be--in contradiction with the President's east European policy. For it
+would be sad to think that abundant petroleum might have washed away
+many of the tribulations which the Rumanians had afterward to endure,
+and that loans accepted on onerous conditions would, as was hinted, have
+softened the hearts of those who had it in their power to render the
+existence of the nation sour or sweet.[144] "Look out," exclaimed a
+Rumanian to me. "You will see that we shall be spurned as Laodiceans,
+or worse, before the Conference is over." Rumania's external situation
+was even more perilous than her domestic plight. Situated between Russia
+and Hungary, she came more and more to resemble the iron between the
+hammer and the anvil. A well-combined move of the two anarchist states
+might have pulverized her. Alive to the danger, her spokesmen in Paris
+were anxious to guard against it, but the only hope they had at the
+moment was centered in the Great Powers, whose delegates at the
+Conference were discharging the functions which the League of Nations
+would be called on to fulfil whenever it became a real institution. And
+their past experience of the Great Powers' mode of action was not
+calculated to command their confidence. It was the Great Powers which,
+for their own behoof and without the slightest consideration for the
+interests of Rumania, had constrained that country to declare war
+against the Central Empires[145] and had made promises of effective
+support in the shape of Russian troops, war material of every kind,
+officers, and heavy artillery. But neither the promises of help nor the
+assurances that Germany's army of invasion would be immobilized were
+redeemed, and so far as one can now judge they ought never to have been
+made. For what actually came to pass--the invasion of the country by
+first-class German armies under Mackensen--might easily have been
+foreseen, and was actually foretold.[146] The entire country was put to
+sack, and everything of value that could be removed was carried off to
+Hungary, Germany, or Austria. The Allies lavished their verbal
+sympathies on the immolated nation, but did little else to succor it,
+and want and misery and disease played havoc with the people.
+
+After the armistice things became worse instead of better. The
+Hungarians were permitted to violate the conditions and keep a powerful
+army out of all proportion to the area which they were destined to
+retain, and as the Allies disposed of no countering force in eastern
+Europe, their commands were scoffed at by the Budapest Cabinet. In the
+spring of 1919 the Bolshevists of Hungary waxed militant and threatened
+the peace of Rumania, whose statesmen respectfully sued for permission
+to occupy certain commanding positions which would have enabled their
+armies to protect the land from invasion. But the Duumviri in Paris
+negatived the request. They fancied that they understood the situation
+better than the people on the spot. Thereupon the Bolshevists, ever
+ready for an opportunity, seized upon the opening afforded them by the
+Supreme Council, attacked the Rumanians, and invaded their territory.
+Nothing abashed, the two Anglo-Saxon statesmen comforted M. Bratiano and
+his colleagues with the expression of their regret and the promise that
+tranquillity would not again be disturbed. The Supreme Council would see
+to that. But this promise, like those that preceded it, was broken.
+
+The Rumanians went so far as to believe that the Supreme Council either
+had Bolshevist leanings or underwent secret influences--perhaps
+unwittingly--the nature of which it was not easy to ascertain. In
+support of these theories they urged that when the Rumanians were on the
+very point of annihilating the Red troops of Kuhn, it was the Supreme
+Council which interposed its authority to save them, and did save them
+effectually, when nothing else could have done it. That Kuhn was on the
+point of collapsing was a matter of common knowledge. A radio-telegram
+flashed from Budapest by one of his lieutenants contained this
+significant avowal: "He [Kuhn] has announced that the Hungarian forces
+are in flight. The troops which occupied a good position at the
+bridgehead of Gomi have abandoned it, carrying with them the men who
+were doing their duty. In Budapest preparations are going forward for
+equipping fifteen workmen's battalions." In other words, the downfall of
+Bolshevism had begun. The Rumanians were on the point of achieving it.
+Their troops on the bank of the river Tisza[147] were preparing to march
+on Budapest. And it was at that critical moment that the world-arbiters
+at the Conference who had anathematized the Bolshevists as the curse of
+civilization interposed their authority and called a halt. If they had
+solid grounds for intervening they were not avowed. M. Clemenceau sent
+for M. Bratiano and vetoed the march in peremptory terms which did scant
+justice to the services rendered and the sacrifices made by the Rumanian
+state. Secret arrangements, it was whispered, had been come to between
+agents of the Powers and Kuhn. At the time nobody quite understood the
+motive of the sudden change of disposition evinced by the Allies toward
+the Magyar Bolshevists. For it was assumed that they still regarded the
+Bolshevist leaders as outlaws. One explanation was that they objected to
+allow the Rumanian army alone to occupy the Hungarian capital. But that
+would not account for their neglect to despatch an Inter-Allied
+contingent to restore order in the city and country. For they remained
+absolutely inactive while Kuhn's supporters were rallying and
+consolidating their scattered and demoralized forces, and they kept the
+Rumanians from balking the Bolshevist work of preparing another attack.
+As one of their French critics[148] remarked, they dealt exclusively in
+negatives--some of them pernicious enough, whereas a positive policy
+was imperatively called for. To reconstruct a nation, not to say a
+ruined world, a series of contradictory vetoes is hardly sufficient. But
+another explanation of their attitude was offered which gained
+widespread acceptance. It will be unfolded presently.
+
+The dispersed Bolshevist army, thus shielded, soon recovered its nerve,
+and, feeling secure on the Rumanian front, where the Allies held the
+invading troops immobilized, attacked the Slovaks and overran their
+country. For Bolshevism is by nature proselytizing. The Prague Cabinet
+was dismayed. The new-born Czechoslovak state was shaken. A catastrophe
+might, as it seemed, ensue at any moment. Rumania's troops were on the
+watch for the signal to resume their march, but it came not. The
+Czechoslovaks were soliciting it prayerfully. But the weak-kneed
+plenipotentiaries in Paris were minded to fight, if at all, with weapons
+taken from a different arsenal. In lieu of ordering the Rumanian troops
+to march on Budapest, they addressed themselves to the Bolshevist
+leader, Kuhn, summoned him to evacuate the Slovak country, and
+volunteered the promise that they would compel the Rumanians to
+withdraw. This amazing line of action was decided on by the secret
+Council of Three without the assent or foreknowledge of the nation to
+whose interests it ran counter and the head of whose government was
+rubbing shoulders with the plenipotentiaries every day. But M.
+Bratiano's existence and that of his fellow-delegate was systematically
+ignored. It is not easy to fathom the motives that inspired this
+supercilious treatment of the spokesman of a nation which was
+sacrificing its sons in the service of the Allies as well as its own.
+Personal antipathy, however real, cannot be assumed without convincing
+grounds to have been the mainspring.
+
+But there was worse than the contemptuous treatment of a colleague who
+was also the chief Minister of a friendly state. If an order was to be
+given to the Rumanian government to recall its forces from the front
+which they occupied, elementary courtesy and political tact as well as
+plain common sense would have suggested its being communicated, in the
+first instance, to the chief of that government--who was then resident
+in Paris--as head of his country's delegation to the Conference. But
+that was not the course taken. The statesmen of the Secret Council had
+recourse to the radio, and, without consulting M. Bratiano, despatched a
+message "to the government in Bucharest" enjoining on it the withdrawal
+of the Rumanian army. For they were minded scrupulously to redeem their
+promise to the Bolshevists. One need not be a diplomatist to realize the
+amazement of "the Rumanian government" on receiving this abrupt behest.
+The feelings of the Premier, when informed of these underhand doings,
+can readily be imagined. And it is no secret that the temper of a large
+section of the Rumanian people was attuned by these petty freaks to
+sentiments which boded no good to the cause for which the Allies
+professed to be working. In September M. Bratiano was reported as having
+stigmatized the policy adopted by the Conference toward Rumania as being
+of a "malicious and dangerous character."[149]
+
+The frontier to which the troops were ordered to withdraw had, as we
+saw, just been assigned to Rumania[150] without the assent of her
+government, and with a degree of secrecy and arbitrariness that gave
+deep offense, not only to her official representatives, but also to
+those parliamentarians and politicians who from genuine attachment or
+for peace' sake were willing to go hand in hand with the Entente. "If
+one may classify the tree by its fruits," exclaimed a Rumanian statesman
+in my hearing, "the great Three are unconscious Bolshevists. They are
+undermining respect for authority, tradition, plain, straightforward
+dealing, and, in the case of Rumania, are behaving as though their
+staple aim were to detach our nation from France and the Entente. And
+this aim is not unattainable. The Rumanian people were heart and soul
+with the French, but the bonds which were strong a short while ago are
+being weakened among an influential section of the people, to the regret
+of all Rumanian patriots."
+
+The answer given by the "Rumanian government in Bucharest" to the
+peremptory order of the Secret Council was a reasoned refusal to comply.
+Rumania, taught by terrible experience, declined to be led once more
+into deadly peril against her own better judgment. Her statesmen, more
+intimately acquainted with the Hungarians than were Mr. Lloyd George,
+Mr. Wilson, and M. Clemenceau, required guaranties which could be
+supplied only by armed forces--Rumanian or Allied. Unless and until
+Hungary received a government chosen by the free will of the people and
+capable of offering guaranties of good conduct, the troops must remain
+where they were. For the line which they occupied at the moment could be
+defended with four divisions, whereas the new one could not be held by
+less than seven or eight. The Council was therefore about to commit
+another fateful mistake, the consequences of which it was certain to
+shift to the shoulders of the pliant people. It was then that Rumania's
+leaders kicked against the pricks.
+
+To return to the dispute between Bucharest and Paris: the Rumanian
+government would have been willing to conform to the desire of the
+Supreme Council and withdraw its troops if the Supreme Council would
+only make good its assurance and guarantee Rumania effectually from
+future attacks by the Hungarians. The proviso was reasonable, and as a
+measure of self-defense imperative. The safeguard asked for was a
+contingent of Allied force. But the two supreme councilors in Paris
+dealt only in counters. All they had to offer to M. Bratiano were verbal
+exhortations before the combat and lip-sympathy after defeat, and these
+the Premier rejected. But here, as in the case of the Poles, the
+representatives of the "Allied and Associated" Powers insisted. They
+were profuse of promises, exhortations, and entreaties before passing to
+threats--of guaranties they said nothing--but the Rumanian Premier,
+turning a deaf ear to cajolery and intimidation, remained inflexible.
+For he was convinced that their advice was often vitiated by gross
+ignorance and not always inspired by disinterestedness, while the orders
+they issued were hardly more than the velleities of well-meaning gropers
+in the dark who lacked the means of executing them.
+
+The eminent plenipotentiaries, thus set at naught by a little state,
+ruminated on the embarrassing situation. In all such cases their
+practice had been to resign themselves to circumstances if they proved
+unable to bend circumstances to their schemes. It was thus that
+President Wilson had behaved when British statesmen declined even to
+hear him on the subject of the freedom of the seas, when M. Clemenceau
+refused to accept a peace that denied the Saar Valley and a pledge of
+military assistance to France, and when Japan insisted on the
+retrocession of Shantung. Toward Italy an attitude of firmness had been
+assumed, because owing to her economic dependence on Britain and the
+United States she could not indulge in the luxury of nonconformity.
+Hence the plenipotentiaries, and in particular Mr. Wilson, asserted
+their will inexorably and were painfully surprised that one of the
+lesser states had the audacity to defy it.
+
+The circumstance that after their triumph over Italy the world's
+trustees were thus publicly flouted by a little state of eastern Europe
+was gall and wormwood to them. It was also a menace to the cause with
+which they were identified. None the less, they accepted the inevitable
+for the moment, pitched their voices in a lower key, and decided to
+approve the Rumanian thesis that Neo-Bolshevism in Hungary must be no
+longer bolstered up,[151] but be squashed vicariously. They accordingly
+invited the representatives of the three little countries on which the
+honor of waging these humanitarian wars in the anarchist east of Europe
+was to be conferred, and sounded them as to their willingness to put
+their soldiers in the field, and how many as to the numbers available.
+M. Bratiano offered eight divisions. The Czechoslovaks did not relish
+the project, but after some delay and fencing around agreed to furnish a
+contingent, whereas the Jugoslavs met the demand with a plain negative,
+which was afterward changed to acquiescence when the Council promised to
+keep the Italians from attacking them. As things turned out, none but
+the Rumanians actually fought the Hungarian Reds. Meanwhile the members
+of the American, British, and Italian missions in Hungary endeavored to
+reach a friendly agreement with the criminal gang in Budapest.
+
+The plan of campaign decided on had Marshal Foch for its author. It was,
+therefore, business-like. He demanded a quarter of a million men,[152]
+to which it was decided that Rumania should contribute 120,000,
+Jugoslavia 50,000, and Czechoslovakia as many as she could conveniently
+afford. But the day before the preparations were to have begun,[153]
+Bela Kuhn flung his troops[154] against the Rumanians with initial
+success, drove them across the Tisza with considerable loss, took up
+commanding positions, and struck dismay into the members of the Supreme
+Council. The Semitic Dictator, with grim humor, explained to the
+crestfallen lawgivers, who were once more at fault, that a wanton breach
+of the peace was alien to his thoughts; that, on the contrary, his
+motive for action deserved high praise--it was to compel the rebellious
+Rumanians to obey the behest of the Conference and withdraw to their
+frontiers. The plenipotentiaries bore this gibe with dignity, and
+decided to have recourse once more to their favorite, and, indeed, only
+method--the despatch of exhortative telegrams. Of more efficacious means
+they were destitute. This time their message, which lacked a definite
+address, was presumably intended for the anti-Bolshevist population of
+Hungary, whom it indirectly urged to overthrow the Kuhn Cabinet and
+receive the promised reward--namely, the privilege of entering into
+formal relations with the Entente and signing the death-warrant of the
+Magyar state. It is not easy to see how this solution alone could have
+enabled the Supreme Council to establish normal conditions and
+tranquillity in the land. But the Duumvirate seemed utterly incapable of
+devising a coherent policy for central or eastern Europe. Even when
+Hungary had a government friendly to the Entente they never obtained any
+advantage from it. They had had no use for Count Karolyi. They had
+allowed things to slip and slide, and permitted--nay, helped--Bolshevism
+to thrive, although they had brand-marked it as a virulent epidemic to
+be drastically stamped out. Temper, education, and training disqualified
+them for seizing opportunity and pressing the levers that stood ready
+to their hand.
+
+In consequence of the vacillation of the two chiefs, who seldom stood
+firm in the face of difficulties, the members of the predatory gang
+which concealed its alien origin under Magyar nationality and its
+criminal propensities[155] under a political mask had been enabled to go
+on playing an odious comedy, to the disgust of sensible people and the
+detriment of the new and enlarged states of Europe. For the cost of the
+Supreme Council's weakness had to be paid in blood and substance, little
+though the two delegates appeared to realize this. The extent to which
+the ruinous process was carried out would be incredible were it not
+established by historic facts and documents.
+
+The permanent agents of the Powers in Hungary,[156] preferring
+conciliation to force, now exhorted the Hungarians to rid themselves of
+Kuhn and promised in return to expel the Rumanians from Hungarian
+territory once more and to have the blockade raised. At the close of
+July some Magyars from Austria met Kuhn at a frontier station[157] and
+strove to persuade him to withdraw quietly into obscurity, but he,
+confiding in the policy of the Allies and his star, scouted the
+suggestion. It was at this juncture that the Rumanians, pushing on to
+Budapest, resolved, come what might, to put an end to the intolerable
+situation and to make a clean job of it once for all. And they
+succeeded.
+
+For Rumania's initial military reverse[158] was the result of a
+surprise attack by some eighty thousand men. But her troops rapidly
+regained their warlike spirit, recrossed the river Tisza, shattered the
+Neo-Bolshevist regime, and reached the environs of Budapest.
+
+By the 1st of August the lawless band that was ruining the country
+relinquished the reins of power, which were taken over at first by a
+Socialist Cabinet of which an influential French press organ wrote: "The
+names of the new ... commissaries of the people tell us nothing, because
+their bearers are unknown. But the endings of their names tell us that
+most of them are, like those of the preceding government, of Jewish
+origin. Never since the inauguration of official communism did Budapest
+better deserve the appellation of Judapest, which was assigned to it by
+the late M. Lueger, chief of the Christian Socialists of Vienna. That is
+an additional trait in common with the Russian Soviets."[159]
+
+The Rumanians presented a stiff ultimatum to the new Hungarian Cabinet.
+They were determined to safeguard their country and its neighbors from a
+repetition of the danger and of the sacrifices it entailed; in other
+words, to dictate the terms of a new armistice. The Powers demurred and
+ordered them to content themselves with the old one concluded by the
+Serbian Voyevod Mishitch and General Henrys in November of the preceding
+year and violated subsequently by the Magyars. But the objections to
+this course were many and unanswerable. In fact they were largely
+identical with the objections which the Supreme Council itself had
+offered to the Polish-Ukrainian armistice. And besides these there were
+others. For example, the Rumanians had had no hand or part in drafting
+the old armistice. Moreover it was clearly inapplicable to the fresh
+campaign which was waged and terminated nine months after it had been
+drawn up. Experience had shown that it was inadequate to guarantee
+public tranquillity, for it had not hindered Magyar attacks on the
+Rumanians and Czechoslovaks. The Rumanians, therefore, now that they had
+worsted their adversaries, were resolved to disarm them and secure a
+real peace. They decided to leave fifteen thousand troops for the
+maintenance of internal order.[160] Rumania's insistence on the delivery
+of live-stock, corn, agricultural machinery, and rolling-stock for
+railways was, it was argued, necessitated by want and justified by
+equity. For it was no more than partial reparation for the immense
+losses wantonly inflicted on the nation by the Magyars and their allies.
+Until then no other amends had been made or even offered. The Austrians,
+Hungarians, and Germans, during their two years' occupation of Rumania,
+had seized and carried off from the latter country two million five
+hundred thousand tons of wheat and hundreds of thousands of head of
+cattle, besides vast quantities of clothing, wool, skins, and raw
+material, while thousands of Rumanian homes were gutted and their
+contents taken away and sold in the Central Empires. Factories were
+stripped of their machinery and the railways of their engines and
+wagons. When Mackensen left there remained in Rumania only fifty
+locomotives out of the twelve hundred which she possessed before the
+war. The material, therefore, that Rumania removed from Hungary during
+the first weeks of the occupation represented but a small part of the
+quantities of which she had been despoiled during the war.
+
+It was further urged that at the beginning the Rumanian delegates would
+have contented themselves with reparation for losses wantonly inflicted
+and for the restitution of the property wrongfully taken from them by
+their enemies, on the lines on which France had obtained this offset.
+They had asked for this, but were informed that their request could not
+be complied with. They were not even permitted to send a representative
+to Germany to point out to the Inter-Allied authorities the objects of
+which their nation had been robbed, as though the plunderers would
+voluntarily give up their ill-gotten stores! It was partly because of
+these restrictions that the Rumanian authorities resolved to take what
+belonged to them without more ado. And they could not, they said, afford
+to wait, because they were expecting an attack by the Russian Bolsheviki
+and it behooved them to have done with one foe before taking on another.
+These explanations irritated in lieu of calming the Supreme Council.
+
+"Possibly," wrote the well-informed _Temps_, "Rumania would have been
+better treated if she had closed with certain proposals of loans on
+crushing terms or complied with certain demands for oil
+concessions."[161] Possibly. But surely problems of justice, equity, and
+right ought never to have been mixed up with commercial and industrial
+interests, whether with the connivance or by the carelessness of the
+holders of a vast trust who needed and should have merited unlimited
+confidence. It is neither easy nor edifying to calculate the harm which
+transactions of this nature, whether completed or merely inchoate, are
+capable of inflicting on the great community for whose moral as well as
+material welfare the Supreme Council was laboring in darkness against so
+many obstacles of its own creation. Is it surprising that the states
+which suffered most from these weaknesses of the potent delegates should
+have resented their misdirection and endeavored to help themselves as
+best they could? It may be blameworthy and anti-social, but it is
+unhappily natural and almost unavoidable. It is sincerely to be
+regretted that the art of stimulating the nations--about which the
+delegates were so solicitous--to enthusiastic readiness to accept the
+Council as the "moral guide of the world" should have been exercised in
+such bungling fashion.
+
+The Supreme Council then feeling impelled to assert its dignity against
+the wilfulness of a small nation decided on ignoring alike the service
+and the disservice rendered by Rumania's action. Accordingly, it
+proceeded without reference to any of the recent events except the
+disappearance of the Bolshevist gang. Four generals were accordingly
+told off to take the conduct of Hungarian affairs into their hands
+despite their ignorance of the actual conditions of the problem.[162]
+They were ordered to disarm the Magyars, to deliver up Hungary's war
+material to the Allies, of whom only the Rumanians and the Czechoslovaks
+had taken the field against the enemy since the conclusion of the
+armistice the year before, and they were also to exercise their
+authority over the Rumanian victors and the Serbs, both of whom occupied
+Hungarian territory. The _Temps_ significantly remarked that the Supreme
+Council, while not wishing to deal with any Hungarian government but one
+qualified to represent the country, "seems particularly eager to see
+resumed the importation of foreign wares into Hungary. Certain persons
+appear to fear that Rumania, by retaking from the Magyars wagons and
+engines, might check the resumption of this traffic."[163]
+
+What it all came to was that the Great Powers, who had left Rumania to
+her fate when she was attacked by the Magyars, intervened the moment the
+assailed nation, helping itself, got the better of its enemy, and then
+they resolved to balk it of the fruits of victory and of the safeguards
+it would fain have created for the future. It was to rely upon the
+Supreme Council once more, to take the broken reed for a solid staff.
+That the Powers had something to urge in support of their interposition
+will not be denied. They rightly set forth that Rumania was not
+Hungary's only creditor. Her neighbors also possessed claims that must
+be satisfied as far as feasible, and equity prompted the pooling of all
+available assets. This plea could not be refuted. But the credit which
+the pleaders ought to have enjoyed in the eyes of the Rumanian nation
+was so completely sapped by their antecedents that no heed was paid to
+their reasoning, suasion, or promises.
+
+Rumania, therefore, in requisitioning Hungarian property was formally in
+the wrong. On the other hand, it should be borne in mind that she, like
+other nations, was exasperated by the high-handed action of the Great
+Powers, who proceeded as though her good-will and loyalty were of no
+consequence to the pacification of eastern Europe.
+
+After due deliberation the Supreme Council agreed upon the wording of a
+conciliatory message, not to the Rumanians, but to the Magyars, to be
+despatched to Lieutenant-Colonel Romanelli. The gist of it was the old
+refrain, "to carry out the terms of the armistice[164] and respect the
+frontiers traced by the Supreme Council[165] and we will protect you
+from the Rumanians, who have no authority from us. We are sending
+forthwith an Inter-Allied military commission[166] to superintend the
+disarmament and see that the Rumanian troops withdraw."
+
+It cannot be denied that the Rumanian conditions were drastic. But it
+should be remembered that the provocation amounted almost to
+justification. And as for the crime of disobedience, it will not be
+gainsaid that a large part of the responsibility fell on the shoulders
+of the lawgivers in Paris, whose decrees, coming oracularly from
+Olympian heights without reference to local or other concrete
+circumstances, inflicted heavy losses in blood and substance on the
+ill-starred people of Rumania. And to make matters worse, Rumania's
+official representatives at the Conference had been not merely ignored,
+but reprimanded like naughty school-children by a harsh dominie and
+occasionally humiliated by men whose only excuse was nervous tenseness
+in consequence of overwork combined with morbid impatience at being
+contradicted in matters which they did not understand. Other states had
+contemplated open rebellion against the big ferrule of the "bosses," and
+more than once the resolution was taken to go on strike unless certain
+concessions were accorded them. Alone the Rumanians executed their
+resolve.
+
+Naturally the destiny-weavers of peoples and nations in Paris were
+dismayed at the prospect and apprehensive lest the Rumanians should end
+the war in their own way. They despatched three notes in quick
+succession to the Bucharest government, one of which reads like a
+peevish indictment hastily drafted before the evidence had been sifted
+or even carefully read. It raked up many of the old accusations that had
+been leveled against the Rumanians, tacked them on to the crime of
+insubordination, and without waiting for an answer--assuming, in fact,
+that there could be no satisfactory answer--summoned them to prove
+publicly by their acts that they accepted and were ready to execute in
+good faith the policy decided upon by the Conference.[167]
+
+That note seemed unnecessarily offensive and acted on the Rumanians as
+a powerful irritant,[168] besides exposing the active members of the
+Supreme Council to scathing criticism. The Rumanians asked their Entente
+friends in private to outline the policy which they were accused of
+countering, and were told in reply that it was beyond the power of the
+most ingenious hair-splitting casuist to define or describe. "As for
+us," wrote one of the stanchest supporters of the Entente in French
+journalism, "who have followed with attention the labors and the
+utterances, written and oral, of the Four, the Five, the Ten, of the
+Supreme and Superior Councils, we have not yet succeeded in discovering
+what was the 'policy decided by the Conference.' We have indeed heard or
+read countless discourses pronounced by the choir-masters. They abound
+in noble thought, in eloquent expositions, in protests, and in promises.
+But of aught that could be termed a policy we have not found a
+trace."[169] This verdict will be indorsed by the historian.
+
+The Rumanians seemed in no hurry to reply to the Council's three notes.
+They were said to be too busy dealing out what they considered rough and
+ready justice to their enemies, and were impatient of the intervention
+of their "friends." They seized rolling-stock, cattle, agricultural
+implements, and other property of the kind that had been stolen from
+their own people and sent the booty home without much ado. Work of this
+kind was certain to be accompanied by excesses and the Conference
+received numerous protests from the aggrieved inhabitants. But on the
+whole Rumania, at any rate during the first few weeks of the occupation,
+had the substantial sympathy of the largest and most influential
+section of the world's press. People declared that they were glad to
+see the haze of self-righteousness and cant at last dispelled by a whiff
+of wholesome egotism. From the outspoken comments of the most widely
+circulating journals in France and Britain the dictators in Paris, who
+were indignant that the counsels of the strong should carry so little
+weight in eastern Europe, could acquaint themselves with the impression
+which their efforts at cosmic legislation were producing among the saner
+elements of mankind.
+
+In almost every language one could read words of encouragement to the
+recalcitrant Rumanians for having boldly burst the irksome bonds in
+which the peoples of the world were being pinioned. "It is our view,"
+wrote one firm adherent of the Entente, "that having proved incapable of
+protecting the Rumanians in their hour of danger, our alliance cannot
+to-day challenge the safeguards which they have won for
+themselves."[170]
+
+"If liberty had her old influence," one read in another popular
+journal,[171] "the Great Powers would not be bringing pressure to bear
+on Rumania with the object of saving Hungary from richly deserved
+punishment." "Instead of nagging the Rumanians," wrote an eminent French
+publicist, "they would do much better to keep the Turks in hand. If the
+Turks in despair, in order to win American sympathies, proclaim
+themselves socialists, syndicalists, or laborists, will President Wilson
+permit them to renovate Armenia and other places after the manner of
+Jinghiz Khan?"[172]
+
+But what may have weighed with the Supreme Council far more than the
+disapproval of publicists were its own impotence, the undignified figure
+it was cutting, and the injury that was being done to the future League
+of Nations by the impunity with which one of the lesser states could
+thus set at naught the decisions of its creators and treat them with
+almost the same disrespect which they themselves had displayed toward
+the Rumanian delegates in Paris. They saw that once their energetic
+representations were ignored by the Bucharest government they were at
+the end of their means of influencing it. To compel obedience by force
+was for the time being out of the question. In these circumstances the
+only issue left them was to make a virtue of necessity and veer round to
+the Rumanian point of view as unobtrusively as might be, so as to tide
+over the transient crisis. And that was the course which they finally
+struck out.
+
+Matters soon came to the culminating point. The members of the Allied
+Military Mission had received full powers to force the commanders of the
+troops of occupation to obey the decisions of the Conference, and when
+they were confronted with M. Diamandi, the ex-Minister to Petrograd,
+they issued their orders in the name of the Supreme Council. "We take
+orders here only from our own government, which is in Bucharest," was
+the answer they received. The Rumanians have a proverb which runs: "Even
+a donkey will not fall twice into the same quicksand," and they may have
+quoted it to General Gorton when refusing to follow the Allies after
+their previous painful experience. Then the mission telegraphed to Paris
+for further instructions.[173] In the meanwhile the Rumanian government
+had sent its answer to the three notes of the Council. And its tenor was
+firm and unyielding. Undeterred by menaces, M. Bratiano maintained that
+he had done the right thing in sending troops to Budapest, imposing
+terms on Hungary and re-establishing order. As a matter of fact he had
+rendered a sterling service to all Europe, including France and
+Britain. For if Kuhn and his confederates had contrived to overrun
+Rumania, the Great Powers would have been morally bound to hasten to the
+assistance of their defeated ally. The press was permitted to announce
+that the Council of Five was preparing to accept the Rumanian position.
+The members of the Allied Military Mission were informed that they were
+not empowered to give orders to the Rumanians, but only to consult and
+negotiate with them, whereby all their tact and consideration were
+earnestly solicited.
+
+But the palliatives devised by the delegates were unavailing to heal the
+breach. After a while the Council, having had no answer to its urgent
+notes, decided to send an ultimatum to Rumania, calling on her to
+restore the rolling-stock which she had seized and to evacuate the
+Hungarian capital. The terms of this document were described as
+harsh.[174] Happily, before it was despatched the Council learned that
+the Rumanian government had never received the communications nor
+seventy others forwarded by wireless during the same period. Once more
+it had taken a decision without acquainting itself of the facts.
+Thereupon a special messenger[175] was sent to Bucharest with a note
+"couched in stern terms," which, however, was "milder in tone" than the
+ultimatum.
+
+To go back for a moment to the elusive question of motive, which was not
+without influence on Rumania's conduct. Were the action and inaction of
+the plenipotentiaries merely the result of a lack of cohesion among
+their ideas? Or was it that they were thinking mainly of the fleeting
+interests of the moment and unwilling to precipitate their conceptions
+of the future in the form of a constructive policy? The historian will
+do well to leave their motives to another tribunal and confine himself
+to facts, which even when carefully sifted are numerous and significant
+enough.
+
+During the progress of the events just sketched there were launched
+certain interesting accounts of what was going on below the surface,
+which had such impartial and well-informed vouchers that the chronicler
+of the Conference cannot pass them over in silence. If true, as they
+appear to be, they warrant the belief that two distinct elements lay at
+the root of the Secret Council's dealings with Rumania. One of them was
+their repugnance to her whole system of government, with its survivals
+of feudalism, anti-Semitism, and conservatism. Associated with this was,
+people alleged, a wish to provoke a radical and, as they thought,
+beneficent change in the entire regime by getting rid of its chiefs.
+This plan had been successfully tried against MM. Orlando and Sonnino in
+Italy. Their solicitude for this latter aim may have been whetted by a
+personal lack of sympathy for the Rumanian delegates, with whom the
+Anglo-Saxon chiefs hardly ever conversed. It was no secret that the
+Rumanian Premier found it exceedingly difficult to obtain an audience of
+his colleague President Wilson, from whom he finally parted almost as
+much a stranger as when he first arrived in Paris.
+
+It may not be amiss to record an instance of the methods of the Supreme
+Council, for by putting himself in the place of the Rumanian Premier the
+reader may the more clearly understand his frame of mind toward that
+body. In June the troops of Moritz (or Bela) Kuhn had inflicted a severe
+defeat on the Czechoslavs. Thereupon the Secret Council of Four or Five,
+whose shortsighted action was answerable for the reverse, decided to
+remonstrate with him. Accordingly they requested him to desist from the
+offensive. Only then did it occur to them that if he was to withdraw
+his armies behind the frontiers, he must be informed where these
+frontiers were. They had already been determined in secret by the three
+great statesmen, who carefully concealed them not merely from an
+inquisitive public, but also from the states concerned. The Rumanian,
+Jugoslav and Czechoslovak delegates were, therefore, as much in the dark
+on the subject as were rank outsiders and enemies. But as soon as
+circumstances forced the hand of all the plenipotentiaries the secret
+had to be confided to them all.[176] The Hungarian Dictator pleaded that
+if his troops had gone out of bounds it was because the frontiers were
+unknown to him. The Czechoslovaks respectfully demurred to one of the
+boundaries along the river Ipol which it was difficult to justify and
+easy to rectify. But the Rumanian delegation, confronted with the map,
+met the decision with a frank protest. For it amounted to the
+abandonment of one of their three vital irreducible claims which they
+were not empowered to renounce. Consequently they felt unable to
+acquiesce in it. But the Supreme Council insisted. The second delegate,
+M. Misu, was in consequence obliged to start at once for Bucharest to
+consult with the King and the Cabinet and consider what action the
+circumstances called for. In the meantime, the entire question, and
+together with it some of the practical consequences involved by the
+tentative solution, remained in suspense.
+
+When certain clauses of the Peace Treaty, which, although they
+materially affected Rumania, had been drafted without the knowledge of
+her plenipotentiaries, were quite ready, the Rumanian Premier was
+summoned to take cognizance of them. Their tenor surprised and irritated
+him. As he felt unable to assent to them, and as the document was to be
+presented to the enemy in a day or two, he deemed it his duty to mention
+his objections at once. But hardly had he begun when M. Clemenceau arose
+and exclaimed, "M. Bratiano, you are here to listen, not to comment."
+Stringent measures may have been considered useful and dictatorial
+methods indispensable in default of reasoning or suasion, but it was
+surely incumbent on those who employed them to choose a form which would
+deprive them of their sting or make them less personally painful.
+
+For whatever one may think of the wisdom of the policy adopted by the
+Supreme Council toward the unprivileged states, it would be difficult to
+justify the manner in which they imposed it. Patience, tact, and suasion
+are indispensable requisites in men who assume the functions of leaders
+and guides, yet know that military force alone is inadequate to shape
+the future after their conception. The delegates could look only to
+moral power for the execution of their far-reaching plans, yet they
+spurned the means of acquiring it. The best construction one can put
+upon their action will represent it as the wrecking of the substance by
+the form. By establishing a situation of force throughout Europe the
+Council created and sanctioned the principle that it must be maintained
+by force.
+
+But the affronted nations did not stop at this mild criticism. They
+assailed the policy itself, cast suspicion on the disinterestedness of
+the motives that inspired it, and contributed thereby to generate an
+atmosphere of distrust in which the frail organism that was shortly to
+be called into being could not thrive. Contemplated through this
+distorting medium, one set of delegates was taunted with aiming at a
+monopoly of imperialism and the other with rank hypocrisy. It is
+superfluous to remark that the idealism and lofty aims of the President
+of the United States were never questioned by the most reckless
+Thersites. The heaviest charges brought against him were weakness of
+will, exaggerated self-esteem, impatience of contradiction, and a naive
+yearning for something concrete to take home with him, in the shape of a
+covenant of peoples.
+
+The reports circulating in the French capital respecting vast commercial
+enterprises about to be inaugurated by English-speaking peoples and
+about proposals that the governments of the countries interested should
+facilitate them, were destructive of the respect due to statesmen whose
+attachment to lofty ideals should have absorbed every other motive in
+their ethico-political activity. Thus it was affirmed by responsible
+politicians that an official representative of an English-speaking
+country gave expression to the view, which he also attributed to his
+government, that henceforth his country should play a much larger part
+in the economic life of eastern Europe than any other nation. This, he
+added, was a conscious aim which would be steadily pursued, and to the
+attainment of which he hoped the politicians and their people would
+contribute. So far this, it may be contended, was perfectly legitimate.
+
+But it was further affirmed, and not by idle quidnuncs, that one of
+Rumania's prominent men had been informed that Rumania could count on
+the good-will and financial assistance of the United States only if her
+Premier gave an assurance that, besides the special privileges to be
+conferred on the Jewish minority in his country, he would also grant
+industrial and commercial concessions to certain Jewish groups and firms
+who reside and do business in the United States. And by way of taking
+time by the forelock one or more of these firms had already despatched
+representatives to Rumania to study and, if possible, earmark the
+resources which they proposed to exploit.
+
+Now, to expand the trade of one's country is a legitimate ambition, and
+to hold that Jewish firms are the best qualified to develop the
+resources of Rumania is a tenable position. But to mix up any commercial
+scheme with the ethical regeneration of Europe is, to put it mildly,
+impolitic. However unimpeachable the motives of the promoter of such a
+project, it is certain to damage both causes which he has at heart. But
+the report does not leave the matter here. It goes on to state that a
+very definite proposal, smacking of an ultimatum, was finally presented,
+which set before the Rumanians two alternatives from which they were to
+choose--either the concessions asked for, which would earn for them the
+financial assistance of the United States, or else no concessions and no
+help.
+
+At a Conference, the object of which was the uplifting of the life of
+nations from the squalor of sordid ambitions backed by brutal force, to
+ideal aims and moral relationship, haggling and chaffering such as this
+seemed wholly out of place. It reminded one of "those that sold oxen and
+sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting" in the temple of
+Jerusalem who were one day driven out with "a scourge of small cords."
+The Rumanians hoped that the hucksters in the latter-day temple of peace
+might be got rid of in a similar way; one of them suggested boldly
+asking President Wilson himself to say what he thought of the policy
+underlying the disconcerting proposal....
+
+The other alleged element of the Supreme Council's attitude needs no
+qualification. The mystery that enwrapped the orders from the Conference
+which suddenly arrested the march of the Rumanian and Allied troops,
+when they were nearing Budapest for the purpose of overthrowing Bela
+Kuhn, never perplexed those who claimed to possess trustworthy
+information about the goings-on between certain enterprising officers
+belonging some to the Allied Army of Occupation and others to the
+Hungarian forces. One of these transactions is alleged to have taken
+place between Kuhn himself, who is naturally a shrewd observer and hard
+bargain-driver, and a certain financial group which for obvious reasons
+remained nameless. The object of the compact was the bestowal on the
+group of concessions in the Banat in return for an undertaking that the
+Bolshevist Dictator would be left in power and subsequently honored by
+an invitation to the Conference. The plenipotentiaries' command
+arresting the march against Kuhn and their conditional promise to summon
+him to the Conference, dovetail with this contract. These undeniable
+coincidences are humiliating. The nexus between them was discovered and
+announced before the stipulations were carried out.
+
+The Banat had been an apple of discord ever since the close of
+hostilities. The country, inhabited chiefly by Rumanians, but with a
+considerable admixture of Magyar and Saxon elements, is one of the
+richest unexploited regions in Europe. Its mines of gold, zinc, lead,
+coal, and iron offer an irresistible temptation to pushing capitalists
+and their governments, who feel further attracted by the credible
+announcement that it also possesses oil in quantities large enough to
+warrant exploitation. It was partly in order to possess herself of these
+abundant resources and create an accomplished fact that Serbia, who also
+founded her claim on higher ground, laid hands on the administration of
+the Banat. But the experiment was disappointing. The Jugoslavs having
+failed to maintain themselves there, the bargain just sketched was
+entered into by officers of the Hungarian and Allied armies. For
+concession-hunters are not fastidious about the nationality or character
+of those who can bestow what they happen to be seeking.
+
+This stroke of jobbery had political consequences. That was inevitable.
+For so long as the Banat remained in Rumania or Serbian hands it could
+not be alienated in favor of any foreign group. Therefore secession from
+both those states was a preliminary condition to economic alienation.
+The task was bravely tackled. An "independent republic" was suddenly
+added to the states of Europe. This amazing creation, which fitted in
+with the Balkanizing craze of the moment, was the work of a few
+wire-pullers in which the easy-going inhabitants had neither hand nor
+part. Indeed, they were hardly aware that the Republic of the Banat had
+been proclaimed. The amateur state-builders were obliging officers of
+the two armies, and behind them were speculators and concession-hunters.
+It was obvious that the new community, as it contained a very small
+population for an independent state, would require a protector. Its
+sponsors, who had foreseen this, provided for it by promising to assign
+the humanitarian role of protectress of the Banat Republic to democratic
+France. And French agents were on the spot to approve the arrangement.
+Thus far the story, of which I have given but the merest outline.[177]
+
+In this compromising fashion then Bela Kuhn was left for the time being
+in undisturbed power, and none of his friends had any fear that he would
+be driven out by the Allies so long as he contrived to hit it off with
+the Hungarians. Should these turn away from him, however, the
+cosmopolitan financiers, whose cardinal virtues are suppleness and
+adaptability, would readily work with his successor, whoever he might
+be. The few who knew of this quickening of high ideals with low intrigue
+were shocked by the light-hearted way in which under the aegis of the
+Conference a discreditable pact was made with the "enemy of the human
+race," a grotesque regime foisted on a simple-minded people without
+consideration for the principle of self-determination, and the very
+existence of the Czechoslovak Republic imperiled. Indeed, for a brief
+while it looked as though the Bolshevist forces of the Ukraine and
+Russia would effect a junction with the troops of Bela Kuhn and shatter
+eastern Europe to shreds. To such dangerous extent did the Supreme
+Council indirectly abet the Bolshevist peace-breakers against the
+Rumanians and Czechoslovak allies.
+
+It was at this conjuncture that a Rumanian friend remarked to me: "The
+apprehension which our people expressed to you some months ago when they
+rejected the demand for concessions has been verified by events. Please
+remember that when striking the balance of accounts."
+
+The fact could not be blinked that in the camp of the Allies there was a
+serious schism. The partizans of the Supreme Council accused the
+Bucharest government of secession, and were accused in turn of having
+misled their Rumanian partners, of having planned to exploit them
+economically, of having favored their Bolshevist invaders, and pursued a
+policy of blackmail. The rights and wrongs of this quarrel had best be
+left to another tribunal. What can hardly be gainsaid is that in a
+general way the Rumanians--and not these alone--were implicitly classed
+as people of a secondary category, who stood to gain by every measure
+for their good which the culture-bearers in Paris might devise. These
+inferior nations were all incarnate anachronisms, relics of dark ages
+which had survived into an epoch of democracy and liberty, and it now
+behooved them to readjust themselves to that. Their institutions must be
+modernized, their Old World conceptions abandoned, and their people
+taught to imitate the progressive nations of the West. What the
+populations thought and felt on the subject was irrelevant, they being
+less qualified to judge what was good for them than their
+self-constituted guides and guardians. To the angry voices which their
+spokesmen uplifted no heed need be paid, and passive resistance could be
+overcome by coercion. This modified version of Carlyle's doctrine would
+seem to be at the root of the Supreme Council's action toward the lesser
+nations generally and in especial toward Rumania.
+
+
+POLAND AND THE SUPREME COUNCIL
+
+This frequent misdirection by the Supreme Council, however one may
+explain it, created an electric state of the political atmosphere among
+all nations whose interests were set down or treated as "limited," and
+more than one of them, as we saw, contemplated striking out a policy of
+passive resistance. As a matter of fact some of them timidly adopted it
+more than once, almost always with success and invariably with impunity.
+It was thus that the Czechoslovaks--the most docile of them
+all--disregarding the injunctions of the Conference, took possession of
+contentious territory,[178] and remained in possession of it for several
+months, and that the Jugoslavs occupied a part of the district of
+Klagenfurt and for a long time paid not the slightest heed to the order
+issued by the Supreme Council to evacuate it in favor of the Austrians,
+and that the Poles applied the same tactics to eastern Galicia. The
+story of this last revolt is characteristic alike of the ignorance and
+of the weakness of the Powers which had assumed the functions of
+world-administrators. During the hostilities between the Ruthenians of
+Galicia and the Poles the Council, taunted by the press with the
+numerous wars that were being waged while the world's peace-makers were
+chatting about cosmic politics in the twilight of the Paris conclave,
+issued an imperative order that an armistice must be concluded at once.
+But the Poles appealed to events, which swiftly settled the matter as
+they anticipated. Neither the Supreme Council nor the agents it employed
+had a real grasp of the east European situation, or of the role
+deliberately assigned to Poland by its French sponsors--that of
+superseding Russia as a bulwark against Germany in the East--or of the
+local conditions. Their action, as was natural in these circumstances,
+was a sequence of gropings in the dark, of incongruous behests,
+exhortations, and prohibitions which discredited them in the eyes of
+those on whose trust and docility the success of their mission depended.
+
+Consciousness of these disadvantages may have had much to do with the
+rigid secrecy which the delegates maintained before their desultory
+talks ripened into discussions. In the case of Poland, as of Rumania,
+the veil was opaque, and was never voluntarily lifted. One day[179] the
+members of the Polish delegation, eager to get an inkling of what had
+been arranged by the Council of Four about Dantzig, requested M.
+Clemenceau to apprize them at least of the upshot if not of the details.
+The French Premier, who has a quizzing way and a keen sense of humor,
+replied, "On the 26th inst. you will learn the precise terms." But
+Poland's representative insisted and pleaded suasively for a hint of
+what had been settled. The Premier finally consented and said, "Tell the
+General Secretary of the Conference, M. Dutasta, from me, that he may
+make the desired communication to you." The delegate accordingly
+repaired to M. Dutasta, preferred his request, and received this reply:
+"M. Clemenceau may say what he likes. His words do not bind the
+Conference. Before I consider myself released from secrecy I must have
+the consent of all his colleagues as well. If you would kindly bring me
+their express authorization I will communicate the information you
+demand." That closed the incident.
+
+When the Council finally agreed to a solution, the delegates were
+convoked to learn its nature and to make a vow of obedience to its
+decisions. During the first stage of the Conference the representatives
+of the lesser states had sometimes been permitted to put questions and
+present objections. But later on even this privilege was withdrawn. The
+following description of what went on may serve as an illustration of
+the Council's mode of procedure. One day the Polish delegation was
+summoned before the Special Commission to discuss an armistice between
+the Ruthenians of Galicia and the Polish Republic. The late General
+Botha, a shrewd observer, whose valuable experience of political
+affairs, having been confined to a country which had not much in common
+with eastern Europe, could be of little help to him in solving the
+complex problems with which he was confronted, was handicapped from the
+outset. Unacquainted with any languages but English and Dutch, the
+general had to surmount the additional difficulty of carrying on the
+conversation through an interpreter. The form it took was somewhat as
+follows:
+
+"It is the wish of the Supreme Council," the chairman began, "that
+Poland should conclude an armistice with the Ruthenians, and under new
+conditions, the old ones having lost their force.[180] Are you prepared
+to submit your proposals?" "This is a military matter," replied the
+Polish delegate, "and should be dealt with by experts. One of our most
+competent military authorities will arrive shortly in Paris with full
+powers to treat with you on the subject. In the meantime, I agree that
+the old conditions are obsolete and must be changed. I can also mention
+three provisos without which no armistice is possible: (1) The Poles
+must be permitted to get into permanent contact with Rumania. That
+involves their occupation of eastern Galicia. The principal grounds for
+this demand are that our frontier includes that territory and that the
+Rumanians are a law-abiding, pacific people whose interests never clash
+with ours and whose main enemy--Bolshevism--is also ours. (2) The Allies
+shall purge the Ukrainian army of the Bolshevists, German and other
+dangerous elements that now pervade it and render peace impossible. (3)
+The Poles must have control of the oil-fields were it only because these
+are now being treated as military resources and the Germans are
+receiving from Galicia, which contains the only supplies now open to
+them, all the oil they require and are giving the Ruthenians munitions
+in return, thus perpetuating a continuous state of warfare. You can
+realize that we are unwilling to have our oil-fields employed to supply
+our enemies with war material against ourselves." General Botha asked,
+"Would you be satisfied if, instead of occupying all eastern Galicia at
+once in order to get into touch with the Rumanians, the latter were to
+advance to meet you?" "Quite. That would satisfy us as a provisional
+measure." "But now suppose that the Supreme Council rejects your three
+conditions--a probable contingency--- what course do you propose to
+take?" "In that case our action would be swayed by events, one of which
+is the hostility of the Ruthenians, which would necessitate measures of
+self-defense and the use of our army. And that would bring back the
+whole issue to the point where it stands to-day."[181] To the
+suggestions made by the Polish delegate that the question of the
+armistice be referred to Marshal Foch, the answer was returned that the
+Marshal's views carried no authority with the Supreme Council.
+
+General Botha, thereupon adopting an emotional tone, said: "I have one
+last appeal to make to you. It behooves Poland to lift the question from
+its present petty surroundings and set it in the larger frame of world
+issues. What we are aiming at is the overthrow of militarism and the
+cessation of bloodshed. As a civilized nation Poland must surely see eye
+to eye with the Supreme Council how incumbent it is on the Allies to put
+a stop to the misery that warfare has brought down on the world and is
+now inflicting on the populations of Poland and eastern Galicia."
+"Truly," replied the Polish delegate, "and so thoroughly does she
+realize it that it is repugnant to her to be satisfied with a sham
+peace, a mere pause during which a bloodier war may be organized. We
+want a settlement that really connotes peace, and our intimate knowledge
+of the circumstances enables us to distinguish between that and a mere
+truce. That is the ground of our insistence."
+
+"Bear well in mind," insisted the Boer general, "the friendly attitude
+of the great Allies toward your country at a critical period of its
+history. They restored it. They meant and mean to help it to preserve
+its status. It behooves the Poles to show their appreciation of this
+friendship in a practical way by deferring to their wishes. Everything
+they ordain is for your good. Realize that and carry out their schemes."
+"For their help we are and will remain grateful," was the answer, "and
+we will go as far toward meeting their wishes as is feasible without
+actually imperiling their contribution to the restoration of our state.
+But we cannot blink the facts that their views are sometimes mistaken
+and their power to realize them generally imaginary. They have made
+numerous and costly mistakes already, which they now frankly avow. If
+they persisted in their present plan they would be adding another to the
+list. And as to their power to help us positively, it is nil. Their
+initial omission to send a formidable military force to Poland was an
+irreparable blunder, for it left them without an executive in eastern
+Europe, where they now can help none of their protegees against their
+respective enemies. Poles, Rumanians, Jugoslavs are all left to
+themselves. From the Allies they may expect inspiriting telegrams, but
+little else. In fact, the utmost they can do is to issue decrees that
+may or may not be obeyed. Examples are many. They obtained for us by the
+armistice the right of disembarking troops at Dantzig, and we were
+unspeakably grateful to them. But they failed to make the Germans
+respect that right and we had to resign ourselves to abandon it. They
+ordered the Ukrainians to cease their numerous attacks on us and we
+appreciated their thoughtfulness. But the order was disobeyed; we were
+assailed and had no one to look to for help but ourselves. Still we are
+most thankful for all that they could do. But if we concluded the
+armistice which you are pleading for, this is what would happen: we
+should have the Ruthenians arrayed against us on one side and the
+Germans on the other. Now if the Ruthenians have brains, their forces
+will attack us at the same time as those of the Germans do. That is
+sound tactics. But if their strength is only on paper, they will give
+admission to the Bolsheviki. That is the twofold danger which you, in
+the name of the Great Powers, are unwillingly endeavoring to conjure up
+against us. If you admit its reality you cannot blame our reluctance to
+incur it. On the other hand, if you regard the peril as imaginary, you
+will draw the obvious consequences and pledge the word of the Great
+Powers that they will give us military assistance against it should it
+come?"
+
+If clear thinking and straightforward action has counted for anything,
+the matter would have been settled satisfactorily then and there. But
+the Great Powers operated less with argument than with more forcible
+stimuli. Holding the economic and financial resources of the world in
+their hands, they sometimes merely toyed with reasoning and proceeded to
+coerce where they were unable to convince or persuade. One day the chief
+delegate of one of the states "with limited interests" said to me: "The
+unvarnished truth is that we are being coerced. There is no milder term
+to signify this procedure. Thus we are told that unless we indorse the
+decrees of the Powers, whose interests are unlimited like their
+assurance, they will withhold from us the supplies of food, raw
+materials, and money without which our national existence is
+inconceivable. Necessarily we must give way, at any rate for the time
+being." Those words sum up the relations of the lesser to the greater
+Powers.
+
+In the case of Poland the conversation ended thus--General Botha,
+addressing the delegate, said: "If you disregard the injunctions of the
+Big Four, who cannot always lay before you the grounds of their policy,
+you run the risk of being left to your own devices. And you know what
+that means. Think well before you decide!" Just then, as it chanced,
+only a part of General Haller's soldiers in France had been transported
+to their own country,[182] and the Poles were in mortal terror lest the
+work of conveying the remainder should be interrupted. This, then, was
+an implicit appeal to which they could not turn a wholly deaf ear.
+"Well, what is it that the Big Four ask of us?" inquired the delegate.
+"The conclusion of an armistice with the Ruthenians, also that
+Poland--as one of the newly created states--should allow the free
+transit of all the Allied goods through her territory." The delegate
+expressed a wish to be told why this measure should be restricted to the
+newly made states. The answer was because it was in the nature of an
+experiment and should, therefore, not be tried over too large an area.
+"There is also another little undertaking which you are requested to
+give--namely, that you will accept and act upon the future decisions of
+the commission whatever they may be." "Without an inkling of their
+character?" "If you have confidence in us you need have no misgivings as
+to that." In spite of the deterrents the Polish delegation at that
+interview met all these demands with a firm _non possumus_. It upheld
+the three conditions of the armistice, rejected the free transit
+proposal, and demurred to the demand for a promise to bow to all future
+decisions of a fallible commission. "When the Polish dispute with the
+Czechoslovaks was submitted to a commission we were not asked in advance
+to abide by its decision. Why should a new rule be introduced now?"
+argued the Polish delegates. And there the matter rested for a brief
+while.
+
+But the respite lasted only a few days, at the expiry of which an envoy
+called on the members of the Polish delegation and reopened the
+discussion on new lines. He stated that he spoke on behalf of the Big
+Four, of whose views and intentions he was the authorized exponent. And
+doubtless he thought he was. But as a matter of fact the French
+government had no cognizance of his visit or mission or of the
+conversation to which it led. He presented arguments before having
+recourse to deterrents. Poland's situation, he said, called for
+prudence. Her secular enemy was Germany, with whom it would be
+difficult, perhaps impossible, ever to cultivate such terms as would
+conciliate her permanently. All the more reason, therefore, to deserve
+and win the friendship of her other neighbors, in particular of the
+Ruthenians. The Polish plenipotentiary met the argument in the usual
+way, where upon the envoy exclaimed: "Well, to make a long story short,
+I am here to say that the line of action traced out for your country
+emanates from the inflexible will of the Great Powers. To this you must
+bend. If it should lead to hostilities on the part of your neighbors you
+could, of course, rely on the help of your protectors. Will this not
+satisfy you?" "If the protection were real it certainly would. But where
+is it? Has it been vouchsafed at any moment since the armistice? Have
+the Allied governments an executive in eastern Europe? Are they likely
+to order their troops thither to assist any of their protegees? And if
+they issued such an order, would it be obeyed? They cannot protect us,
+as we know to our cost. That is why we are prepared, in our
+interests--also in theirs--to protect ourselves."
+
+This remarkable conversation was terminated by the announcement of the
+penalty of disobedience. "If you persist in refusing the proposals I
+have laid before you, I am to tell you that the Great Powers will
+withdraw their aid from your country and may even feel it to be their
+duty to modify the advantageous status which they had decided to confer
+upon it." To which this answer was returned: "For the assistance we are
+receiving we are and will ever be truly grateful. But in order to
+benefit by it the Polish people must be a living organism and your
+proposals tend to reduce us to a state of suspended vitality. They also
+place us at the mercy of our numerous enemies, the greatest of whom is
+Germany."
+
+But lucid intelligence, backed by unflagging will, was of no avail
+against the threat of famine. The Poles had to give way. M. Paderewski
+pledged his word to Messrs. Lloyd George and Wilson that he would have
+an armistice concluded with the Ruthenians of eastern Galicia, and the
+Duumvirs rightly placed implicit confidence in his word as in his moral
+rectitude. They also felt grateful to him for having facilitated their
+arduous task by accepting the inevitable. To my knowledge President
+Wilson himself addressed a letter to him toward the end of April,
+thanking him cordially for the broad-minded way in which he had
+co-operated with the Supreme Council in its efforts to reconstitute his
+country on a solid basis. Probably no other representative of a state
+"with limited interests" received such high mark of approval.
+
+M. Paderewski left Paris for Warsaw, there to win over the Cabinet. But
+in Poland, where the authorities were face to face with the concrete
+elements of the problem, the Premier found no support. Neither the
+Cabinet nor the Diet nor the head of the state found it possible to
+redeem the promise made in their name. Circumstance was stronger than
+the human will. M. Paderewski resigned. The Ruthenians delivered a
+timely attack on the Poles, who counter-attacked, captured the towns of
+Styra, Tarnopol, Stanislau, and occupied the enemy country right up to
+Rumania, with which they desired to be in permanent contact. Part of the
+Ruthenian army crossed the Czech frontier and was disarmed, the
+remainder melted away, and there remained no enemy with whom to conclude
+an armistice.
+
+For the "Big Four" this turn of events was a humiliation. The Ruthenian
+army, whose interests they had so taken to heart, had suddenly ceased to
+exist, and the future danger which it represented to Poland was seen to
+have been largely imaginary. Their judgment was at fault and their power
+ineffectual. Against M. Paderewski's impotence they blazed with
+indignation. He had given way to their decision and promptly gone to
+Warsaw to see it executed, yet the conditions were such that his words
+were treated as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. The Polish
+Premier, it is true, had tendered his resignation in consequence, but it
+was refused--and even had it been accepted, what was the retirement of a
+Minister as compared with the indignity put upon the world's lawgivers
+who represented power and interests which were alike unlimited? Angry
+telegrams were flashed over the wires from Paris to Warsaw and the
+Polish Premier was summoned to appear in Paris without delay. He duly
+returned, but no new move was made. The die was cast.
+
+A noteworthy event in latter-day Polish history ensued upon that
+military victory over the Ruthenians of eastern Galicia. The
+Ukrainian[183] Minister at Vienna was despatched to request the Poles to
+sign a unilateral treaty with them after the model of that which was
+arranged by the two Anglo-Saxon states in favor of France. The proposal
+was that the Ukraine government would renounce all claims to eastern
+Galicia and place their troops under the supreme command of the Polish
+generalissimus, in return for which the Poles should undertake to
+protect the Ukrainians against all their enemies. This draft agreement,
+while under consideration in Warsaw, was negatived by the Polish
+delegates in Paris, who saw no good reason why their people should bind
+themselves to fight Russia one day for the independence of the Ukraine.
+Another inchoate state which made an offer of alliance to Poland was
+Esthonia, but its advances were declined on similar grounds. It is
+manifest, however, that in the new state system alliances are more in
+vogue than in the old, although they were to have been banished from it.
+
+Throughout all the negotiations that turned upon the future status and
+the territorial frontiers of Poland the British Premier unswervingly
+stood out against the Polish claims, just as the President of the United
+States inflexibly countered those of Italy, and both united to negative
+those of the Rumanians. Whatever one may think of the merits of these
+controversies--and various opinions have been put forward with obvious
+sincerity--there can be but one judgment as to the spirit in which they
+were conducted. It was a dictatorial spirit, which was intolerant not
+merely of opposition, but of enlightened and constructive criticism. To
+the representatives of the countries concerned it seemed made up of
+bitter prejudice and fierce partizanship, imbibed, it was affirmed, from
+those unseen sources whence powerful and, it was thought, noxious
+currents flowed continuously toward the Conference. For none of the
+affronted delegates credited with a knowledge of the subject either Mr.
+Lloyd George, who had never heard of Teschen, or Mr. Wilson, whose
+survey of Corsican politics was said to be so defective. And yet to the
+activity of men engaged like these in settling affairs of unprecedented
+magnitude it would be unfair to apply the ordinary tests of technical
+fastidiousness. Their position as trustees of the world's greatest
+states, even though they lacked political imagination, knowledge, and
+experience, entitled them to the high consideration which they generally
+received. But it could not be expected to dazzle to blindness the eyes
+of superior men--and the delegates of the lesser states, Venizelos,
+Dmowski, and Benes, were undoubtedly superior in most of the attributes
+of statesmanship. Yet they were frequently snubbed and each one made to
+feel that he was the fifth wheel in the chariot of the Conference. No
+sacred fame, says Goethe, requires us to submit to contempt, and they
+winced under it. The Big Three lacked the happy way of doing things
+which goes with diplomatic tact and engaging manners, and the
+consequence was that not only were their arguments mistrusted, but even
+their good faith was, as we saw, momentarily subjected to doubt. "Bitter
+prejudice, furious antipathy" were freely predicated of the two
+Anglo-Saxon statesmen, who were rashly accused of attempting by
+circuitous methods to deprive France of her new Slav ally in eastern
+Europe. Sweeping recriminations of this character deserve notice only as
+indicating the spirit of discord--not to use a stronger term--prevailing
+at a Conference which was professedly endeavoring to knit together the
+peoples of the planet in an organized society of good-fellowship.
+
+The delegates of the lesser states, to whom one should not look for
+impartial judgments, formulated some queer theories to explain the
+Allies' unavowed policy and revealed a frame of mind in no wise
+conducive to the attainment of the ostensible ends of the Conference.
+One delegate said to me: "I have no longer the faintest doubt that the
+firm purpose of the 'Big Two' is the establishment of the hegemony of
+the Anglo-Saxon peoples, which in the fullness of time may be
+transformed into the hegemony of the United States of North America.
+Even France is in some respects their handmaid. Already she is bound to
+them indissolubly. She is admittedly unable to hold her own without
+their protection. She will become more dependent on them as the years
+pass and Germany, having put her house in order, regains her economic
+preponderance on the Continent. This decline is due to the operation of
+a natural law which diplomacy may retard but cannot hinder. Numbers will
+count in the future, and then France's role will be reduced. For this
+reason it is her interest that her new allies in eastern Europe should
+be equipped with all the means of growing and keeping strong instead of
+being held in the leading-strings of the overlords. But perhaps this
+tutelage is reckoned one of those means?"
+
+Against Britain in especial the Poles, as we saw, were wroth. They
+complained that whenever they advanced a claim they found her first
+delegate on their path barring their passage, and if Mr. Wilson chanced
+to be with them the British Premier set himself to convert him to his
+way of thinking or voting. Thus it was against Mr. Lloyd George that the
+eastern Galician problem had had to be fought at every stage. At the
+outset the British Premier refused Galicia to Poland categorically and
+purposed making it an entirely separate state under the League of
+Nations. This design, of which he made no secret, inspired the
+insistence with which the armistice with the Ruthenians of Galicia was
+pressed. The Polish delegates, one of them a man of incisive speech,
+left no stone unturned to thwart that part of the English scheme, and
+they finally succeeded. But their opponents contrived to drop a spoonful
+of tar in Poland's pot of honey by ordering a plebiscite to take place
+in eastern Galicia within ten or fifteen years. Then came the question
+of the Galician Constitution. The Poles proposed to confer on the
+Ruthenians a restricted measure of home rule with authority to arrange
+in their own way educational and religious matters, local
+communications, and the means of encouraging industry and agriculture,
+besides giving them a proportionate number of seats in the state
+legislature in Warsaw. But again the British delegates--experienced in
+problems of home rule--expressed their dissatisfaction and insisted on a
+parliament or diet for the Ukraine invested with considerable authority
+over the affairs of the province. The Poles next announced their
+intention to have a governor of eastern Galicia appointed by the
+President of the Polish Republic, with a council to advise him. The
+British again amended the proposal and asked that the governor should be
+responsible to the Galician parliament, but to this the Poles demurred
+emphatically, and finally it was settled that only the members of his
+council should be responsible to the provincial legislature. The Poles
+having suggested that military conscription should be applied to eastern
+Galicia on the same terms as to the rest of Poland, the British once
+more joined issue with them and demanded that no troops whatever should
+be levied in the province. The upshot of this dispute was that after
+much wrangling the British Commission gave way to the Poles, but made it
+a condition that the troops should not be employed outside the province.
+To this the Poles made answer that the massing of so many soldiers on
+the Rumanian frontier might reasonably be objected to by the
+Rumanians--and so the amoebean word-game went on in the subcommission.
+In a word, when dealing with the eastern Galician problem, Mr. Lloyd
+George played the part of an ardent champion of complete home rule.
+
+To sum up, the Conference linked eastern Galicia with Poland, but made
+the bonds extremely tenuous, so that they might be severed at any moment
+without involving profound changes in either country, and by this
+arrangement, which introduced the provisional into the definitive, a
+broad field of operations was allotted to political agitation and revolt
+was encouraged to rear its crest.
+
+The province of Upper Silesia was asked for on grounds which the Poles,
+at any rate, thought convincing. But Mr. Lloyd George, it was said,
+declared them insufficient. The subject was thrashed out one day in June
+when the Polish delegates were summoned before their all-powerful
+colleagues to be told of certain alterations that had been recently
+introduced into the Treaty which concerned them to know. They appeared
+before the Council of Five.[184] President Wilson, addressing the two
+delegates, spoke approximately as follows: "You claim Silesia on the
+ground that its inhabitants are Poles and we have given your demand
+careful consideration. But the Germans tell us that the inhabitants,
+although Polish by race, wish to remain under German rule as heretofore.
+That is a strong objection if founded on fact. At present we are unable
+to answer it. In fact, nobody can answer it with finality but the
+inhabitants themselves. Therefore we must order a plebiscite among
+them." One of the Polish delegates remarked: "If you had put the
+question to the inhabitants fifty years ago they would have expressed
+their wish to remain with the Germans because at that time they were
+profoundly ignorant and their national sentiment was dormant. Now it is
+otherwise. For since then many of them have been educated, and the
+majority are alive to the issue and will therefore declare for Poland.
+And if any section of the territory should still prefer German sway to
+Polish and their district in consequence of your plebiscite becomes
+German, the process of enlightenment which has already made such headway
+will none the less go on, and their children, conscious of their loss,
+will anathematize their fathers for having inflicted it. And then there
+will be trouble."
+
+Mr. Wilson retorted: "You are assuming more than is meet. The frontiers
+which we are tracing are provisional, not final. That is a consideration
+which ought to weigh with you. Besides, the League of Nations will
+intervene to improve what is imperfect." "O League of Nations, what
+blunders are committed in thy name!" the delegate may have muttered to
+himself as he listened to the words meant to comfort him and his
+countrymen.
+
+Much might have been urged against this proffered solace if the
+delegates had been in a captious mood. The League of Nations had as yet
+no existence. If its will, intelligence, and power could indeed be
+reckoned upon with such confidence, how had it come to pass that its
+creators, Britain and the United States, deemed them dubious enough to
+call for a reinforcement in the shape of a formal alliance for the
+protection of France? If this precautionary measure, which shatters the
+whole Wilsonian system, was indispensable to one Ally it was at least
+equally indispensable to another. And in the case of Poland it was more
+urgent than in the case of France, because if Germany were again to
+scheme a war of conquest the probability is infinitesimal that she would
+invade Belgium or move forward on the western front. The line of least
+resistance, which is Poland, would prove incomparably more attractive.
+And then? The absence of Allied troops in eastern Europe was one of the
+principal causes of the wars, tumults, and chaotic confusion that had
+made nervous people tremble for the fate of civilization in the interval
+between the conclusion of the armistice and the ratification of the
+Treaty. In the future the absence of strongly situated Allies there, if
+Germany were to begin a fresh war, would be more fatal still, and the
+Polish state might conceivably disappear before military aid from the
+Allied governments could reach it. Why should the safety of Poland and
+to some extent the security of Europe be made to depend upon what is at
+best a gambler's throw?
+
+But no counter-objections were offered. On the contrary, M. Paderewski
+uttered the soft answer that turneth away wrath. He profoundly regretted
+the decision of the lawgivers, but, recognizing that it was immutable,
+bowed to it in the name of his country. He knew, he said, that the
+delegates were animated by very friendly feelings toward his country and
+he thanked them for their help. M. Paderewski's colleague, the less
+malleable M. Dmowski, is reported to have said: "It is my desire to be
+quite sincere with you, gentlemen. Therefore I venture to submit that
+while you profess to have settled the matter on principle, you have not
+carried out that principle thoroughly. Doubtless by inadvertence. Thus
+there are places inhabited by a large majority of Poles which you have
+allotted to Germany on the ground that they are inhabited by Germans.
+That is inconsistent." At this Mr. Lloyd George jumped up from his place
+and asked: "Can you name any such places?" M. Dmowski gave several
+names. "Point them out to me on the map," insisted the British Premier.
+They were pointed out on the map. Twice President Wilson asked the
+delegate to spell the name Bomst for him.[185] Mr. Lloyd George then
+said: "Well, those are oversights that can be rectified." "Oh yes,"
+added Mr. Wilson, "we will see to that."[186] M. Dmowski also questioned
+the President about the plebiscite, and under whose auspices the voting
+would take place, and was told that there would be an Inter-Allied
+administration to superintend the arrangements and insure perfect
+freedom of voting. "Through what agency will that administration work?
+Is it through the officials?" "Evidently," Mr. Wilson answered. "You are
+doubtless aware that they are Germans?" "Yes. But the administration
+will possess the right to dismiss those who prove unworthy of their
+confidence." "Don't you think," insisted M. Dmowski, "that it would be
+fairer to withdraw one half of the German bureaucrats and give their
+places to Poles?" To which the President replied: "The administration
+will be thoroughly impartial and will adopt all suitable measures to
+render the voting free." There the matter ended.
+
+The two potentates in council, tackling the future status of Lithuania,
+settled it in an offhand and singular fashion which at any rate bespoke
+their good intentions. The principle of self-determination, or what was
+facetiously termed the Balkanization of Europe, was at first applied to
+that territory and a semi-independent state created _in petto_ which was
+to contain eight million inhabitants and be linked with Poland. Certain
+obstacles were soon afterward encountered which had not been foreseen.
+One was that all the Lithuanians number only two millions, or say at the
+most two millions and one hundred thousand. Out of these even the
+Supreme Council could not make eight millions. In Lithuania there are
+two and a half million Poles, one and a half million Jews, and the
+remainder are White Russians.[187] It was recognized that a community
+consisting of such disparate elements, situated where it now is, could
+hardly live and strive as an independent state. The Lithuanian Jews,
+however, were of a different way of thinking, and they opposed the
+Polish claims with a degree of steadfastness and animation which wounded
+Poland's national pride and left rankling sores behind.
+
+It is worth noting that the representatives of Russia, who are supposed
+to clutch convulsively at all the states which once formed part of the
+Tsardom, displayed a degree of political detachment in respect of
+Lithuania which came as a pleasant surprise to many. The Russian
+Ambassador in Paris, M. Maklakoff, in a remarkable address before a
+learned assembly[188] in the French capital, announced that Russia was
+henceforward disinterested in the status of Lithuania.
+
+That the Poles were minded to deal very liberally with the Lithuanians
+became evident during the Conference. General Pilsudski, on his own
+initiative, visited Vilna and issued a proclamation to the Lithuanians
+announcing that elections would be held, and asking them to make known
+their desires, which would be realized by the Warsaw government. One of
+the many curious documents of the Conference is an official missive
+signed by the General Secretary, M. Dutasta, and addressed to the first
+Polish delegate, exhorting him to induce his government to come to terms
+with the Lithuanian government, as behooves two neighboring states.
+Unluckily for the soundness of that counsel there was no recognized
+Lithuanian state or Lithuanian government to come to terms with.
+
+As has been often enough pointed out, the actions and utterances of the
+two world-menders were so infelicitous as to lend color to the
+belief--shared by the representatives of a number of humiliated
+nations--that greed of new markets was at the bottom of what purported
+to be a policy of pure humanitarianism. Some of the delegates were
+currently supposed to be the unwitting instruments of elusive
+capitalistic influences. Possibly they would have been astonished were
+they told this: Great Britain was suspected of working for complete
+control of the Baltic and its seaboard in order to oust the Germans from
+the markets of that territory and to have potent levers for action in
+Poland, Germany, and Russia. The achievement of that end would mean
+command of the Baltic, which had theretofore been a German lake.[189] It
+would also entail, it was said, the separation of Dantzig from Poland,
+and the attraction of the Finns, Esthonians, Letts, and Lithuanians from
+Germany's orbit into that of Great Britain. In vain the friends of the
+delegates declared that economic interests were not the mainspring of
+their deliberate action and that nothing was further from their
+intention than to angle for a mandate for those countries. The
+conviction was deep-rooted in the minds of many that each of the Great
+Powers was playing for its own hand. That there was some apparent
+foundation for this assumption cannot, as we saw, be gainsaid. Widely
+and unfavorably commented was the circumstance that in the heat of those
+discussions at the Conference a man of confidence of the Allies put this
+significant and impolitic question to one of the plenipotentiaries: "How
+would you take it if England were to receive a mandate for Lithuania?"
+
+"The Great Powers," observed the most outspoken of the delegates of the
+lesser states, "are bandits, but as their operations are on a large
+scale they are entitled to another and more courteous name. Their gaze
+is fascinated by markets, concessions, monopolies. They are now making
+preparations for a great haul. At this politicians cannot affect to be
+scandalized. For it has never been otherwise since men came together in
+ordered communities. But what is irritating and repellent is the perfume
+of altruism and philanthropy which permeates this decomposition. We are
+told that already they are purchasing the wharves of Dantzig, making
+ready for 'big deals' in Libau, Riga, and Reval, founding a bank in
+Klagenfurt and negotiating for oil-wells in Rumania. Although deeply
+immersed in the ethics of politics, they have not lost sight of the
+worldly goods to be picked up and appropriated on the wearisome journey
+toward ideal goals. The atmosphere they have thus renewed is peculiarly
+favorable to the growth of cant, and tends to accelerate the process of
+moral and social dissolution. And the effects of this mephitic air may
+prove more durable than the contribution of its creators to the
+political reorganization of Europe. If we compare the high functions
+which they might have fulfilled in relation to the vast needs and the
+unprecedented tendencies of the new age with those which they have
+unwittingly and deliberately performed as sophists of sentimental
+morality and destroyers of the wheat together with the tares, we shall
+have to deplore one of the rarest opportunities missed beyond retrieve."
+
+In this criticism there is a kernel of truth. The ethico-social currents
+to which the war gave rise had a profoundly moral aspect, and if rightly
+canalized might have fertilized many lands and have led to a new and
+healthy state-system. One indispensable condition, however, was that the
+peoples of the world should themselves be directly interested in the
+process, that they should be consulted and listened to, and helped or
+propelled into new grooves of thought and action. Instead of that the
+delegates contented themselves with giving new names to old institutions
+and tendencies which stood condemned, and with teaching lawless
+disrespect for every check and restraint except such as they chose to
+acknowledge. They were powerful advocates for right and justice,
+democracy and publicity, but their definitions of these abstract nouns
+made plain-speaking people gasp. Self-interest and material power were
+the idols which they set themselves to pull down, but the deities which
+they put in their places wore the same familiar looks as the idols, only
+they were differently colored.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[127] In February, 1919.
+
+[128] The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. Pichon, undertook to
+recognize in principle the independence of Esthonia, provided that
+Esthonia would take over her part of the Russian debt.
+
+[129] In the first version of the Covenant, Article XIX deals with this
+subject. In the revised version it is Article XXI.
+
+[130] Cf. _L'Echo de Paris_, August 19, 1919.
+
+[131] In July, 1919.
+
+[132] _L'Echo de Paris_, August 19, 1919.
+
+[133] The armistice concluded with Hungary was grossly violated by the
+Hungarians and had lost its force. The Rumanians, when occupying the
+country, demanded a new one, and drafted it. The Supreme Council at
+first demurred, and then desisted from dictation. But its attitude
+underwent further changes later.
+
+[134] _The New York Herald_, (Paris ed.), August 20, 1919.
+
+[135] _Ibid._, May 4, 1919.
+
+[136] I discussed Belgium's demands in a series of special articles
+published in _The London Daily Telegraph_ and _The Philadelphia Public
+Ledger_ in the months of January, February, and March, 1919.
+
+[137] In Frisia and Ghelderland.
+
+[138] In August, 1919.
+
+[139] By Article XXI of the Covenant and Article CCCCXXXV of the Treaty.
+
+[140] I was in possession of a complete copy.
+
+[141] Cf. _Corriere della Sera_, August 24, 1919.
+
+[142] In February.
+
+[143] Cf. Chapter, "Censorship and Secrecy." The writer of these pages
+was the journalist.
+
+[144] _Le Temps_, July 8, 1919.
+
+[145] At the close of August, 1916.
+
+[146] I was one of those who at the time maintained that even in the
+Allies' interests Rumania ought not to enter the war at that
+conjuncture, and anticipation of that invasion was one of the reasons I
+adduced.
+
+[147] Also known by the German name of Theiss.
+
+[148] Cf. _Le Temps_, July 28, 1919.
+
+[149] Cf. _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), September 5, 1919.
+
+[150] On June 13, 1919.
+
+[151] On July 11, 1919, some days later, the decision was suspended,
+owing to the opinion of General Bliss, who disagreed with Foch.
+
+[152] On July 17, 1919.
+
+[153] On July 20th.
+
+[154] Estimated at 85,000.
+
+[155] Moritz Kuhn, who altered his name to Bela Kuhn, was a vulgar
+criminal. Expelled from school for larceny, he underwent several terms
+of imprisonment, and is alleged to have pilfered from a fellow-prisoner.
+Even among some thieves there is no honor.
+
+[156] Italy was represented by Lieutenant-Colonel Romanelli, who resided
+in Budapest; Britain, by Col. Sir Thomas Cunningham, who was in Vienna,
+as was also Prince Livio Borghese. Later on the Powers delegated
+generals to be members of a military mission to the Hungarian capital.
+
+[157] At Bruck.
+
+[158] On July 20th.
+
+[159] _Le Journal des Debats_, August 4, 1919.
+
+[160] This is a larger proportion than was left to the Germans by the
+Treaty of Versailles.
+
+[161] _Le Temps_, July 8, 1919.
+
+[162] It was the habitual practice of the Conference to intrust missions
+abroad to generals who knew nothing whatever about the countries to
+which they were sent.
+
+[163] _Le Temps_, August 8, 1919.
+
+[164] Armistice of November 13, 1918, which had become void.
+
+[165] On June 13, 1919.
+
+[166] Composed of four members, one each for Britain, the United States,
+France, and Italy.
+
+[167] On July 20th.
+
+[168] Paris journals ascribed it to Mr. Balfour, although it does not
+bear the hall-mark of a diplomatist.
+
+[169] _Le Journal des Debats_, August 13, 1919.
+
+[170] Pertinax in _L'Echo de Paris_, August 10, 1919.
+
+[171] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), August 10, 1919.
+
+[172] _Le Journal des Debats_, August 13, 1919. Article by Auguste
+Gauvain.
+
+[173] General Gorton is the one who is said to have despatched the
+telegram.
+
+[174] In the beginning of September, 1919.
+
+[175] The French government having prudently refused to furnish an
+envoy, the British chose Sir George Clark.
+
+[176] On June 10, 1919.
+
+[177] The actors in this episode were not all officers and civil
+servants. They included some men in responsible positions.
+
+[178] In Teschen.
+
+[179] On Friday, April 18, 1919.
+
+[180] The Rumanians, on the contrary, had been ordered to keep to the
+old conditions, although they, too, had lost their force.
+
+[181] That is exactly what happened in the end. But the delegates would
+not believe it until it became an accomplished fact.
+
+[182] About twenty-five thousand had already left France.
+
+[183] The Ruthenians, Ukrainians, and Little Russians are racially the
+same people, just as those who speak German in northwestern Germany,
+Dutch in Holland, and Flemish in Belgium are racially close kindred. The
+main distinctions between the members of each branch are political.
+
+[184] The Messrs. Wilson, George, Clemenceau, Barons Makino and Sonnino.
+M. Clemenceau was the nominal chairman, but in reality it was President
+Wilson who conducted the proceedings.
+
+[185] Bomst is a canton in the former Province (Regierungs-besirk) of
+Posen, with about sixty thousand inhabitants.
+
+[186] Minutes of this conversation exist.
+
+[187] An interesting Russian tribe, dwelling chiefly in the provinces of
+Minsk and Grodno (excepting the extreme south), a small part of Suvalki,
+Vilna (excepting the northwest corner), the entire provinces of Vitebsk
+and Moghileff, the west part of Smolensk, and a few districts of
+Tshernigoff.
+
+[188] La Societe des Etudes Politiques. The discourse in question was
+printed and published.
+
+[189] In Germany and Russia the same view was generally taken of the
+motives that actuated the policy of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. The most
+elaborate attempt to demonstrate its correctness was made by Cr. Bunke,
+in _The Dantziger Neueste Nachrichten_, already mentioned in this book.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+POLAND'S OUTLOOK IN THE FUTURE
+
+
+Casting a parting glance at Poland as she looked when emerging from the
+Conference in the leading-strings of the Great Western Powers, after
+having escaped from the Bolshevist dangers that compassed her round, we
+behold her about to begin her national existence as a semi-independent
+nation, beset with enemies domestic and foreign. For it would be an
+abuse of terms to affirm that Poland, or, indeed, any of the lesser
+states, is fully independent in the old sense of the word. The special
+treaty imposed on her by the Great Two obliges her to accord free
+transit to Allied goods and certain privileges to her Jewish and other
+minorities; to accept the supervision and intervention of the League of
+Nations, which the Poles contend means in their case an
+Anglo-Saxon-Jewish association; and, at the outset, at any rate, to
+recognize the French generalissimus as the supreme commander of her
+troops.
+
+Poland's frontiers and general status ought, if the scheme of her French
+protectors had been executed, to have been accommodated to the peculiar
+functions which they destined her to fill in New Europe. France's plan
+was to make of Poland a wall between Germany and Russia. The marked
+tendency of the other two Conference leaders was to transform it into a
+bridge between those two countries. And the outcome of the compromise
+between them has been to construct something which, without being
+either, combines all the disadvantages of both. It is a bridge for
+Germany and a wall for Bolshevist Russia. That is the verdict of a large
+number of Poles. Although the Europe of the future is to be a pacific
+and ethically constituted community, whose members will have their
+disputes and quarrels with one another settled by arbitration courts and
+other conciliatory tribunals, war and efficient preparation for it were
+none the less uppermost in the minds of the circumspect lawgivers. Hence
+the Anglo-Saxon agreement to defend France against unprovoked
+aggression. Hence, too, the solicitude displayed by the French to have
+the Polish state, which is to be their mainstay in eastern Europe,
+equipped with every territorial and other guaranty necessary to qualify
+it for the duties. But what the French government contrived to obtain
+for itself it failed to secure for its new Slav ally. Nay, oddly enough
+it voted with the Anglo-Saxon delegates for keeping all the lesser
+states under the tutelage of the League. The Duumvirs, having made the
+requisite concessions to France, were resolved in Poland's case to avoid
+a further recoil toward the condemned forms of the old system of
+equilibrium. Hence the various plebiscites, home-rule charters,
+subdivisions of territory, and other evidences of a struggle for reform
+along the line of least resistance, as though in the unavoidable future
+conflict between timidly propounded theories and politico-social forces
+the former had any serious chance of surviving. In politics, as in
+coinage, it is the debased metal that ousts the gold from circulation.
+
+Poland's situation is difficult; some people would call it precarious.
+She is surrounded by potential enemies abroad and at home--Germans,
+Russians, Ukrainians, Magyars, and Jews. A considerable number of
+Teutons are incorporated in her republic to-day, and also a large number
+of people of Russian race. Now, Russia and Germany, even if they
+renounce all designs of reconquering the territory which they misruled
+for such a long span of time, may feel tempted one day to recover their
+own kindred, and what they consider to be their own territory. And
+irredentism is one of the worst political plagues for all the three
+parties who usually suffer from it. If then Germany and Russia were to
+combine and attack Poland, the consequences would be serious. That
+democratic Germany would risk such a wild adventure in the near future
+is inconceivable. But history operates with long periods of time, and it
+behooves statesmanship to do likewise.
+
+A Polish statesman would start from the assumption that, as Russia and
+Germany have for the time being ceased to be efficient members of the
+European state-system, a good understanding may be come to with both of
+them, and a close intimacy cultivated with one. Resourcefulness and
+statecraft will be requisite to this consummation. For some Russians are
+still uncompromising, and would fain take back a part of what the
+revolutionary wave swept out of their country's grasp, but circumstance
+bids fair to set free a potent moderating force in the near future.
+Already it is incarnated in statesmen of the new type. In this
+connection it is instructive to pass in review the secret maneuvers by
+which the recognition of Poland's independence was, so to say, extorted
+from a Russian Minister, who was reputed at the time to be a Democrat of
+the Democrats. As some governments have now become champions of
+publicity, I venture to hope that this disclosure will be as helpful to
+those whom it concerns as was the systematic suppression of my articles
+and telegrams during the space of four years.[190]
+
+On the outbreak of the Russian revolution Poland's representatives in
+Britain, who had been ceaselessly working for the restoration of their
+country, approached the British government with a request that the
+opportunity should be utilized at once, and the new democratic Cabinet
+in Petrograd requested to issue a proclamation recognizing the
+independence of Poland. The reasons for this move having been propounded
+in detail, orally and in writing, the Foreign Secretary despatched at
+once a telegram to the Ambassador in the Russian capital, instructing
+him to lay the matter before the Russian Foreign Minister and urge him
+to lose no time in establishing the claim of the Polish provisional
+government to the sympathies of the world, and the redress of its wrongs
+by Russia. Sir George Buchanan called on Professor Milyukoff, then
+Minister of Foreign Affairs and President of the Constitutional
+Democratic party, and propounded to him the views of the British
+government, which agreed with those of France and Italy, and hoped he
+would see his way to profit by the opportunity. The answer was prompt
+and definite, and within forty-eight hours of Mr. Balfour's despatch it
+reached the Foreign Office. The gist of it was that the Minister of
+Foreign Affairs regretted his inability to deal with the problem at that
+conjuncture, owing to its great complexity and various bearings, and
+also because of his apprehension that the Poles would demand the
+incorporation of Russian lands in their reconstituted state. From this
+answer many conclusions might fairly be drawn respecting persons,
+parties, and principles on the surface of revolutionary Russia. But to
+his credit, Mr. Balfour did not accept it as final. He again telegraphed
+to the British Ambassador, instructing him to insist upon the
+recognition of Poland, as the matter was urgent, and to exhort the
+provisional government to give in good time the desired proof of the
+democratic faith that is to save Russia. Sir George Buchanan
+accomplished the task expeditiously. M. Milyukoff gave way, drafted and
+issued the proclamation. Mr. Bonar Law welcomed it in a felicitous
+speech in the House of Commons,[191] and the Entente press lauded to the
+skies the generous spirit of the new Russian government. The Russian
+people and their leaders have traveled far since then, and have rid
+themselves of much useless ballast.
+
+As Slavs the Poles might have been naturally predisposed to live in
+amity with the Russians, were it not for the specter of the past that
+stands between them. But now that Russia is a democracy in fact as well
+as in name, this is much more feasible than it ever was before, and it
+is also indispensable to the Russians. In the first place, it is
+possible that Poland may have consolidated her forces before her mighty
+neighbor has recovered the status corresponding to her numbers and
+resources. If the present estimates are correct, and the frontiers, when
+definitely traced, leave Poland a republic with some thirty-five million
+people, such is her extraordinary birth-rate and the territorial scope
+it has for development, that in the not far distant future her
+population may exceed that of France. Assuming for the sake of argument
+that armies and other national defenses will count in politics as much
+as hitherto, Poland's specific weight will then be considerable. She
+will have become not indeed a world power (to-day there are only two
+such), but a European Great Power whose friendship will be well worth
+acquiring.
+
+In the meanwhile Polish statesmen--the Poles have one in Roman
+Dmowski--may strike up a friendly accord with Russia, abandoning
+definitely and formally all claims to so-called historic Poland,
+disinteresting themselves in all the Baltic problems which concern
+Russia so closely, and envisaging the Ukraine from a point of view that
+harmonizes with hers. And if the two peoples could thus find a common
+basis of friendly association, Poland would have solved at least one of
+her Sphinx questions.
+
+As for the internal development of the nation, it is seemingly hampered
+with as many hindrances as the international. It may be likened to the
+world after creation, bearing marks of the chaos of the eve. The German
+Poles differ considerably from the Austrian, while the Russian Poles are
+differentiated from both. The last-named still show traces of recent
+servitude in their everyday avocations. They lack the push and the
+energy of purpose so necessary nowadays in the struggle for life. The
+Austrian Poles in general are reputed to be likewise easy-going, lax,
+and more brilliant than solid, while their administrative qualities are
+said to be impaired by a leaning toward Oriental methods of transacting
+business. The Polish inhabitants of the provinces hitherto under Germany
+are people of a different temperament. They have assimilated some of the
+best qualities of the Teuton without sacrificing those which are
+inherent in men of their own race. A thorough grasp of detail and a gift
+for organization characterize their conceptions, and precision,
+thoroughness, and conscientiousness are predicated of their methods. If
+it be true that the first reform peremptorily called for in the new
+republic is an administrative purge, it follows that it can be most
+successfully accomplished with the whole-hearted co-operation of the
+German Poles, whose superior education fits them to conform their
+schemes to the most urgent needs of the nation and the epoch.
+
+The next measure will be internal colonization. There are considerable
+tracts of land in what once was Russian Poland, the population of which,
+owing to the havoc of war, is abnormally sparse. Some districts, like
+that of the Pripet marshes, which even at the best of times had but five
+persons to the kilometer, are practically deserts. For the Russian army,
+when retreating before the Germans, drove before it a huge population
+computed at eight millions, who inhabited the territory to the east of
+Brest-Litovsk and northward between Lida and Minsk. Of these eight
+millions many perished on the way. A large percentage of the survivors
+never returned.[192] Roughly speaking, a couple of millions (mostly
+Poles and Jews) went back to their ruined homes. Now the Poles, who are
+one of the most prolific races in Europe, might be encouraged to settle
+on these thinly populated lands, which they could convert into
+ethnographically Polish districts within a relatively short span of
+time. These, however, are merely the ideas of a friendly observer, whose
+opinion cannot lay claim to any weight.
+
+To-day Poland's hope is not, as it has been hitherto, the nobleman, the
+professor, and the publicist, but the peasant. The members of this class
+are the nucleus of the new nation. It is from their midst that Poland's
+future representatives in politics, arts, and science will be drawn.
+Already the peasants are having their sons educated in high-schools and
+universities, of which the republic has a fair number well supplied with
+qualified teachers,[193] and they are resolute adversaries of every
+movement tainted with Bolshevism.
+
+Thus the difficulties and dangers with which new Poland will have to
+contend are redoubtable. But she stands a good chance of overcoming them
+and reaching the goal where lies her one hope of playing a noteworthy
+part in reorganized Europe. The indispensable condition of success is
+that the current of opinion and sentiment in the country shall buoy up
+reforming statesmen. These must not only understand the requirements of
+the new epoch and be alive to the necessity of penetrating public
+opinion, but also possess the courage to place high social aims at the
+head of their life and career. Statesmen of this temper are rare to-day,
+but Poland possesses at least one of them. Her resources warrant the
+conviction which her chiefs firmly entertain that she may in a
+relatively near future acquire the economic leadership of eastern
+Europe, and in population, military strength, and area equal France.
+
+Parenthetically it may be observed that the enthusiasm of the Poles for
+British institutions and for intimate relations with Great Britain has
+perceptibly cooled.
+
+In the limitations to which she is now subjected, her more optimistic
+leaders discern the temporarily unavoidable condition of a beneficent
+process of working forward toward indefinite amelioration. Their
+people's faith, that may one day raise the country above the highest
+summit of its past historical development, if it does not reconcile them
+to the present, may nerve them to the effort which shall realize that
+high consummation in the future.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[190] Most of my articles written during the last half of the war, and
+some during the armistice, were held back on grounds which were
+presumably patriotic. I share with those who were instrumental in
+keeping them from the public the moral portion of the reward which
+consists in the assumption that some high purpose was served by the
+suppression.
+
+[191] On April 26, 1917.
+
+[192] Mainly White Russians.
+
+[193] The Poles have universities in Cracow, Warsaw, Lvoff (Lemberg),
+Liublin, and will shortly open one in Posen. One Polish statesman
+entertains a novel and useful idea which will probably be tested in the
+University of Posen. Noticing that the greater the progress of technical
+knowledge the less is the advance made in the knowledge of men, which is
+perhaps the most pressing need of the new age, this statesman proposes
+to create a new type of university, where there would be two principal
+sections, one for the study of natural sciences and mathematics, and the
+other for the study of men, which would include biology, psychology,
+ethnography, sociology, philology, history, etc.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+ITALY
+
+
+Of all the problems submitted to the Conference, those raised by Italy's
+demands may truly be said to have been among the easiest. Whether placed
+in the light of the Fourteen Points or of the old system of the rights
+of the victors, they would fall into their places almost automatically.
+But the peace criteria were identical with neither of those principles.
+They consisted of several heterogeneous maxims which were invoked
+alternately, Mr. Wilson deciding which was applicable to the particular
+case under discussion. And from his judgment there was no appeal.
+
+It is of the essence of statesmanship to be able to put oneself in the
+place--one might almost say in the skin--of the foreign peoples and
+governments with which one is called upon to deal. But the feat is
+arduous and presupposes a variety of conditions which the President was
+unable to fulfil. His conception of Europe, for example, was much too
+simple. It has been aptly likened to that of the American economist who
+once remarked to the manager of an English railway: "You Britishers are
+handicapped by having to build your railway lines through cities and
+towns. We go to work diligently: we first construct the road and create
+the cities afterward."
+
+And Mr. Wilson happened just then to be in quest of a fulcrum on which
+to rest his idealistic lever. For he had already been driven by
+egotistic governments from several of his commanding positions, and
+people were gibingly asking whether the new political gospel was being
+preached only as a foil for backslidings. Thus he abandoned the freedom
+of the seas ... on which he had taken a determined stand before the
+world. Although he refused the Rhine frontier to France, he had
+reluctantly given way to M. Clemenceau in the matter of the Saar Valley,
+assenting to a monstrous arrangement by which the German inhabitants of
+that region were to be handed over to the French Republic against their
+expressed will, as a set-off for a sum in gold which Germany would
+certainly be unable to pay.[194] He doubtless foresaw that he would also
+yield on the momentous issue of Shantung and the Chino-Japanese secret
+treaty. In a word, some of his more important abstract tenets professed
+in words were being brushed aside when it came to acts, and his position
+was truly unenviable. Naturally, therefore, he seized the first
+favorable occasion to apply them vigorously and unswervingly. This was
+supplied by the dispute between Italy and Jugoslavia, two nations which
+he held, so to say, in the hollow of his hand.
+
+The latter state, still in the making, depended for its frontiers
+entirely on the fiat of the American President backed by the Premiers of
+Britain and France. And of this backing Mr. Wilson was assured. Italy,
+although more powerful militarily than Jugoslavia, was likewise
+economically dependent upon the good-will of the two English-speaking
+communities, who were assured in advance of the support of the French
+Republic. If, therefore, she could not be reasoned or cajoled into
+obeying the injunctions of the Supreme Council, she could easily be made
+malleable by other means. In her case, therefore, Mr. Wilson's ethical
+notions might be fearlessly applied. That this was the idea which
+underlay the President's policy is the obvious inference from the calm,
+unyielding way in which he treated the Italian delegation. In this
+connection it should be borne in mind that there is no more important
+distinction between all former peace settlements and that of the Paris
+Conference than the unavowed but indubitable fact that the latter rests
+upon the hegemony of the English-speaking communities of the world,
+whereas the former were based upon the balance of power. So immense a
+change could not be effected without discreetly throwing out as useless
+ballast some of the highly prized dogmas of the accepted political
+creeds, even at the cost of impairing the solidarity of the Latin races.
+This was effected incidentally. As a matter of fact, the French are not,
+properly speaking, a Latin race, nor has their solidarity with Italy or
+Spain ever been a moving political force in recent times. Italy's
+refusal to fight side by side with her Teuton allies against France and
+her backers may conceivably be the result of racial affinities, but it
+has hardly ever been ascribed to that sentimental source. Sentiment in
+politics is a myth. In any case, M. Clemenceau discerned no pressing
+reason for making painful efforts to perpetuate the Latin union, while
+solicitude for national interests hindered him from making costly
+concessions to it.
+
+Naturally the cardinal innovation of which this was a corollary was
+never invoked as the ground for any of the exceptional measures adopted
+by the Conference. And yet it was the motive for several, for although
+no allusion was made to the hegemony of Anglo-Saxondom, it was ever
+operative in the subconsciousness of the two plenipotentiaries. And in
+view of the omnipotence of these two nations, they temporarily
+sacrificed consistency to tactics, probably without conscientious
+qualms, and certainly without political misgivings. That would seem to
+be a partial explanation of the lengths to which the Conference went in
+the direction of concessions to the Great Powers' imperialist demands.
+France asked to be recognized and treated as the personification of that
+civilization for which the Allied peoples had fought. And for many
+reasons, which it would be superfluous to discuss here, a large part of
+her claim was allowed. This concession was attacked by many as connoting
+a departure from principle, but the deviation was more apparent than
+real, for under all the wrappings of idealistic catchwords lay the
+primeval doctrine of force. The only substantial difference between the
+old system and the new was to be found in the wielders of the force and
+the ends to which they intended to apply it. Force remains the granite
+foundation of the new ordering, as it had been of the old. But its
+employment, it was believed, would be different in the future from what
+it had been in the past. Concentrated in the hands of the
+English-speaking peoples, it would become so formidable a weapon that it
+need never be actually wielded. Possession of overwhelmingly superior
+strength would suffice to enforce obedience to the decrees of its
+possessors, which always will, it is assumed, be inspired by equity. An
+actual trial of strength would be obviated, therefore, at least so long
+as the relative military and economic conditions of the world states
+underwent no sensible change. To this extent the war specter would be
+exorcised and trying abuses abolished.
+
+That those views were expressly formulated and thrown into the clauses
+of a secret program is unlikely. But it seems to be a fact that the
+general outlines of such a policy were conceived and tacitly adhered to.
+These outlines governed the action of the two world-arbiters, not only
+in the dictatorial decrees issued in the name of political idealism and
+its Fourteen Points, which were so bitterly resented as oppressive by
+Italy, Rumania, Jugoslavia, Poland, and Greece, but likewise in those
+other concessions which scandalized the political puritans and gladdened
+the hearts of the French, the Japanese, the Jugoslavs, and the Jews. The
+dictatorial decrees were inspired by the delegates' fundamental aims,
+the concessions by their tactical needs--the former, therefore, were
+meant to be permanent, the latter transient.
+
+All other explanations of the Italian crisis, however well they may fit
+certain of its phases, are, when applied to the pith of the matter,
+beside the mark. Even if it were true, as the dramatist, Sem Benelli,
+wrote, that "President Wilson evidently considers our people as on the
+plane of an African colony, dominated by the will of a few ambitious
+men," that would not account for the tenacious determination with which
+the President held to his slighted theory.
+
+Italy's position in Europe was in many respects peculiar. Men still
+living remember the time when her name was scarcely more than a
+geographical expression which gradually, during the last sixty years,
+came to connote a hard-working, sober, patriotic nation. Only little by
+little did she recover her finest provinces and her capital, and even
+then her unity was not fully achieved. Austria still held many of her
+sons, not only in the Trentino, but also on the other shore of the
+Adriatic. But for thirty years her desire to recover these lost children
+was paralyzed by international conditions. In her own interests, as well
+as in those of peace, she had become the third member of an alliance
+which constrained her to suppress her patriotic feelings and allowed her
+to bend all her energies to the prevention of a European conflict.
+
+When hostilities broke out, the attitude of the Italian government was a
+matter of extreme moment to France and the Entente. Much, perhaps the
+fate of Europe, depended on whether they would remain neutral or throw
+in their lot with the Teutons. They chose the former alternative and
+literally saved the situation. The question of motive is wholly
+irrelevant. Later on they were urged to move a step farther and take an
+active part against their former allies. But a powerful body of opinion
+and sentiment in the country was opposed to military co-operation, on
+the ground that the sum total of the results to be obtained by
+quiescence would exceed the guerdon of victory won by the side of the
+Entente. The correctness of this estimate depended upon many
+incalculable factors, among which was the duration of the struggle. The
+consensus of opinion was that it would be brief, in which case the terms
+dangled before Italy's eyes by the Entente would, it was believed by the
+Cabinet, greatly transcend those which the Central Powers were prepared
+to offer. Anyhow they were accepted and the compact was negotiated,
+signed, and ratified by men whose idealism marred their practical sense,
+and whose policy of sacred egotism, resolute in words and feeble in
+action, merely impaired the good name of the government without bringing
+any corresponding compensation to the country. The world struggle lasted
+much longer than the statesmen had dared to anticipate; Italy's
+obligations were greatly augmented by Russia's defection, she had to
+bear the brunt of all, instead of a part of Austria's forces, whereby
+the sacrifices demanded of her became proportionately heavier.
+Altogether it is fair to say that the difficulties to be overcome and
+the hardships to be endured before the Italian people reached their goal
+were and still are but imperfectly realized by their allies. For the
+obstacles were gigantic, the effort heroic; alone the results shrank to
+disappointing dimensions.
+
+The war over, Italian statesmen confidently believed that those
+supererogatory exertions would be appropriately recognized by the
+Allies. And this expectation quickly crystallized into territorial
+demands. The press which voiced them ruffled the temper of
+Anglo-Saxondom by clamoring for more than it was ever likely to concede,
+and buoyed up their own nation with illusory hopes, the non-fulfilment
+of which was certain to produce national discontent. Curiously enough,
+both the government and the press laid the main stress upon territorial
+expansion, leaving economic advantages almost wholly out of account.
+
+It was at this conjuncture that Mr. Wilson made his appearance and threw
+all the pieces on the political chessboard into weird confusion. "You,"
+he virtually said, "have been fighting for the dismemberment of your
+secular enemy, Austria. Well, she is now dismembered and you have full
+satisfaction. Your frontiers shall be extended at her expense, but not
+at the expense of the new states which have arisen on her ruins. On the
+contrary, their rights will circumscribe your claims and limit your
+territorial aggrandizement. Not only can you not have all the additional
+territory you covet, but I must refuse to allot even what has been
+guaranteed to you by your secret treaty. I refuse to recognize that
+because the United States government was no party to it, was, in fact,
+wholly unaware of it until recently. New circumstances have transformed
+it into a mere scrap of paper."
+
+This language was not understood by the Italian people. For them the
+sacredness of treaties was a dogma not to be questioned, and least of
+all by the champion of right, justice, and good faith. They had welcomed
+the new order preached by the American statesman, but were unable to
+reconcile it with the tearing up of existing conventions, the
+repudiation of legal rights, the dissolution of alliances. In particular
+their treaty with France, Britain, and Russia had contributed
+materially to the victory over the common enemy, had in fact saved the
+Allies. "It was Italy's intervention," said the chief of the Austrian
+General Staff, Conrad von Hoetzendorff, "that brought about the
+disaster. Without that the Central Empires would infallibly have won the
+war."[195] And there is no reason to doubt his assertion. In truth Italy
+had done all she had promised to the Allies, and more. She had
+contributed materially to save France--wholly gratuitously. It was also
+her neutrality, which she could have bartered, but did not,[196] that
+turned the scale at Bucharest against the military intervention of
+Rumania on the side of the Teutons.[197] And without the neutrality of
+both these countries at the outset of hostilities the course of the
+struggle and of European history would have been widely different from
+what they have been. And now that the Allies had achieved their aim they
+were to refuse to perform their part of the compact in the name, too, of
+a moral principle from the operation of which three great Powers were
+dispensed. That was the light in which the matter appeared to the
+unsophisticated mind of the average Italian, and not to him alone.
+Others accustomed to abstract reasoning asked whether the best
+preparation for the future regime of right and justice, and all that
+these imply, is to transgress existing rights and violate ordinary
+justice, and what difference there is between the demoralizing influence
+of this procedure and that of professional Bolshevists. There was but
+one adequate answer to this objection, and it consisted in the
+whole-hearted and rigid application of the Wilsonian tenets to all
+nations without exception. But even the author of these tenets did not
+venture to make it.
+
+The essence of the territorial question lay in the disposal of the
+eastern shore of the Adriatic.[198] The Jugoslavs claimed all Istria and
+Dalmatia, and based their claim partly on the principle of nationalities
+and partly on the vital necessity of having outlets on that sea, and in
+particular Fiume, the most important of them all, which they described
+as essentially Croatian and indispensable as a port. The Italian
+delegates, joining issue with the Jugoslavs, and claiming a section of
+the seaboard and Fiume, argued that the greatest part of the East
+Adriatic shore would still remain Croatian, together with all the ports
+of the Croatian coast and others in southern Dalmatia--in a word, twelve
+ports, including Spalato and Ragusa, and a thousand kilometers of
+seaboard. The Jugoslavs met this assertion with the objection that the
+outlets in question were inaccessible, all except Fiume and Metkovitch.
+As for Fiume,[199] the Italian delegates contended that although not
+promised to Italy by the Treaty of London, it was historically hers,
+because, having been for centuries an autonomous entity and having as
+such religiously preserved its Italian character, its inhabitants had
+exercised their rights to manifest by plebiscite their desire to be
+united with the mother country. They further denied that it was
+indispensable to the Jugoslavs because these would receive a dozen other
+ports and also because the traffic between Croatia and Fiume was
+represented by only 7 per cent. of the whole, and even that of Croatia,
+Slavonia, and Dalmatia combined by only 13 per cent. Further, Italy
+would undertake to give all requisite export facilities in Fiume to the
+Jugoslavs.
+
+The latter traversed many of these statements, and in particular that
+which described Fiume as a separate autonomous entity and as an
+essentially Italian city. Archives were ransacked by both parties,
+ancient documents produced, analyzed, condemned as forgeries or appealed
+to as authentic proofs, chance phrases were culled from various writers
+of bygone days and offered as evidence in support of each contention.
+Thus the contest grew heated. It was further inflamed by the attitude of
+Italy's allies, who appeared to her as either covertly unfriendly or at
+best lukewarm.
+
+M. Clemenceau, who maintained during the peace negotiations the epithet
+"Tiger" which he had earned long before, was alleged to have said in the
+course of one of those conversations which were misnamed private, "For
+Italy to demand Fiume is to ask for the moon."[200] Officially he took
+the side of Mr. Wilson, as did also the British Premier, and Italy's two
+allies signified but a cold assent to those other claims which were
+covered by their own treaty. But they made no secret of their desire to
+see that instrument wholly set aside. Fiume they would not bestow on
+their ally, at least not unless she was prepared to offer an equivalent
+to the Jugoslavs and to satisfy the President of the United States.
+
+This advocacy of the claims of the Jugoslavs was bitterly resented by
+the Italians. For centuries the two peoples had been rivals or enemies,
+and during the war the Jugoslavs fought with fury against the Italians.
+For Italy the arch-enemy had ever been Austria and Austria was largely
+Slav. "Austria," they say, "was the official name given to the cruel
+enemy against whom we fought, but it was generally the Croatians and
+other Slavs whom our gallant soldiers found facing them, and it was they
+who were guilty of the misdeeds from which our armies suffered."
+Official documents prove this.[201] Orders of the day issued by the
+Austrian Command eulogize "the Serbo-Croatian battalions who vied with
+the Austro-German and Hungarian soldiers in resisting the pitfalls dug
+by the enemy to cause them to swerve from their fidelity and take the
+road to treason.[202] In the last battle which ended the existence of
+the Austro-Hungarian monarchy a large contingent of excellent Croatian
+troops fought resolutely against the Italian armies."
+
+In Italy an impressive story is told which shows how this transformation
+of the enemy of yesterday into the ally of to-day sometimes worked out.
+The son of an Italian citizen who was fighting as an aviator was killed
+toward the end of the war, in a duel fought in the air, by an Austrian
+combatant. Soon after the armistice was signed the sorrowing father
+repaired to the place where his son had fallen. He there found an
+ex-Austrian officer, the lucky victor and slayer of his son, wearing in
+his buttonhole the Jugoslav _cocarde_, who, advancing toward him with
+extended hand, uttered the greeting, "You and I are now allies."[203]
+The historian may smile at the naivete of this anecdote, but the
+statesman will acknowledge that it characterized the relations between
+the inhabitants of the new state and the Italians. One can divine the
+feelings of these when they were exhorted to treat their ex-enemies as
+friends and allies.
+
+"Is it surprising, then," the Italians asked, "that we cannot suddenly
+conceive an ardent affection for the ruthless 'Austrians' of whose
+cruelties we were bitterly complaining a few months back? Is it strange
+that we cannot find it in our hearts to cut off a slice of Italian
+territory and make it over to them as one of the fruits of--our victory
+over them? If Italy had not first adopted neutrality and then joined the
+Allies in the war there would be no Jugoslavia to-day. Are we now to pay
+for our altruism by sacrificing Italian soil and Italian souls to the
+secular enemies of our race?" In a word, the armistice transformed
+Italy's enemy into a friend and ally for whose sake she was summoned to
+abandon some of the fruits of a hard-earned victory and a part of her
+secular aspirations. What, asked the Italian delegates, would France
+answer if she were told that the Prussians whom her matchless armies
+defeated must henceforth be looked upon as friends and endowed with some
+new colonies which would otherwise be hers? The Italian dramatist Sem
+Benelli put the matter tersely: "The collapse of Austria transforms
+itself therefore into a play of words, so much so that our people, who
+are much more precise because they languished under the Austrian yoke
+and the Austrian scourge, never call the Austrians by this name; they
+call them always Croatians, knowing well that the Croatians and the
+Slavs who constituted Austria were our fiercest taskmasters and most
+cruel executioners. It is naive to think that the ineradicable
+characteristics and tendencies of peoples can be modified by a change of
+name and a new flag."
+
+But there was another way of looking at the matter, and the Allies,
+together with the Jugoslavs, made the most of it. The Slav character of
+the disputed territory was emphasized, the principle of nationality
+invoked, and the danger of incorporating an unfriendly foreign element
+which could not be assimilated was solemnly pointed out. But where
+sentiment actuates, reason is generally impotent. The policy of the
+Italian government, like that of all other governments, was frankly
+nationalistic; whether it was also statesman-like may well be
+questioned--indeed the question has already been answered by some of
+Italy's principal press organs in the negative.[204] They accuse the
+Cabinet of having deliberately let loose popular passions which it
+afterward vainly sought to allay, and the facts which they allege in
+support of the charge have never been denied.
+
+It was certainly to Italy's best interests to strike up a friendly
+agreement with the new state, if that were feasible, and some of the men
+in whose hands her destinies rested, feeling their responsibility, made
+a laudable attempt to come to an understanding. Signor Orlando, whose
+sagacity is equal to his resourcefulness, was one. In London he had
+talked the subject over with the Croatian leader, M. Trumbic, and
+favored the movement toward reconciliation[205] which Baron Sonnino, his
+colleague, as resolutely discouraged. A congress was accordingly held in
+Rome[206] and an accord projected. The reciprocal relations became
+amicable. The Jugoslav committee in the Italian capital congratulated
+Signor Orlando on the victory of the Piave. But owing to various causes,
+especially to Baron Sonnino's opposition, these inchoate sentiments of
+neighborliness quickly lost their warmth and finally vanished. No trace
+of them remained at the Paris Conference, where the delegates of the two
+states did not converse together nor even salute one another.
+
+President Wilson's visit to Rome, where, to use an Italian expression,
+he was welcomed by Delirium, seemed to brighten Italy's outlook on the
+future. Much was afterward made by the President's enemies of the
+subsequent change toward him in the sentiments of the Italian people.
+This is commonly ascribed to his failure to fulfil the expectations
+which his words or attitude aroused or warranted. Nothing could well be
+more misleading. Mr. Wilson's position on the subject of Italy's claims
+never changed, nor did he say or do aught that would justify a doubt as
+to what it was. In Rome he spoke to the Ministers in exactly the same
+terms as in Paris at the Conference. He apprized them in January of what
+he proposed to do in April and he even contemplated issuing a
+declaration of his Italian policy at once. But he was earnestly
+requested by the Ministers to keep his counsel to himself and to make no
+public allusion to it during his sojourn in Italy.[207] It was not his
+fault, therefore, if the Italian people cherished illusory hopes. In
+Paris Signer Orlando had an important encounter with Mr. Wilson,[208]
+who told him plainly that the allotment of the northern frontiers traced
+for Italy by the London Treaty would be confirmed, while that of the
+territory on the eastern Adriatic would be quashed. The division of the
+spoils of Austria there must, he added, be made congruously with a map
+which he handed to the Italian Premier. It was proved on examination to
+be identical with one already published by the _New Europe_.[209] Signor
+Orlando glanced at the map and in courteous phraseology unfolded the
+reasons why he could not entertain the settlement proposed. He added
+that no Italian parliament would ratify it. Thereupon the President
+turned the discussion to politico-ethical lines, pointed out the harm
+which the annexation of an alien and unfriendly element could inflict
+upon Italy, the great advantages which cordial relations with her Slav
+neighbor would confer on her, and the ease with which she might gain the
+markets of the new state. A young and small nation like the Jugoslavs
+would be grateful for an act of generosity and would repay it by lasting
+friendship--a return worth far more than the contentious territories.
+"Ah, you don't know the Jugoslavs, Mr. President," exclaimed Signor
+Orlando. "If Italy were to cede to them Dalmatia, Fiume, and eastern
+Istria they would forthwith lay claim to Trieste and Pola and, after
+Trieste and Pola, to Friuli and Gorizia."
+
+After some further discussion Mr. Wilson said: "Well, I am unable to
+reconcile with my principles the recognition of secret treaties, and as
+the two are incompatible I uphold the principles." "I, too," rejoined
+the Italian Premier, "condemn secret treaties in the future when the new
+principles will have begun to regulate international politics. As for
+those compacts which were concluded during the war they were all secret,
+not excluding those to which the United States was a party." The
+President demurred to this reservation. He conceived and put his case
+briefly as follows: Italy, like her allies, had had it in her power to
+accept the Fourteen Points, reject them, or make reserves. Britain and
+France had taken exception to those clauses which they were determined
+to reject, whereas Italy signified her adhesion to them all. Therefore
+she was bound by the principles underlying them and had forfeited the
+right to invoke a secret treaty. The settlement of the issues turning
+upon Dalmatia, Istria, Fiume, and the islands must consequently be
+taken in hand without reference to the clauses of that instrument.
+Examined on their merits and in the light of the new arrangements,
+Italy's claims could not be upheld. It would be unfair to the Jugoslavs
+who inhabit the whole country to cut them off from their own seaboard.
+Nor would such a measure be helpful to Italy herself, whose interest it
+was to form a homogeneous whole, consolidate her dominions, and prepare
+for the coming economic struggle for national well-being. The principle
+of nationality must, therefore, be allowed full play.
+
+As for Fiume, even if the city were, as alleged, an independent entity
+and desirous of being incorporated in Italy, one would still have to set
+against these facts Jugoslavia's imperative need of an outlet to the
+sea. Here the principle of economic necessity outweighs those of
+nationality and free determination. A country must live, and therefore
+be endowed with the wherewithal to support life. On these grounds,
+judgment should be entered for the Jugoslavs.
+
+The Italian Premier's answer was equally clear, but he could not
+unburden his mind of it all. His government had, it was true, adhered to
+the Fourteen Points without reservation. But the assumptions on which it
+gave this undertaking were that it would not be used to upset past
+compacts, but would be reserved for future settlements; that even had it
+been otherwise the maxims in question should be deemed relevant in
+Italy's case only if applied impartially to all states, and that the
+entire work of reorganization should rest on this ethical foundation. A
+regime of exceptions, with privileged and unprivileged nations, would
+obviously render the scheme futile and inacceptable. Yet this was the
+system that was actually being introduced. If secret treaties were to be
+abrogated, then let the convention between Japan and China be also put
+out of court and the dispute between them adjudicated upon its merits.
+If the Fourteen Points are binding, let the freedom of the seas be
+proclaimed. If equal rights are to be conferred upon all states, let the
+Monroe Doctrine be repealed. If disarmament is to become a reality, let
+Britain and America cease to build warships. Suppose for a moment that
+to-morrow Brazil or Chile were to complain of the conduct of the United
+States, the League of Nations, in whose name Mr. Wilson speaks, would be
+hindered by the Monroe Doctrine from intervening, whereas Britain and
+the United States in analogous conditions may intermeddle in the affairs
+of any of the lesser states. When Ireland or Egypt or India uplifts its
+voice against Britain, it is but a voice in the desert which awakens no
+echo. If Fiume were inhabited by American citizens who, with a like
+claim to be considered a separate entity, asked to be allowed to live
+under the Stars and Stripes, what would President Wilson's attitude be
+then? Would he turn a deaf ear to their prayer? Surely not. Why, in the
+case of Italy, does he not do as he would be done by? What it all comes
+to is that the new ordering under the flag of equality is to consist of
+superior and inferior nations, of which the former, who speak English,
+are to possess unlimited power over the latter, to decide what is good
+for them and what is bad, what is licit and what is forbidden. And
+against their fiat there is to be no appeal. In a word, it is to be the
+hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon race.
+
+It is worth noting that Signor Orlando's arguments were all derived from
+the merits of the case, not from the terms or the force of the London
+Treaty. Fiume, he said, had besought Italy to incorporate it, and had
+made this request before the armistice, at a moment when it was risky to
+proclaim attachments to the kingdom.[210] The inhabitants had invoked
+Mr. Wilson's own words: "National aspirations must be respected....
+Self-determination is not a mere phrase." "Peoples and provinces are not
+to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were
+mere chattels and pawns in a game. Every territorial settlement involved
+in this war must be made in the interest and for the benefit of the
+populations concerned, and not as a part of any adjustment for
+compromise of claims among rival states." And in his address at Mount
+Vernon the President had advocated a doctrine which is peculiarly
+applicable to Fiume--_i.e._:
+
+"The settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty,
+of economic arrangement, or of political relationship, upon the basis of
+the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately
+concerned, and not upon the basis of material interest or advantage of
+any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement, for
+the sake of its own exterior influence or mastery."[211] These maxims
+laid down by Mr. Wilson implicitly allot Fiume to Italy.
+
+Finally as to the objection that Italy's claims would entail the
+incorporation of a number of Slavs, the answer was that the percentage
+was negligible as compared with the number of foreign elements annexed
+by other states. The Poles, it was estimated, would have some 30 per
+cent. of aliens, the Czechs not less, Rumania 17 per cent., Jugoslavia
+11 per cent., France 4 per cent., and Italy only 3 per cent.
+
+In February the Jugoslavs made a strategic move, which many admired as
+clever, and others blamed as unwise. They proposed that all differences
+between their country and Italy should be submitted to Mr. Wilson's
+arbitration. Considering that the President's mind was made up on the
+subject from the beginning, and that he had decided against Italy, it
+was natural that the delegation in whose favor his decision was known to
+incline should be eager to get it accepted by their rivals. As neither
+side was ignorant of what the result of the arbitration would be, only
+one of the two could be expected to close with the offer, and the most
+it could hope by doing this was to embarrass the other. The Italian
+answer was ingenious. Their dispute, they said, was not with Serbia, who
+alone was represented at the Conference; it concerned Croatia, who had
+no official standing there, and whose frontiers were not yet determined,
+but would in due time be traced by the Conference, of which Italy was a
+member. The decision would be arrived at after an exhaustive study, and
+its probable consequences to Europe's peace would be duly considered. As
+extreme circumspection was imperative before formulating a verdict, five
+plenipotentiaries would seem better qualified than any one of them, even
+though he were the wisest of the group. To remove the question from the
+competency of the Conference, which was expressly convoked to deal with
+such issues, and submit it to an individual, would be felt as a slight
+on the Supreme Council. And so the matter dropped.
+
+Signor Orlando knew that if he had adopted the suggestion and made Mr.
+Wilson arbiter, Italy's hopes would have been promptly extinguished in
+the name of the Fourteen Points, and her example held up for all the
+lesser states to imitate. The President was, however, convinced that the
+Italian people would have ratified the arrangement with alacrity. It is
+worth recording that he was so sure of his own hold on the Italian
+masses that, when urging Signor Orlando to relinquish his demand for
+Fiume and the Dalmatian coast, he volunteered to provide him with a
+message written by himself to serve as the Premier's justification.
+Signor Orlando was to read out this document in Parliament in order to
+make it clear to the nation that the renunciation had been demanded by
+America, that it would most efficaciously promote Italy's best
+interests, and should for that reason be ratified with alacrity. Signor
+Orlando, however, declined the certificate and things took their course.
+
+In Paris the Italian delegation made little headway. Every one admired,
+esteemed, and felt drawn toward the first delegate, who, left to
+himself, would probably have secured for his country advantageous
+conditions, even though he might be unable to add Fiume to those secured
+by the secret treaty. But he was not left to himself. He had to reckon
+with his Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was as mute as an oyster and
+almost as unsociable. Baron Sonnino had his own policy, which was
+immutable, almost unutterable. At the Conference he seemed unwilling to
+propound, much less to discuss it, even with those foreign colleagues on
+whose co-operation or approval its realization depended. He actually
+shunned delegates who would fain have talked over their common interests
+in a friendly, informal way, and whose business it was to strike up an
+agreement. In fact, results which could be secured only by persuading
+indifferent or hostile people and capturing their good-will he expected
+to attain by holding aloof from all and leading the life of a hermit,
+one might almost say of a misanthrope. One can imagine the feelings, if
+one may not reproduce the utterances, of English-speaking officials,
+whose legitimate desire for a free exchange of views with Italy's
+official spokesman was thwarted by the idiosyncrasies of her own
+Minister of Foreign Affairs. In Allied circles Baron Sonnino was
+distinctly unpopular, and his unpopularity produced a marked effect on
+the cause he had at heart. He was wholly destitute of friends. He had,
+it is true, only two enemies, but they were himself and the foreign
+element who had to work with him. Italy's cause was therefore
+inadequately served.
+
+Several months' trial showed the unwisdom of Baron Sonnino's attitude,
+which tended to defeat his own policy. Italy was paid back by her allies
+in her own coin, aloofness for aloofness. After she had declined the
+Jugoslavs' ingenious proposal to refer their dispute to Mr. Wilson the
+three delegates[212] agreed among themselves to postpone her special
+problems until peace was signed with Germany, but Signor Orlando, having
+got wind of the matter, moved every lever to have them put into the
+forefront of the agenda. He went so far as to say that he would not sign
+the Treaty unless his country's claims were first settled, because that
+document would make the League of Nations--and therefore Italy as a
+member of the League--the guarantor of other nations' territories,
+whereas she herself had no defined territories for others to guarantee.
+She would not undertake to defend the integrity of states which she had
+helped to create while her own frontiers were indefinite. But in the art
+of procrastination the Triumvirate was unsurpassed, and, as the time
+drew near for presenting the Treaty to Germany, neither the Adriatic,
+the colonial, the financial, nor the economic problems on which Italy's
+future depended were settled or even broached. In the meanwhile the
+plenipotentiaries in secret council, of whom four or five were wont to
+deliberate and two to take decisions, had disagreed on the subject of
+Fiume. Mr. Wilson was inexorable in his refusal to hand the city over to
+Italy, and the various compromises devised by ingenious weavers of
+conflicting interests failed to rally the Italian delegates,
+whose inspirer was the taciturn Baron Sonnino. The
+Italian press, by insisting on Fiume as a _sine qua non_ of
+Italy's approval of the Peace Treaty and by announcing
+that it would undoubtedly be accorded, had made it
+practically impossible for the delegates to recede. The
+circumstance that the press was inspired by the government is immaterial
+to the issue. President Wilson, who had been frequently told that a word
+from him to the peoples of Europe would fire their enthusiasm and carry
+them whithersoever he wished, even against their own governments, now
+purposed wielding this unique power against Italy's plenipotentiaries.
+As we saw, he would have done this during his sojourn in Rome, but was
+dissuaded by Baron Sonnino. His intention now was to compel the
+delegates to go home and ascertain whether their inflexible attitude
+corresponded with that of their people and to draw the people into the
+camp of the "idealists." He virtually admitted this during his
+conversation with Signor Orlando. What he seems to have overlooked,
+however, is that there are time limits to every policy, and that only
+the same causes can be set in motion to produce the same results. In
+Italy the President's name had a very different sound in April from the
+clarion-like tones it gave forth in January, and the secret of his
+popularity even then was the prevalent faith in his firm determination
+to bring about a peace of justice, irrespective of all separate
+interests, not merely a peace with indulgence for the strong and rigor
+for the weak. The time when Mr. Wilson might have summoned the peoples
+of Europe to follow him had gone by irrevocably. It is worth noting that
+the American statesman's views about certain of Italy's claims, although
+originally laid down with the usual emphasis as immutable, underwent
+considerable modifications which did not tend to reinforce his
+authority. Thus at the outset he had proclaimed the necessity of
+dividing Istria between the two claimant nations, but, on further
+reflection, he gave way in Italy's favor, thus enabling Signor Orlando
+to make the point that even the President's solutions needed
+corrections. It is also a fact that when the Italian Premier insisted on
+having the Adriatic problems definitely settled before the presentation
+of the Treaty to the Germans[213] his colleagues of France and Britain
+assured him that this reasonable request would be complied with. The
+circumstance that this promise was disregarded did not tend to smooth
+matters in the Council of Five.
+
+The decisive duel between Signor Orlando and Mr. Wilson was fought out
+in April, and the overt acts which subsequently marked their tense
+relations were but the practical consequences of that. On the historic
+day each one set forth his program with a _ne varietur_ attached, and
+the President of the United States gave utterance to an estimate of
+Italian public opinion which astonished and pained the Italian Premier,
+who, having contributed to form it, deemed himself a more competent
+judge of its trend than his distinguished interlocutor. But Mr. Wilson
+not only refused to alter his judgment, but announced his intention to
+act upon it and issue an appeal to the Italian nation. The gist of this
+document was known to M. Clemenceau and Mr. Lloyd George. It has been
+alleged, and seems highly probable, that the British Premier was
+throughout most anxious to bring about a workable compromise. Proposals
+were therefore put forward respecting Fiume and Dalmatia, some of which
+were not inacceptable to the Italians, who lodged counter-proposals
+about the others. On the fate of these counter-proposals everything
+depended.
+
+On April 23d I was at the Hotel Edouard VII, the headquarters of the
+Italian delegation, discussing the outlook and expecting to learn that
+some agreement had been reached. In an adjoining room the members of the
+delegation were sitting in conference on the burning subject, painfully
+aware that time pressed, that the Damocles's sword of Mr. Wilson's
+declaration hung by a thread over their heads, and that a spirit of
+large compromise was indispensable. At three o'clock Mr. Lloyd George's
+secretary brought the reply of the Council of Three to Italy's maximum
+of concessions. Only one point remained in dispute, I was told, but that
+point hinged upon Fiume, and, by a strange chance, it was not mentioned
+in the reply which the secretary had just handed in. The Italian
+delegation at once telephoned to the British Premier asking him to
+receive the Marquis Imperiali, who, calling shortly afterward, learned
+that Fiume was to be a free city and exempt from control. It was when
+the marquis had just returned that I took leave of my hosts and received
+the assurance that I should be informed of the result. About half an
+hour later, on receipt of an urgent message, I hastened back to the
+Italian headquarters, where consternation prevailed, and I learned that
+hardly had the delegates begun to discuss the contentious clause when a
+copy of the _Temps_ was brought in, containing Mr. Wilson's appeal to
+the Italian people "over the heads of the Italian government."
+
+The publication fell like a powerful explosive. The public were at a
+loss to fit in Mr. Wilson's unprecedented action with that of his
+British and French colleagues. For if in the morning he sent his appeal
+to the newspapers, it was asked, why did he allow his Italian colleagues
+to go on examining a proposal on which he manifestly assumed that they
+were no longer competent to treat? Moreover a rational desire to settle
+Italy's Adriatic frontiers, it was observed, ought not to have lessened
+his concern about the larger issues which his unwonted procedure was
+bound to raise. And one of these was respect for authority, the loss of
+which was the taproot of Bolshevism. Signor Orlando replied to the
+appeal in a trenchant letter which was at bottom a reasoned protest
+against the assumed infallibility of any individual and, in particular,
+of one who had already committed several radical errors of judgment.
+What the Italian Premier failed to note was the consciousness of
+overwhelming power and the will to use it which imparted its specific
+mark to the whole proceeding. Had he realized this element, his
+subsequent tactics would perhaps have run on different lines.
+
+The suddenness with which the President carried out his purpose was
+afterward explained as the outcome of misinformation. In various Italian
+cities, it had been reported to him, posters were appearing on the walls
+announcing that Fiume had been annexed. Moreover, it was added, there
+were excellent grounds for believing that at Rome the Italian Cabinet
+was about to issue a decree incorporating it officially, whereby things
+would become more tangled than ever. Some French journals gave credit to
+these allegations, and it may well be that Mr. Wilson, believing them,
+too, and wanting to be beforehand, took immediate action. This, however,
+is at most an explanation; it hardly justifies the precipitancy with
+which the Italian plenipotentiaries were held up to the world as men who
+were misrepresenting their people. As a matter of fact careful inquiry
+showed that all those reports which are said to have alarmed the
+President were groundless. Mr. Wilson's sources of information
+respecting the countries on which he was sitting in judgment were often
+as little to be depended on as presumably were the decisions of the
+special commissions which he and Mr. Lloyd George so unceremoniously
+brushed aside.
+
+On the following morning Signori Orlando and Sonnino called on the
+British Premier in response to his urgent invitation. To their surprise
+they found Mr. Wilson and M. Clemenceau also awaiting them, ready, as it
+might seem, to begin the discussion anew, curious in any case to observe
+the effect of the declaration. But the Italian Premier burned his boats
+without delay or hesitation. "You have challenged the authority of the
+Italian government," he said, "and appealed to the Italian people. Be it
+so. It is now become my duty to seek out the representatives of my
+people in Parliament and to call upon them to decide between Mr. Wilson
+and me." The President returned the only answer possible, "Undoubtedly
+that is your duty." "I shall inform Parliament then that we have allies
+incapable of agreeing among themselves on matters that concern us
+vitally." Disquieted by the militant tone of the Minister, Mr. Lloyd
+George uttered a suasive appeal for moderation, and expressed the hope
+that in his speech to the Italian Chamber, Signor Orlando would not
+forget to say that a satisfactory solution may yet be found. He would
+surely be incapable of jeopardizing the chances of such a desirable
+consummation. "I will make the people arbiters of the whole situation,"
+the Premier announced, "and in order to enable them to judge with full
+knowledge of the data, I herewith ask your permission to communicate my
+last memorandum to the Council of Four. It embodies the pith of the
+facts which it behooves the Parliament to have before it. In the
+meantime, the Italian government withdraws from the Peace Conference."
+On this the painful meeting terminated and the principal Italian
+plenipotentiaries returned to Rome. In France a section of the press
+sympathized with the Italians, while the government, and in particular
+M. Clemenceau, joined Mr. Wilson, who had promised to restore the
+sacredness of treaties[214] in exhorting Signor Orlando to give up the
+Treaty of London. The clash between Mr. Wilson and Signor Orlando and
+the departure of the Italian plenipotentiaries coincided with the
+arrival of the Germans in Versailles, so that the Allies were faced with
+the alternative of speeding up their desultory talks and improvising a
+definite solution or giving up all pretense at unanimity in the presence
+of the enemy. One important Paris journal found fault with Mr. Wilson
+and his "Encyclical," and protested emphatically against his way of
+filling every gap in his arrangements by wedging into it his League of
+Nations. "Can we harbor any illusion as to the net worth of the League
+of Nations when the revised text of the Covenant reveals it shrunken to
+the merest shadow, incapable of thought, will, action, or justice?...
+Too often have we made sacrifices to the Wilsonian doctrine."[215] ...
+Another press organ compared Fiume to the Saar Valley and sympathized
+with Italy, who, relying on the solidarity of her allies, expected to
+secure the city.[216]
+
+While those wearisome word-battles--in which the personal element played
+an undue part--were being waged in the twilight of a secluded Valhalla,
+the Supreme Economic Council decided that the seized Austrian vessels
+must be pooled among all the Allies. When the untoward consequences of
+this decision were flashed upon the Italians and the Jugoslavs, the
+rupture between them was seen to be injurious to both and profitable to
+third parties. For if the Austrian vessels were distributed among all
+the Allied peoples, the share that would fall to those two would be of
+no account. Now for the first time the adversaries bestirred themselves.
+But it was not their diplomatists who took the initiative. Eager for
+their respective countries' share of the spoils of war, certain
+business men on both sides met,[217] deliberated, and worked out an
+equitable accord which gave four-fifths of the tonnage to Italy and the
+remainder to the Jugoslavs, who otherwise would not have obtained a
+single ship.[218] They next set about getting the resolution of the
+Economic Council repealed, and went on with their conversations.[219]
+The American delegation was friendly, promised to plead for the repeal,
+and added that "if the accord could be extended to the Adriatic problem
+Mr. Wilson would be delighted and would take upon himself to ratify it
+_even without the sanction of the Conference_.[220] Encouraged by this
+promise, the delegates made the attempt, but as the Italian Premier had
+for some unavowed reason limited the intercourse of the negotiators to a
+single day, on the expiry of which he ordered the conversation to
+cease,[221] they failed. Two or three days later the delegates in
+question had quitted Paris.
+
+What this exchange of views seems to have demonstrated to open-minded
+Italians was that the Jugoslavs, whose reputation for obstinacy was a
+dogma among all their adversaries and some of their friends, have chinks
+in their panoply through which reason and suasion may penetrate.
+
+When the Italian withdrew from the Conference he had ample reason for
+believing that in his absence peace could not be signed, and many
+thought that, by departing, he was giving Mr. Wilson a Roland for his
+Oliver. But this supposed tactical effect formed no part of Orlando's
+deliberate plan. It was a coincidence to be utilized, nothing more. Mr.
+Wilson had left him no choice but to quit France and solicit the verdict
+of his countrymen. But Mr. Wilson's colleagues were aghast at the
+thought that the Pact of London, by which none of the Allies might
+conclude a separate peace, rendered it indispensable that Italy's
+recalcitrant plenipotentiaries should be co-signatories, or at any rate
+consenting parties. About this interpretation of the Pact there was not
+the slightest doubt. Hence every one feared that the signing of the
+Peace Treaty would be postponed indefinitely because of the absence of
+the Italian plenipotentiaries from the Conference. That certainly was
+the belief of the remaining delegates. There was no doubt anywhere that
+the presence or the express assent of the Italians was a _sine qua non_
+of the legality of the Treaty. It certainly was the conviction of the
+French press, and was borne out by the most eminent jurists throughout
+the world.[222] That the Italian delegates might refuse to sign, as
+Signor Orlando had threatened, until Italy's affairs were arranged
+satisfactorily was taken for granted, and the remaining members of the
+inner Council set to work to checkmate this potential maneuver and
+dispense with her co-operation. This aim was attained during the absence
+of the Italian delegation by the decree that the signature of any three
+of the Allied and Associated governments would be deemed adequate. The
+legality and even the morality of this provision were challenged by
+many.
+
+But it may be maintained that the imperative nature of the task which
+confronted the Conference demanded a chart of ideas and principles
+different from that by which Old World diplomacy had been guided and
+that respect for the letter of a compact should not be allowed to
+destroy its spirit. There is much to be said for this contention, which
+was, however, rejected by Italian jurists as destructive of the
+sacredness of treaties. They also urged that even if it were permissible
+to dash formal obstacles aside in order to clear the path for the
+furtherance of a good cause, it is also indispensable that the result
+should be compassed with the smallest feasible sacrifice of principle.
+Hopes were accordingly entertained by the Italian delegates that, on
+their return to Paris, at least a formal declaration might be made that
+Italy's signature was indispensable to the validity of the Treaty. But
+they were not, perhaps could not, be fulfilled at that conjuncture.
+
+Advantage was taken in other ways of the withdrawal of Italy's
+representatives from the Conference. For example, a clause of the Treaty
+with Germany dealing with reparations was altered to Italy's detriment.
+Another which turned upon Austro-German relations was likewise modified.
+Before the delegates left for Rome it had been settled that Germany
+should be bound over to respect Austria's independence. This obligation
+was either superfluous, every state being obliged to respect the
+independence of every other, or else it had a cryptic meaning which
+would only reveal itself in the application of the clause. As soon as
+the Conference was freed from the presence of the Italians the formula
+was modified, and Germany was plainly forbidden to unite with Austria,
+even though Austria should expressly desire amalgamation. As this
+enactment runs directly counter to the principle of self-determination,
+the Italian Minister Crespi raised his voice in energetic protest
+against this and the financial changes,[223] whereupon the Triumvirs,
+giving way on the latter point, consented to restore the primitive text
+of the financial condition.[224] Germany is obliged to supply France
+with seven million tons of coal every year by way of restitution for
+damage done during the war. At the price of fifty francs a ton, the
+money value of this tribute would be three hundred and fifty million
+francs, of which Italy would be entitled to receive 30 per cent. But
+during the absence of the Italian representatives a supplementary clause
+was inserted in the Treaty[225] conferring a special privilege on France
+which renders Italy's claim of little or no value. It provides that
+Germany shall deliver annually to France an amount of coal equal to the
+difference between the pre-war production of the mines of Pas de Calais
+and the Nord, destroyed by the enemy, and the production of the mines of
+the same area during each of the coming years, the maximum limit to be
+twenty million tons. As this contribution takes precedence of all
+others, and as Germany, owing to insufficiency of transports and other
+causes, will probably be unable to furnish it entirely, Italy's claim is
+considered practically valueless.
+
+The reception of the delegates in Rome was a triumph, their return to
+Paris a humiliation. For things had been moving fast in the meanwhile,
+and their trend, as we said, was away from Italy's goal. Public opinion
+in their own country likewise began to veer round, and people asked
+whether they had adopted the right tactics, whether, in fine, they were
+the right men to represent their country at that crisis of its history.
+There was no gainsaying the fact that Italy was completely isolated at
+the Conference. She had sacrificed much and had garnered in relatively
+little. The Jugoslavs had offered her an alliance--although this kind of
+partnership had originally been forbidden by the Wilsonian discipline;
+the offer was rejected and she was now certain of their lasting enmity.
+Venizelos had also made overtures to Baron Sonnino for an understanding,
+but they elicited no response, and Italy's relations with Greece lost
+whatever cordiality they might have had. Between France and Italy the
+threads of friendship which companionship in arms should have done much
+to strengthen were strained to the point of snapping. And worst,
+perhaps, of all, the Italian delegates had approved the clause
+forbidding Germany to unite with Austria.
+
+That the fault did not lie wholly in the attitude of the Allies is
+obvious. The Italian delegates' lack of method, one might say of unity,
+was unquestionably a contributory cause of their failure to make
+perceptible headway at the Conference. A curious and characteristic
+incident of the slipshod way in which the work was sometimes done
+occurred in connection with the disposal of the Palace Venezia, in Rome,
+which had belonged to Austria, but was expropriated by the Italian
+government soon after the opening of hostilities. The heirs of the
+Hapsburg Crown put forward a claim to proprietary rights which was
+traversed by the Italian government. As the dispute was to be laid
+before the Conference, the Roman Cabinet invited a _juris consult_
+versed in these matters to argue Italy's case. He duly appeared,
+unfolded his claim congruously with the views of his government, but
+suddenly stopped short on observing the looks of astonishment on the
+faces of the delegates. It appears that on the preceding day another
+delegate of the Economic Conference, also an Italian, had unfolded and
+defended the contrary thesis--namely, that Austria's heirs had
+inherited her right to the Palace of Venezia.[226]
+
+Passing to more momentous matters, one may pertinently ask whether too
+much stress was not laid by the first Italian delegation upon the
+national and sentimental sides of Italy's interests, and too little on
+the others. Among the Great Powers Italy is most in need of raw
+materials. She is destitute of coal, iron, cotton, and naphtha. Most of
+them are to be had in Asia Minor. They are indispensable conditions of
+modern life and progress. To demand a fair share of them as guerdon for
+having saved Europe, and to put in her claim at a moment when Europe was
+being reconstituted, could not have been construed as imperialism. The
+other Allies had possessed most of those necessaries in abundance long
+before the war. They were adding to them now as the fruits of a victory
+which Italy's sacrifices had made possible. Why, then, should she be
+left unsatisfied? Bitterly though the nation was disappointed by failure
+to have its territorial claims allowed, it became still more deeply
+grieved when it came to realize that much more important advantages
+might have been secured if these had been placed in the forefront of the
+nation's demands. Emigration ground for Italy's surplus population,
+which is rapidly increasing, coal and iron for her industries might
+perhaps have been obtained if the Italian plan of campaign at the
+Conference had been rightly conceived and skilfully executed. But this
+realistic aspect of Italy's interests was almost wholly lost sight of
+during the waging of the heated and unfruitful contests for the
+possession of town and ports, which, although sacred symbols of
+Italianism, could not add anything to the economic resources which will
+play such a predominant part in the future struggle for material
+well-being among the new and old states. There was a marked propensity
+among Italy's leaders at home and in Paris to consider each of the
+issues that concerned their country as though it stood alone, instead of
+envisaging Italy's economic, financial, and military position after the
+war as an indivisible problem and proving that it behooved the Allies in
+the interests of a European peace to solve it satisfactorily, and to
+provide compensation in one direction for inevitable gaps in the other.
+This, to my thinking, was the fundamental error of the Italian and
+Allied statesmen for which Europe may have to suffer. That Italy's
+policy cannot in the near future return to the lines on which it ran
+ever since the establishment of her national unity, whatever her allies
+may do or say, will hardly be gainsaid. Interests are decisive factors
+of foreign policy, and the action of the Great Powers has determined
+Italy's orientation.
+
+Italy undoubtedly gained a great deal by the war, into which she entered
+mainly for the purpose of achieving her unity and securing strong
+frontiers. But she signed the Peace Treaty convinced that she had not
+succeeded in either purpose, and that her allies were answerable for her
+failure. It was certainly part of their policy to build up a strong
+state on her frontier out of a race which she regards as her adversary
+and to give it command of some of her strategic positions. And the overt
+bearing manner in which this policy was sometimes carried out left as
+much bitterness behind as the object it aimed at. It is alleged that the
+Italian delegates were treated with an economy of consideration which
+bordered on something much worse, while the arguments officially invoked
+to non-suit them appeared to them in the light of bitter sarcasms.
+President Wilson, they complained, ignored his far-resonant principle
+of self-determination when Japan presented her claim for Shantung, but
+refused to swerve from it when Italy relied on her treaty rights in
+Dalmatia. And when the inhabitants of Fiume voted for union with the
+mother country, the President abandoned that principle and gave judgment
+for Jugoslavia on other grounds. He was right, but disappointing, they
+observed, when he told his fellow-citizens that his presence in Europe
+was indispensable in order to interpret his conceptions, for no other
+rational being could have construed them thus.
+
+The withdrawal of the Italian delegates was construed as an act of
+insubordination, and punished as such. The Marquis de Viti de Varche has
+since disclosed the fact that the Allied governments forthwith reduced
+the credits accorded to Italy during hostilities, whereupon hardships
+and distress were aggravated and the peasantry over a large area of the
+country suffered intensely.[227] For Italy is more dependent on her
+allies than ever, owing to the sacrifices which she offered up during
+the war, and she was made to feel her dependence painfully. The military
+assistance which they had received from her was fraught with financial
+and economic consequences which have not yet been realized by the
+unfortunate people who must endure them. Italy at the close of
+hostilities was burdened with a foreign debt of twenty milliards of
+lire, an internal debt of fifty millards, and a paper circulation four
+times more than what it was in pre-war days.[228] Raw materials were
+exhausted, traffic and production were stagnant, navigation had almost
+ceased, and the expenditure of the state had risen to eleven milliards
+a year.[229]
+
+According to the figures published by the Statistical Society of Berne,
+the general rise in prices attributed to the war hit Italy much harder
+than any of her allies.[230] The consequences of this and other
+perturbations were sinister and immediate. The nation, bereft of what it
+had been taught to regard as its right, humiliated in the persons of its
+chiefs, subjected to foreign guidance, insufficiently clad, underfed,
+and with no tangible grounds for expecting speedy improvement, was
+seething with discontent. Frequent strikes merely aggravated the general
+suffering, which finally led to riots, risings, and the shedding of
+blood. The economic, political, and moral crisis was unprecedented. The
+men who drew Italy into the war were held up to public opprobrium
+because in the imagination of the people the victory had cost them more
+and brought them in less than neutrality would have done. One of the
+principal orators of the Opposition, in a trenchant discourse in the
+Italian Parliament, said, "The Salandra-Sonnino Cabinet led Italy into
+the war blindfolded."[231]
+
+After the return of the Italian delegation to Paris various fresh
+combinations were devised for the purpose of grappling with the Adriatic
+problem. One commended itself to the Italians as a possible basis for
+discussion. In principle it was accepted. A declaration to this effect
+was made by Signor Orlando and taken cognizance of by M. Clemenceau, who
+undertook to lay the matter before Mr. Wilson, the sole arbitrator in
+Italian affairs. He played the part of Fate throughout. Days went by
+after this without bringing any token that the Triumvirate was
+interested in the Adriatic. At last the Italian Premier reminded his
+French colleague that the latest proposal had been accepted in
+principle, and the Italian plenipotentiaries were awaiting Mr. Wilson's
+pleasure in the matter. Accordingly, M. Clemenceau undertook to broach
+the matter to the American statesman without delay. The reply, which was
+promptly given, dismayed the Italians. It was in the form of one of
+those interpretations which, becoming associated with Mr. Wilson's name,
+shook public confidence in certain of the statesman-like qualities with
+which he had at first been credited. The construction which he now put
+upon the mode of voting to be applied to Fiume, including this city--in
+a large district inhabited by a majority of Jugoslavs--imparted to the
+project as the Italians had understood it a wholly new aspect. They
+accordingly declared it inacceptable. As after that there seemed to be
+nothing more for the Italian Premier to do in Paris, he left, was soon
+afterward defeated in the Chamber, and resigned together with his
+Cabinet. The vote of the Italian Parliament, which appeared to the
+continental press in the light of a protest of the nation against the
+aims and the methods of the Conference, closed for the time being the
+chapter of Italy's endeavor to complete her unity, secure strong
+frontiers, and perpetuate her political partnership with France and her
+intimate relations with the Entente. Thenceforward the English-speaking
+states might influence her overt acts, compel submission to their
+behests, and generally exercise a sort of guardianship over her, because
+they are the dispensers of economic boons, but the union of hearts, the
+mutual trust, the cement supplied by common aims are lacking.
+
+One of the most telling arguments employed by President Wilson to
+dissuade various states from claiming strategic positions, and in
+particular Italy from insisting on the annexation of Fiume and the
+Dalmatian coast, was the effective protection which the League of
+Nations would confer on them.[232] Strategical considerations would, it
+was urged, lose all their value in the new era, and territorial
+guaranties become meaningless and cumbersome survivals of a dead epoch.
+That was the principal weapon with which he had striven to parry the
+thrusts of M. Clemenceau and the touchstone by which he tested the
+sincerity of all professions of faith in his cherished project of
+compacting the nations of the world in a vast league of peace-loving,
+law-abiding communities. But the faith of France's leaders differed
+little from unbelief. Guaranties first and the protection of the League
+afterward was the French formula, around which many fierce battles royal
+were fought. In the end Mr. Wilson, having obtained the withdrawal of
+the demand for the Rhine frontier, gave in, and the Covenant was
+reinforced by a compact which in the last analysis is a military
+undertaking, a unilateral Triple Alliance, Great Britain and the United
+States undertaking to hasten to France's assistance should her territory
+be wantonly invaded by Germany. The case thus provided for is extremely
+improbable. The expansion of Germany, when the auspicious hour strikes,
+will presumably be inaugurated on wholly new lines, against which
+armies, even if they can be mobilized in time, will be of little avail.
+But if force were resorted to, it is almost certain to be used in the
+direction where the resistance is least--against France's ally, Poland.
+This, however, is by the way. The point made by the Italians was that
+the League of Nations being thus admittedly powerless to discharge the
+functions which alone could render strategic frontiers unnecessary, can
+consequently no longer be relied upon as an adequate protection against
+the dangers which the possession of the strongholds she claimed on the
+Adriatic would effectively displace. Either the League, it was argued,
+can, as asserted, protect the countries which give up commanding
+positions to potential enemies, or it cannot. In the former hypothesis
+France's insistence on a military convention is mischievous and
+immoral--in the latter Italy stands in as much need of the precautions
+devised as her neighbor. But her spokesmen were still plied with the
+threadbare arguments and bereft of the countervailing corrective. And
+faith in the efficacy of the League was sapped by the very men who were
+professedly seeking to spread it.
+
+The press of Rome, Turin, and Milan pointed to the loyalty of the
+Italian people, brought out, they said, in sharp relief by the
+discontent which the exclusive character of that triple military accord
+engendered among them. As kinsmen of the French it was natural for
+Italians to expect that they would be invited to become a party to this
+league within the League. As loyal allies of Britain and France they
+felt desirous of being admitted to the alliance. But they were excluded.
+Nor was their exasperation allayed by the assurance of their press that
+this was no alliance, but a state of tutelage. An alliance, it was
+explained, is a compact by which two or more parties agree to render one
+another certain services under given conditions, whereas the convention
+in question is a one-sided undertaking on the part of Britain and the
+United States to protect France if wantonly attacked, because she is
+unable efficaciously to protect herself. It is a benefaction. But this
+casuistry fell upon deaf ears. What the people felt was the
+disesteem--the term in vogue was stronger--in which they were held by
+the Allies, whom they had saved perhaps from ruin.
+
+By slow degrees the sentiments of the Italian nation underwent a
+disquieting change. All parties and classes united in stigmatizing the
+behavior of the Allies in terms which even the literary eminence of the
+poet d'Annunzio could not induce the censors to let pass. "The Peace
+Treaty," wrote Italy's most influential journal, "and its correlate
+forbode for the near future the Continental hegemony of France
+countersigned by the Anglo-American alliance."[233] Another widely
+circulated and respected organ described the policy of the Entente as a
+solvent of the social fabric, constructive in words, corrosive in acts,
+"mischievous if ever there was a mischievous policy. For while raising
+hopes and whetting appetites, it does nothing to satisfy them; on the
+contrary, it does much to disappoint them. In words--a struggle for
+liberty, for nations, for the equality of peoples and classes, for the
+well-being of all; in acts--the suppression of the most elementary and
+constitutional liberty, the overlordship of certain nations based on the
+humiliation of others, the division of peoples into exploiters and
+exploited--the sharpening of social differences--the destruction of
+collective wealth, and its accumulation in a few blood-stained hands,
+universal misery, and hunger."[234]
+
+Although it is well understood that Italy's defeat at the Conference was
+largely the handiwork of President Wilson, the resentment of the Italian
+nation chose for its immediate objects the representatives of France and
+Britain. The American "associates" were strangers, here to-day and gone
+to-morrow, but the Allies remain, and if their attitude toward Italy, it
+was argued, had been different, if their loyalty had been real, she
+would have fared proportionately as well as they, whatever the American
+statesmen might have said or done.
+
+The Italian press breathed fiery wrath against its French ally, who so
+often at the Conference had met Italy's solicitations with the odious
+word "impossible." Even moderate organs of public opinion gave free vent
+to estimates of France's policy and anticipations of its consequences
+which disturbed the equanimity of European statesmen. "It is
+impossible," one of these journals wrote, "for France to become the
+absolute despot of Europe without Italy, much less against Italy. What
+transcended the powers of Richelieu, who was a lion and fox combined,
+and was beyond the reach of Bonaparte, who was both an eagle and a
+serpent, cannot be achieved by "Tiger" Clemenceau in circumstances so
+much less favorable than those of yore. We, it is true, are isolated,
+but then France is not precisely embarrassed by the choice of friends."
+The peace was described as "Franco-Slav domination with its headquarters
+in Prague, and a branch office in Agram." M. Clemenceau was openly
+charged with striving after the hegemony of the Continent for his
+country by separating Germany from Austria and surrounding her with a
+ring of Slav states--Poland, Jugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and perhaps the
+non-Slav kingdom of Rumania. All these states would be in the
+leading-strings of the French Republic, and Austria would be linked to
+it in a different guise. And in order to effect this resuscitation of
+the Hapsburg state under the name of "Danubian federation," Mr. Wilson,
+it was asserted, had authorized a deliberate violation of his own
+principle of self-determination, and refused to Austria the right of
+adopting the regime which she preferred. It was, in truth, an odd
+compromise, these critics continued, for an idealist of the President's
+caliber, on whose every political action the scrutinizing gaze of the
+world was fixed. One could not account for it as a sacrifice made for a
+high ethical aim--one of those ends which, according to the old maxim,
+hallows the means. It seemed an open response to a secret instigation or
+impulse which was unconnected with any recognized or avowable principle.
+Even the Socialist organs swelled the chorus of the accusers. _Avanti_
+wrote, "We are Socialists, yet we have never believed that the American
+President with his Fourteen Points entered into the war for the highest
+aims of humanity and for the rights of peoples, any more than we believe
+at present that his opposition to the aspirations of the Italian state
+on the Adriatic are inspired by motives of idealism."[235]
+
+The fate of the disputed territories on the Adriatic was to be the
+outcome of self-determination. Poland's claims were to be left to the
+self-determination of the Silesian and Ruthenian populations. Rumania
+was told that her suit must remain in abeyance until it could be tested
+by the same principle, which would be applied in the form of a
+plebiscite. For self-determination was the cornerstone of the League of
+Nations, the holiest boon for which the progressive peoples of the world
+had been pouring out their life-blood and substance for nearly five
+years. But when Italy invoked self-determination, she was promptly
+non-suited. When Austria appealed to it she was put out of court. And to
+crown all, the world was assured that the Fourteen Points had been
+triumphantly upheld. This depravation of principles by the triumph of
+the little prudences of the hour spurred some of the more impulsive
+critics to ascribe it to influences less respectable than those to which
+it may fairly be attributed.
+
+The directing Powers were hypersensitive to the oft-repeated charge of
+meddling in the internal affairs of other nations. They were never
+tired of protesting their abhorrence of anything that smacked of
+interference. Among the numerous facts, however, which they could
+neither deny nor reconcile with their professions, the following was
+brought forward by the Italians, who had a special interest to draw
+public attention to it. It had to do with the abortive attempt to
+restore the Hapsburg monarchy in Hungary as the first step toward the
+formation of a Danubian federation. "It is certain," wrote the principal
+Italian journal, "that the Archduke Joseph's _coup d'etat_ did not take
+place, indeed (given the conditions in Budapest) could not take place,
+without the Entente's connivance. The official _communiques_ of Budapest
+and Vienna, dated August 9th, recount on this point precise details
+which no one has hitherto troubled to deny. The Peidl government was
+scarcely three days in power, and, therefore, was not in a position to
+deserve either trust or distrust, when the heads of the 'order-loving
+organizations' put forward, to justify the need of a new crisis, the
+complaints of the heads of the Entente Missions as to the anarchy
+prevailing in Hungary and the urgency of finding 'some one' who could
+save the country from the abyss. Then a commission repaired to Alscuth,
+where it easily persuaded the Archduke to come to Budapest. Here he at
+once visited all the heads of missions and spent the whole day in
+negotiations. '_As a result of negotiations with Entente
+representatives, the Archduke Joseph undertook a solution of the
+crisis_.' He then called together the old state police and a volunteer
+army of eight thousand men. The Rumanian garrison was kept ready. The
+Peidl government naturally did not resist at all. At 10 P.M. on August
+7th all the Entente Missions held a meeting, _to which the Archduke
+Joseph and the new Premier were invited_. General Gorton presided. _The
+Conference lasted two hours and reached an agreement on all questions.
+All the heads of Missions assured the new government of their warmest
+support_."[236]
+
+Another case of unwarranted interference which stirred the Italians to
+bitter resentment turned upon the obligation imposed on Austria to
+renounce her right to unite with Germany. "It is difficult to discern in
+the policy of the Entente toward Austria anything more respectable than
+obstinacy coupled with stupidity," wrote the same journal. "But there is
+something still worse. It is impossible not to feel indignant with a
+coalition which, after having triumphed in the name of the loftiest
+ideas ... treats German-Austria no better than the Holy Alliance treated
+the petty states of Italy. But the Congress of Vienna acted in harmony
+with the principle of legitimism which it avowed and professed, whereas
+the Paris Conference violates without scruple the canons by which it
+claims to be guided.
+
+"Not a whit more decorous is the intervention of the Supreme Council in
+the internal affairs of Germany--a state which, according to the spirit
+and the letter of the Versailles Treaty, is sovereign and not a
+protectorate. The Conference was qualified to dictate peace terms to
+Germany, but it wanders beyond the bounds of its competency when it
+construes those terms and arrogates to itself--on the strength of forced
+and equivocal interpretations--the right of imposing upon a nation which
+is neither militarily nor juridically an enemy a constitutional reform.
+Whether Germany violates the Treaty by her Constitution is a question
+which only a judicial finding of the League of Nations can fairly
+determine."[237]
+
+It would be impolitic to overlook and insincere to belittle the effects
+of this incoherency upon the relations between France and Italy. Public
+opinion in the Peninsula characterized the attitude of Prance as
+deliberately hostile. The Italians at the Conference eagerly scrutinized
+every act and word of their French colleagues, with a view to
+discovering grounds for dispelling this view. But the search is reported
+to have been worse than vain. It revealed data which, although
+susceptible of satisfactory explanations, would, if disclosed at that
+moment, have aggravated the feeling of bitterness against France, which
+was fast gathering. Signor Orlando had recourse to the censor to prevent
+indiscretions, but the intuition of the masses triumphed over
+repression, and the existing tenseness merged into resentment. The way
+in which Italians accounted for M. Clemenceau's attitude was this.
+Although Italy has ceased to be the important political factor she once
+was when the Triple Alliance was in being, she is still a strong
+continental Power, capable of placing a more numerous army in the field
+than her republican sister, and her population continues to increase at
+a high rate. In a few years she will have outstripped her rival. France,
+too, has perhaps lost those elements of her power and prestige which she
+derived from her alliance with Russia. Again, the Slav ex-ally, Russia,
+may become the enemy of to-morrow. In view of these contingencies France
+must create a substitute for the Rumanian and Italian allies. And as
+these have been found in the new Slav states, Poland, Czechoslovakia,
+and Jugoslavia, she can afford to dispense with making painful
+sacrifices to keep Italy in countenance.
+
+A trivial incident which affords a glimpse of the spirit prevailing
+between the two kindred peoples occurred at St.-Germain-en-Laye, where
+the Austrian delegates were staying. They had been made much of in
+Vienna by the Envoy of the French Republic there, M. Allize, whose
+mission it was to hinder Austria from uniting with the Reich. Italy's
+policy was, on the contrary, to apply Mr. Wilson's principle of
+self-determination and allow the Austrians to do as they pleased in that
+respect. A fervent advocate of the French orthodox doctrine--a
+publicist--repaired to the Austrian headquarters at St.-Germain for the
+purpose, it is supposed, of discussing the subject. Now intercourse of
+any kind between private individuals and the enemy delegates was
+strictly forbidden, and when M. X. presented himself, the Italian
+officer on duty refused him admission. He insisted. The officer was
+inexorable. Then he produced a written permit signed by the Secretary of
+the Conference, M. Dutasta. How and why this exception was made in his
+favor when the rule was supposed to admit of no exceptions was not
+disclosed. But the Italian officer, equal to the occasion, took the
+ground that a military prohibition cannot be canceled by a civilian, and
+excluded the would-be visitor.
+
+The general trend of France's European policy was repugnant to Italy.
+She looked on it as a well-laid scheme to assume a predominant role on
+the Continent. That, she believed, was the ultimate purpose of the veto
+on the union of Austria and Germany, of the military arrangements with
+Britain and the United States, and of much else that was obnoxious to
+Italy. Austria was to be reconstituted according to the federative plans
+of the late Archduke Franz Ferdinand, to be made stronger than before as
+a counterpoise to Italy, and to be at the beck and call of France. Thus
+the friend, ally, sister of yesterday became the potential enemy of
+to-morrow. That was the refrain of most of the Italian journals, and
+none intoned it more fervently than those which had been foremost in
+bringing their country into the war. One of these, a Conservative organ
+of Lombardy, wrote: "Until yesterday, we might have considered that two
+paths lay open before us, that of an alliance with France and that of
+an independent policy. But we can think so no longer. To offer our
+friendship to-day to the people who have already chosen their own road
+and established their solidarity with our enemies of yesterday and
+to-morrow would not be to strike out a policy, but to decide on an
+unseemly surrender. It would be tantamount to reproducing in an
+aggravated form the situation we occupied in the alliance with Germany.
+Once again we should be engaged in a partnership of which one of the
+partners was in reality our enemy. France taking the place of Germany,
+and Jugoslavia that of Austria, the situation of the old Triple Alliance
+would be not merely reproduced, but made worse in the reproduction,
+because the _Triplice_ at least guaranteed us against a conflict which
+we had grounds for apprehending, whereas the new alliance would tie our
+hands for the sake of a little Balkan state which, single-handed, we are
+well able to keep in its place.
+
+"We have had enough of a policy which has hitherto saddled us with all
+the burdens of the alliance without bestowing on us any advantage--which
+has constrained us to favor all the peoples whose expansion dovetailed
+with French schemes and to combat or neglect those others whose
+consolidation corresponded to our interests--which has led us to support
+a great Poland and a great Bohemia and to combat the Ukraine, Hungary,
+Bulgaria, Rumania, Spain, to whose destinies the French, but not we,
+were indifferent."[238] A press organ of Bologna denounced the atrocious
+and ignominious sacrifice "which her allies imposed on Italy by means of
+economic blackmailing and violence with a whip in one hand and a chunk
+of bread in the other."[239]
+
+Sharp comments were provoked by the heavy tax on strangers in Tunisia
+imposed by the French government,[240] on strangers, mostly Italians,
+who theretofore had enjoyed the same rights as the French and Tunisians.
+"Suddenly," writes the principal Italian journal, "and just when it was
+hoped that the common sacrifices they had made had strengthened the ties
+between the two nations, the governor of Tunisia issued certain orders
+which endangered the interests of foreigners and the effects of which
+will be felt mainly by Italians, of whom there are one hundred and
+twenty thousand in Tunisia.[241] First there came an order forbidding
+the use of any language but French in the schools. Now the tax referred
+to in the House of Lords gives the Tunisian government power to levy an
+impost on the buying and selling of property in Tunisia. The new tax,
+which is to be levied over and above pre-existing taxes, ranged from 59
+per cent. of the value when it is not assessed at a higher sum than one
+hundred thousand lire to 80 per cent. when its estimated value is more
+than five hundred thousand lire." The article terminates with the remark
+that boycotting is hardly a suitable epilogue to a war waged for common
+ideals and interests.
+
+These manifestations irritated the French and were taken to indicate
+Italy's defection. It was to no purpose that a few level-headed men
+pointed out that the French government was largely answerable for the
+state of mind complained of. "Pertinax," in the _Echo de Paris_, wrote
+"that the alliance, in order to subsist and flourish, should have
+retained its character as an Anti-German League, whereas it fell into
+the error of masking itself as a Society of Nations and arrogated to
+itself the right of bringing before its tribunal all the quarrels of the
+planet."[242] Italy's allies undoubtedly did much to forfeit her
+sympathies and turn her from the alliance. It was pointed out that when
+the French troops arrived in Italy the Bulletin of the Italian command
+eulogized their efforts almost daily, but when the Italian troops went
+to France, the _communiques_ of the French command were most chary of
+allusions to their exploits, yet the Italian army contributed more dead
+to the French front than did the French army to the Italian front.[243]
+At the Peace Conference, as we saw, when the terms with Germany were
+being drafted, Italy's problems were set aside on the grounds that there
+was no nexus between them. The Allies' interests, which were dealt with
+as a whole during the war, were divided after the armistice into
+essential and secondary interests, and those of Italy were relegated to
+the latter class. Subsequently France, Britain, and the United States,
+without the co-operation or foreknowledge of their Italian friends,
+struck up an alliance from which they excluded Italy, thereby vitiating
+the only arguments that could be invoked in favor of such a coalition.
+When peace was about to be signed they one-sidedly revoked the treaty
+which they had concluded in London, rendering the consent of all Allies
+necessary to the validity of the document, and decreed that Italy's
+abstention would make no difference. When the instrument was finally
+signed, Mr. Wilson returned to the United States, Mr. Lloyd George to
+England, and the Marquis of Saionji to Japan, without having settled any
+of Italy's problems. Italy, her needs, her claims, and her policy thus
+appear as matters of little account to the Great Powers. Naturally, the
+Italian people were disappointed, and desirous of seeking new friends,
+the old ones having forsaken them.
+
+It would be difficult to exaggerate the consequences which this attitude
+of the Allies toward Italy may have on European politics generally. Her
+most eminent statesman, Signor Tittoni, who succeeded Baron Sonnino,
+transcending his country's mortifications, exerted himself tactfully and
+not unsuccessfully to lubricate the mechanism of the alliance, to ease
+the dangerous friction and to restore the tone. And he seems to have
+accomplished in these respects everything which a sagacious statesman
+could do. But to arrest the operation of psychological laws is beyond
+the power of any individual. In order to appreciate the Italian point of
+view, it is nowise necessary to approve the exaggerated claims put
+forward by her press in the spring of 1919. It is enough to admit that
+in the light of the Wilsonian doctrine they were not more incompatible
+with that doctrine than the claims made by other Powers and accorded by
+the Supreme Council.
+
+To sum up, Italy acquired the impression that association with her
+recent allies means for her not only sacrifices in their hour of need,
+but also further sacrifices in their hour of triumph. She became
+reluctantly convinced that they regard interests which she deems vital
+to herself as unconnected with their own. And that was unfortunate. If
+at some fateful conjuncture in the future her allies on their part
+should gather the impression that she has adjusted her policy to those
+interests which are so far removed from theirs, they will have
+themselves to blame.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[194] This clause, which figured in the draft Treaty, as presented to
+the Germans, provoked such emphatic protests from all sides that it was
+struck out in the revised version.
+
+[195] In an interview given to the Correspondenz Bureau of Vienna by
+Conrad von Hoetzendorff. Cf. _Le Temps_, July 19, 1919.
+
+[196] The Prime Minister, Salandra, declared that to have made
+neutrality a matter of bargaining would have been to dishonor Italy.
+
+[197] King Carol was holding a crown council at the time. Bratiano had
+spoken against the King's proposal to throw in the country's lot with
+Germany. Carp was strongly for carrying out Rumania's treaty
+obligations. Some others hesitated, but before it could be put to the
+vote a telegram was brought in announcing Italy's resolve to maintain
+neutrality. The upshot was Rumania's refusal to follow her allies.
+
+[198] On the eastern Adriatic, the Treaty of London allotted to Italy
+the peninsula of Istria, without Fiume, most of Dalmatia, exclusive of
+Spalato, the chief Dalmatian islands and the Dodecannesus.
+
+[199] The present population of Fiume is computed at 45,227 souls, of
+whom 33,000 are Italians, 10,927 Slavs, and 1,300 Magyars.
+
+[200] Another delegate is reported to have answered: "As we need Italy's
+friendship, we should pay the moderate price asked and back her claim to
+have the moon."
+
+[201] A number of orders of the day eulogizing individual Slav officers
+and collective military entities were quoted by the advocates of Italy's
+cause at the Conference.
+
+[202] Official _communique_ of June 17, 1918.
+
+[203] _Journal de Geneve_, April 25, 1919.
+
+[204] Cf. _Il Corriere della Sera_ and _Il Secolo_ of May 26, 1919.
+
+[205] In the Senate he defended this attitude on March 4,1919, and
+expressed a desire to dispel the misunderstanding between the two
+peoples.
+
+[206] In April, 1919.
+
+[207] This fact has since been made public by Enrico Ferri in a
+remarkable discourse pronounced in the parliament at Rome (July 9,
+1919). It was Baron Sonnino who deprecated the publication of any
+statement on the subject by President Wilson. Cf. _La Stampa_, July 10,
+1919.
+
+[208] On January 10, 1919.
+
+[209] It gave eastern Friuli to Italy, including Gorizia, split Istria
+into two parts, and assigned Trieste and Pola also to Italy, but under
+such territorial conditions that they would be exposed to enemy
+projectiles in case of war.
+
+[210] The National Council of Fiume issued its proclamation before it
+had become known that the battle of Vittorio Veneto was begun--_i.e._,
+October 30, 1918.
+
+[211] Speech delivered at Mount Vernon on July 4, 1918.
+
+[212] Of the United States, France, and Great Britain.
+
+[213] Between April 5th and 12th.
+
+[214] In his address to the representatives of organized labor in
+January, 1918.
+
+[215] _L'Echo de Paris_, April 29, 1919.
+
+[216] _Le Gaulois_, April 29, 1919.
+
+[217] These meetings were held from March 28 till April 23, 1919.
+
+[218] See Marco Borsa's article in _Il Secolo_, June 18, 1919; also
+_Corriere della Sera_, June 19, 1919.
+
+[219] From May 5 to 16, 1919.
+
+[220] _Il Secolo_, June 19, 1919.
+
+[221] On April 23, 1919.
+
+[222] "Can and will our allies treat our absence as a matter of no
+moment? Can and will they violate the formal undertaking which forbids
+the belligerents to conclude a diplomatic peace?... The London
+Declaration prohibits categorically the conclusion of any separate peace
+with any enemy state. France and England cannot sign peace with Germany
+if Italy does not sign it.... The situation is grave and abnormal, for
+our allies it is also grave and abnormal. Italy is isolated, and
+nations, especially those of continental Europe, which are not overrich,
+flee solitude as nature abhors a vacuum."--_Corriere della Sera_, April
+26, 1919. Again: "'The Treaty of London' restrains France and England
+from concluding peace without Italy. And Italy is minded not to conclude
+peace with Germany before she herself has received
+satisfaction."--_Journal de Geneve_, April 25, 1919.
+
+[223] On May 6, 1919, at Versailles.
+
+[224] Cf. _Corriere della Sera_, May 10, 1919.
+
+[225] Annex W of the Revised Treaty.
+
+[226] This incident was revealed by Enrico Ferri, in his remarkable
+speech in the Italian Parliament on July 9, 1919. Cf. _La Stampa_, July
+10, 1919, page 2.
+
+[227] Cf. _The Morning Post_, July 9, 1919.
+
+[228] On July 10th the Italian Finance Minister, in his financial
+statement, announced that the total cost of the war to Italy would
+amount to one hundred milliard lire. He added, however, that her share
+of the German indemnity would wipe out her foreign debt, while a
+progressive tax on all but small fortunes would meet her internal
+obligations. Cf. _Corriere della Sera_, July 11 and 12, 1919.
+
+[229] Cf. _Avanti_, July 19, 1919.
+
+[230] Shown in percentages, the rise in the cost of living was: United
+States, 220 per cent.; England, 240 per cent.; Switzerland, 257 per
+cent.; France, 368 per cent.; Italy, 481 per cent.
+
+[231] Enrico Ferri, on July 9, 1919. Cf. _La Stampa_, July 10, 1919.
+
+[232] At a later date the President reiterated the grounds of his
+decision. In his Columbus speech (September 4, 1919) he asserted that
+"Italy desired Fiume for strategic military reasons, which the League of
+Nations would make unnecessary." (_The New York Herald_ (Paris edition),
+September 6, 1919.) But the League did not render strategic precautions
+unnecessary to France.
+
+[233] _Corriere della Sera_, May 11, 1919.
+
+[234] _La Stampa_, July 16, 1919.
+
+[235] _Avanti_, April 27, 1919. Cf. _Le Temps_, April 28, 1919.
+
+[236] _Corriere della Sera_, August 9, 1919.
+
+[237] _Corriere della Sera_, September 3, 1919.
+
+[238] Quoted in _La Stampa_ of July 20, 1919.
+
+[239] _Ibidem_.
+
+[240] _Corriere d' Italia_, June 29, 1919.
+
+[241] Cf. _Modern Italy_, July 12, 1919 (page 298).
+
+[242] _Echo de Paris_, July 7, 1919.
+
+[243] Cf. "An Italian Expose," published by _The Morning Post_, July 5,
+1919.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+JAPAN
+
+
+Among the solutions of the burning questions which exercised the
+ingenuity and tested the good faith of the leading Powers at the Peace
+Conference, none was more rapidly reached there, or more bitterly
+assailed outside, than those in which Japan was specially interested.
+The storm that began to rage as soon as the Supreme Council's decision
+on the Shantung issue became known did not soon subside. Far from that,
+it threatened for a time to swell into a veritable hurricane. This
+problem, like most of those which were submitted to the forum of the
+Conference, may be envisaged from either of two opposite angles of
+survey; from that of the future society of justice-loving nations, whose
+members are to forswear territorial aggrandizement, special economic
+privileges, and political sway in, or at the expense of, other
+countries; or from the traditional point of view, which has always
+prevailed in international politics and which cannot be better described
+than by Signor Salandra's well-known phrase "sacred egotism." Viewed in
+the former light, Japan's demand for Shantung was undoubtedly as much a
+stride backward as were those of the United States and France for the
+Monroe Doctrine and the Saar Valley respectively. But as the three Great
+Powers had set the example, Japan was resolved from the outset to rebel
+against any decree relegating her to the second-or third-class nations.
+The position of equality occupied by her government among the
+governments of other Great Powers did not extend to the Japanese nation
+among the other nations. But her statesmen refused to admit this
+artificial inferiority as a reason for descending another step in the
+international hierarchy and they invoked the principle of which Britain,
+France, and America had already taken advantage.
+
+The Supreme Council, like Janus of old, possessed two faces, one
+altruistic and the other egotistic, and, also like that son of Apollo,
+held a key in its right hand and a rod in its left. It applied to the
+various states, according to its own interest or convenience, the
+principles of the old or the new Covenant, and would fain have
+dispossessed Japan of the fruits of the campaign, and allotted to her
+the role of working without reward in the vineyard of the millennium,
+were it not that this policy was excluded by reasons of present
+expediency and previous commitments. The expediency was represented by
+President Wilson's determination to obtain, before returning to
+Washington, some kind of a compact that might be described as the
+constitution of the future society of nations, and by his belief that
+this instrument could not be obtained without Japan's adherence, which
+was dependent on her demand for Shantung being allowed. And the previous
+commitments were the secret compacts concluded by Japan with Britain,
+France, Russia, and Italy before the United States entered the war.
+
+Nippon's role in the war and the circumstances that shaped it are
+scarcely realized by the general public. They have been purposely thrust
+in the background. And yet a knowledge of them is essential to those who
+wish to understand the significance of the dispute about Shantung, which
+at bottom was the problem of Japan's international status. Before
+attempting to analyze them, however, it may not be amiss to remark that
+during the French press campaign conducted in the years 1915-16, with
+the object of determining the Tokio Cabinet to take part in the military
+operations in Europe, the question of motive was discussed with a degree
+of tactlessness which it is difficult to account for. It was affirmed,
+for example, that the Mikado's people would be overjoyed if the Allied
+governments vouchsafed them the honor of participating in the great
+civilizing crusade against the Central Empires. That was proclaimed to
+be such an enviable privilege that to pay for it no sacrifice of men or
+money would be exorbitant. Again, the degree to which Germany is a
+menace to Japan was another of the texts on which Entente publicists
+relied to scare Nippon into drastic action, as though she needed to be
+told by Europeans where her vital interests lay, from what quarters they
+were jeopardized, and how they might be safeguarded most successfully.
+So much for the question of tact and form. Japan has never accepted the
+doctrine of altruism in politics which her Western allies have so
+zealously preached. Until means have been devised and adopted for
+substituting moral for military force in the relations of state with
+state, the only reconstruction of the world in which the Japanese can
+believe is that which is based upon treaties and the pledged word. That
+is the principle which underlies the general policy and the present
+strivings of our Far Eastern ally.
+
+One of the characteristic traits of all Nippon's dealings with her
+neighbors is loyalty and trustworthiness. Her intercourse with Russia
+before and after the Manchurian campaign offers a shining example of all
+the qualities which one would postulate in a true-hearted neighbor and a
+stanch and chivalrous ally. I had an opportunity of watching the
+development of the relations between the two governments for many years
+before they quarreled, and subsequently down to 1914, and I can state
+that the praise lavished by the Tsar's Ministers on their Japanese
+colleagues was well deserved. And for that reason it may be taken as an
+axiom that whatever developments the present situation may bring forth,
+the Empire of Nippon will carry out all its engagements with scrupulous
+exactitude, in the spirit as well as the letter.
+
+To be quite frank, then, the Japanese are what we should term realists.
+Consequently their foreign policy is inspired by the maxims which
+actuated all nations down to the year 1914, and still move nearly all of
+them to-day. In fact, the only Powers that have fully and
+authoritatively repudiated them as yet are Bolshevist Russia, and to a
+large extent the United States. Holding thus to the old dispensation,
+Japan entered the war in response to a definite demand made by the
+British government. The day before Britain declared war against Germany
+the British Ambassador at Tokio officially inquired whether his
+government could count upon the active co-operation of the Mikado's
+forces in the campaign about to begin. On August 4th Baron Kato, having
+in the meanwhile consulted his colleagues, answered in the affirmative.
+Three days later another communication reached Tokio from London,
+requesting the _immediate_ co-operation of Japan, and on the following
+day it was promised. The motive for this haste was credibly asserted to
+be Britain's apprehension lest Germany should transfer Kiaochow to
+China, and reserve to herself, in virtue of Article V of the Convention
+of 1898, the right of securing after the war "a more suitable territory"
+in the Middle Empire or Republic. Thereupon they began operations which
+were at first restricted to the China seas, but were afterward extended
+to the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and finally to the Mediterranean. The
+only task that fell to their lot on land was that of capturing Kiaochow.
+But whatever they set their hands to they carried out thoroughly, and
+to the complete satisfaction of their European allies.
+
+For many years the people of Nippon have been wending slowly, but with
+tireless perseverance and unerring instinct, toward their far-off goal,
+which to the unbiased historian will seem not merely legitimate but
+praiseworthy. Their intercourse with Russia was the story of one long
+laborious endeavor to found a common concern which should enable Japan
+to make headway on her mission. Russia was just the kind of partner
+whose co-operation was especially welcome, seeing that it could be had
+without the hitches and set-backs attached to that of most other Great
+Powers. The Russians were never really intolerant in racial matters, nor
+dangerous in commercial rivalry. They intermarried freely with all the
+so-called inferior races and tribes in the Tsardom, and put all on an
+equal footing before the law. Twenty-three years ago I paid a visit to
+my friend General Tomitch, the military governor of Kars, and I found
+myself sitting at his table beside the Prefect of the city, who was a
+Mohammedan. The individual Russian is generally free from racial
+prejudices; he has no sense of the "yellow peril," and no objection to
+receive the Japanese as a comrade, a colleague, or a son-in-law.
+
+And the advances made by Ito and others would have been reciprocated by
+Witte and Lamsdorff were it not that the Tsar, interested in
+Bezobrazoff's Yalu venture, subordinated his policy to those vested
+interests, and compelled Japan to fight. The master-idea of the policy
+of Ito, with whom I had two interesting conversations on the subject,
+was to strike up a close friendship with the Tsardom, based on community
+of durable interests, and to bespeak Russia's help for the hour of storm
+and stress which one day might strike. The Tsar's government was
+inspired by analogous motives. Before the war was terminated I repaired
+to London on behalf of Russia, in order to propose to the Japanese
+government, in addition to the treaty of peace which was about to be
+discussed at Portsmouth, an offensive and defensive alliance, and to ask
+that Prince Ito be sent as first plenipotentiary, invested with full
+powers to conclude such a treaty.
+
+M. Izvolsky's policy toward Japan, frank and statesman-like, had an
+offensive and a defensive alliance for its intended culmination, and the
+treaties and conventions which he actually concluded with Viscount
+Motono, in drafting which I played a modest part, amounted almost to
+this. The Tsar's opposition to the concessions which represented
+Russia's share of the compromise was a tremendous obstacle, which only
+the threat of the Minister's resignation finally overcame. And
+Izvolsky's energy and insistence hastened the conclusion of a treaty
+between them to maintain and respect the _status quo_ in Manchuria, and,
+in case it was menaced, to concert with each other the measures they
+might deem necessary for the maintenance of the _status quo_. And it was
+no longer stipulated, as it had been before, that these measures must
+have a pacific character. They were prepared to go farther. And I may
+now reveal the fact that the treaty had a secret clause, providing for
+the action which Russia afterward took in Mongolia.
+
+These transactions one might term the first act of the international
+drama which is still proceeding. They indicate, if they did not shape,
+the mold in which the bronze of Japan's political program was cast. It
+necessarily differed from other politics, although the maxims underlying
+it were the same. Japan, having become a Great Power after her war with
+China, was slowly developing into a world Power, and hoped to establish
+her claim to that position one day. It was against that day that she
+would fain have acquired a puissant and trustworthy ally, and she left
+nothing undone to deserve the whole-hearted support of Russia. In the
+historic year of 1914, many months before the storm-cloud broke, the War
+Minister Sukhomlinoff transferred nearly all the garrisons from Siberia
+to Europe, because he had had assurances from Japan which warranted him
+in thus denuding the eastern border of troops. During the campaign, when
+the Russian offensive broke down and the armies of the enemy were
+driving the Tsar's troops like sheep before them, Japan hastened to the
+assistance of her neighbor, to whom she threw open her military
+arsenals, and many private establishments as well. And when the
+Petrograd Cabinet was no longer able to meet the financial liabilities
+incurred, the Mikado's advisers devised a generous arrangement on lines
+which brought both countries into still closer and more friendly
+relations.
+
+The most influential daily press organ in the Tsardom, the _Novoye
+Vremya_, wrote: "The war with Germany has supplied our Asiatic neighbor
+with an opportunity of proving the sincerity of her friendly assurances.
+She behaves not merely like a good friend, but like a stanch military
+ally.... In the interests of the future tranquil development of Japan a
+more active participation of the Japanese is requisite in the war of the
+nations against the world-beast of prey. An alliance with Russia for the
+attainment of this object would be an act of immense historic
+significance."[244]
+
+Ever since her entry into the community of progressive nations, Japan's
+main aspiration and striving has been to play a leading and a civilizing
+part in the Far East, and in especial to determine China by advice and
+organization to move into line with herself, adopt Western methods and
+apply them to Far-Eastern aims. And this might well seem a legitimate as
+well as a profitable policy, and a task as noble as most or those to
+which the world is wont to pay a tribute of high praise. It appeared all
+the more licit that the Powers of Europe, with the exception of Russia,
+had denied full political rights to the colored alien. He was placed in
+a category apart--an inferior class member of humanity.
+
+"In Japan, and as yet in Japan alone, do we find the Asiatic welcoming
+European culture, in which, if a tree may fairly be judged by its fruit,
+is to be found the best prospect for the human personal liberty, in due
+combination with restraints of law sufficient to, but not in excess of,
+the requirements of the general welfare. In this particular
+distinctiveness of characteristic, which has thus differentiated the
+receptivity of the Japanese from that of the continental Asiatic, we may
+perhaps see the influence of the insular environment that has permitted
+and favored the evolution of a strong national personality; and in the
+same condition we may not err in finding a promise of power to preserve
+and to propagate, by example and by influence, among those akin to her,
+the new policy which she has adopted, and by which she has profited,
+affording to them the example which she herself has found in the
+development of Eastern peoples."[245]
+
+Now that is exactly what the Japanese aimed at accomplishing. They were
+desirous of contributing to the intellectual and moral advance of the
+Chinese and other backward peoples of the Far East, in the same way as
+France is laudably desirous of aiding the Syrians, or Great Britain the
+Persians. And what is more, Japan undertook to uphold the principle of
+the open door, and generally to respect the legitimate interests of
+European peoples in the Far East.
+
+But the white races had economic designs of their own on China, and one
+of the preliminary conditions of their execution was that Japan's
+aspirations should be foiled. Witte opened the campaign by inaugurating
+the process of peaceful penetration, but his remarkable efforts were
+neutralized and defeated by his own sovereign. The Japanese, after the
+Manchurian campaign, which they had done everything possible to avoid,
+contrived wholly to eliminate Russian aggression from the Far East. The
+feat was arduous and the masterly way in which it was tackled and
+achieved sheds a luster on Japanese statesmanship as personified by
+Viscount Motono. The Tsardom, in lieu of a potential enemy, was
+transformed into a stanch and powerful friend and ally, on whom Nippon
+could, as she believed, rely against future aggressors. Russia came to
+stand toward her in the same political relationship as toward France.
+Japanese statesmen took the alliance with the Tsardom as a solid and
+durable postulate of their foreign policy.
+
+All at once the Tsardom fell to pieces like a house of cards, and the
+fragments that emerged from the ruins possessed neither the will nor the
+power to stand by their Far Eastern neighbors. The fruits of twelve
+years' statesmanship and heavy sacrifices were swept away by the Russian
+revolution, and Japan's diplomatic position was therefore worse beyond
+compare than that of the French Republic in July, 1917, because the
+latter was forthwith sustained by Great Britain and the United States,
+with such abundance of military and economic resources as made up in the
+long run for that of Russia. Japan, on the other hand, has as yet no
+substitute for her prostrate ally. She is still alone among Powers some
+of whom decline to recognize her equality, while others are ready to
+thwart her policy and disable her for the coming race.
+
+The Japanese are firm believers in the law of causality. Where they
+desire to reap, there they first sow. They invariably strive to deal
+with a situation while there is still time to modify it, and they take
+pains to render the means adequate to the end. Unlike the peoples of
+western Europe and the United States, the Japanese show a profound
+respect for the principles of authority and inequality, and reserve the
+higher functions in the community for men of the greatest ability and
+attainments. It is a fact, however, that individual liberty has made
+perceptible progress in the population, and is still growing, owing to
+the increase of economic well-being and the spread of general and
+technical education. But although socialism is likewise spreading fast,
+I feel inclined to think that in Japan a high grade of instruction and
+of social development on latter-day lines will be found compatible with
+that extraordinary cohesiveness to which the race owes the position
+which it occupies among the communities of the world. The soul of the
+individual Japanese may be said to float in an atmosphere of
+collectivity, which, while leaving his intellect intact, sways his
+sentiments and modifies his character by rendering him impressible to
+motives of an order which has the weal of the race for its object.
+
+Japan has borrowed what seemed to her leaders to be the best of
+everything in foreign countries. They analyzed the military, political,
+and industrial successes of their friends and enemies, satisfactorily
+explained and duly fructified them. They use the school as the seed-plot
+of the state, and inculcate conceptions there which the entire community
+endeavors later on to embody in acts and institutions. And what the
+elementary school has begun, the intermediate, the technical, and the
+high schools develop and perfect, aided by the press, which is
+encouraged by the state.
+
+Japan's ideal cannot be offhandedly condemned as immoral, pernicious, or
+illegitimate. Its partizans pertinently invoke every principle which
+their Allies applied to their own aims and strivings. And men of deeper
+insight than those who preside over the fortunes of the Entente to-day
+recognize that Europeans of high principles and discerning minds, who
+perceive the central issues, would, were they in the position of the
+Japanese statesmen, likewise bend their energies to the achievement of
+the same aims.
+
+The Japanese argue their case somewhat as follows:
+
+"We are determined to help China to put herself in line with ourselves,
+and to keep her from falling into anarchy. And no one can honestly deny
+our qualifications. We and they have very much in common, and we
+understand them as no Anglo-Saxon or other foreign people can. On the
+one hand our own past experience resembles that of the Middle Kingdom,
+and on the other our method of adapting ourselves to the new
+international conditions challenged and received the ungrudging
+admiration of a world disposed to be critical. The Peking treaties of
+May, 1915, between China and Japan, and the pristine drafts of them
+which were modified before signature, enable the outsider to form a
+fairly accurate opinion of Japan's economic and political program, which
+amounts to the application of a Far Eastern Monroe Doctrine.
+
+"What we seek to obtain in the Far East is what the Western Powers have
+secured throughout the remainder of the globe: the right to contribute
+to the moral and intellectual progress of our backward neighbors, and to
+profit by our exertions. China needs the help which we are admittedly
+able to bestow. To our mission no cogent objection has ever been
+offered. No Cabinet in Tokio has ever looked upon the Middle Realm as a
+possible colony for the Japanese. The notion is preposterous, seeing
+that China is already over-populated. What Japan sorely needs are
+sources whence to draw coal and iron for industrial enterprise. She also
+needs cotton and leather."
+
+In truth, the ever-ready command of these raw materials at their
+sources, which must be neither remote nor subject to potential enemies,
+is indispensable to the success of Japan's development. But for the
+moment the English-speaking nations have a veto upon them, in virtue of
+possession, and the embargo put by the United States government upon the
+export of steel during the war caused a profound emotion in Nippon. For
+the shipbuilding works there had increased in number from nine before
+the war to twelve in 1917, and to twenty-eight at the beginning of 1918,
+with one hundred slips capable of producing six hundred thousand tons of
+net register. The effect of that embargo was to shut down between 70 and
+80 per cent. of the shipbuilding works of the country, and to menace
+with extinction an industry which was bringing in immense profits.
+
+It was with these antecedents and aims that Japan appeared before the
+Conference in Paris and asked, not for something which she lacked
+before, but merely for the confirmation of what she already possessed by
+treaty. It must be admitted that she had damaged her cause by the manner
+in which that treaty had been obtained. To say that she had intimidated
+the Chinese, instead of coaxing them or bargaining with them, would be a
+truism. The fall of Tsingtao gave her a favorable opportunity, and she
+used and misused it unjustifiably. The demands in themselves were open
+to discussion and, if one weighs all the circumstances, would not
+deserve a classification different from some of those--the protection of
+minorities or the transit proviso, for example--imposed by the greater
+on the lesser nations at the Conference. But the mode in which they were
+pressed irritated the susceptible Chinese and belied the professions
+made by the Mikado's Ministers. The secrecy, too, with which the Tokio
+Cabinet endeavored to surround them warranted the worst construction.
+Yuan Shi Kai[246] regarded the procedure as a deadly insult to himself
+and his country. And the circumstance that the Japanese government
+failed either to foresee or to avoid this amazing psychological blunder
+lent color to the objections of those who questioned Japan's
+qualifications for the mission she had set herself. The wound inflicted
+on China by that exhibition of insolence will not soon heal. How it
+reacted may be inferred from the strenuous and well-calculated
+opposition of the Chinese delegation at the Conference.
+
+Nor was that all. In the summer of 1916 a free fight occurred between
+Chinese and Japanese soldiers in Cheng-cha-tun, the rights and wrongs of
+which were, as is usual in such cases, obscure. But the Okuma Cabinet,
+assuming that the Chinese were to blame, pounced upon the incident and
+made it the base of fresh demands to China,[247] two of which were
+manifestly excessive. That China would be better off than she is or is
+otherwise likely to become under Japanese guidance is in the highest
+degree probable. But in order that that guidance should be effective it
+must be accepted, and this can only be the consequence of such a policy
+of cordiality, patience, and magnanimity as was outlined by my friend,
+the late Viscount Motono.[248]
+
+At the Conference the policy of the Japanese delegates was clear-cut and
+coherent. It may be summarized as follows: the Japanese delegation
+decided to give its entire support to the Allies in all matters
+concerning the future relations of Germany and Russia, western Europe,
+the Balkans, the African colonies, as well as financial indemnities and
+reparations. The fate of the Samoan Archipelago must be determined in
+accord with Britain and the United States. New Guinea should be allotted
+to Australia. As the Marshall, Caroline, and Ladrone Islands, although
+of no intrinsic value, would constitute a danger in Germany's hands,
+they should be taken over by Japan. Tsingtao and the port of Kiaochow
+should belong to Japan, as well as the Tainan railway. Japan would
+co-operate with the Allies in maintaining order in Siberia, but no Power
+should arrogate to itself a preponderant voice in the matter of
+obtaining concessions or other interests there. Lastly, the principle of
+the open door was to be upheld in China, Japan being admittedly the
+Power which is the most interested in the establishment and maintenance
+of peace in the Far East.
+
+At the Conference, when the Kiaochow dispute came up for discussion, the
+Japanese attitude, according to their Anglo-Saxon and French colleagues,
+was calm and dignified, their language courteous, their arguments were
+put with studied moderation, and their resolve to have their treaty
+rights recognized was inflexible. Their case was simple enough, and
+under the old ordering unanswerable. The only question was whether it
+would be invalidated by the new dispensation. But as the United States
+had obtained recognition for its Monroe Doctrine, Britain for the
+supremacy of the sea, and France for the occupation of the Saar Valley
+and the suspension of the right of self-determination in the case of
+Austria, it was obvious that Japan had abundant and cogent arguments for
+her demands, which were that the Chinese territory once held by Germany,
+and since wrested from that Power by Japan, be formally retroceded to
+Japan, whose claim to it rested upon the right of conquest and also
+upon the faith of treaties which she had concluded with China. At the
+same time she expressly and spontaneously disclaimed the intention of
+keeping that territory for herself. Baron Makino said at the Peace
+Table:
+
+"The acquisition of territory belonging to one nation which it is the
+intention of the country acquiring it to exploit to its sole advantage
+is not conducive to amity or good-will." Japan, although by the fortune
+of war Germany's heir to Kiaochow, did not purpose retaining it for the
+remaining term of the lease; she had, in fact, already promised to
+restore it to China. She maintained, however, that the conditions of
+retrocession should form the subject of a general settlement between
+Tokio and Peking.
+
+The Chinese delegation, which worked vigorously and indefatigably and
+won over a considerable number of backers, argued that Kiaochow had
+ceased to belong to Germany on the day when China declared war on that
+state, inasmuch as all their treaties, including the lease of Kiaochow,
+were abrogated by that declaration, and the ownership of every rood of
+Chinese territory held by Germany reverted in law to China, and should
+therefore be handed over to her, and not to Japan. To this plea Baron
+Makino returned the answer that with the surrender of Tsingtao to Japan
+in 1914[249] the whole imperial German protectorates of Shantung had
+passed to that Power, China being still a neutral. Consequently the
+entry of China into the war in 1917 could not affect the status of the
+province which already belonged to Nippon by right of conquest. As a
+matter of alleged fact, this capture of the protectorates by the
+Japanese had been specially desired by the British government, in order
+to prevent Germany from ceding it to China. If that move meant
+anything, therefore, it meant that neither China nor Germany had or
+could have any hold on the territory once it was captured by Japan.
+Further, this conquest was effected at the cost of vast sums of money
+and two thousand Japanese lives.
+
+Nor was that all. In the year 1915[250] China signed an agreement with
+Japan, undertaking "to recognize all matters that may be agreed upon
+between the Japanese government and the German government respecting the
+disposition of all the rights, interests, and concessions which, in
+virtue of treaties or otherwise, Germany possesses _vis-a-vis_ China, in
+relation to the province of Shantung." This treaty, the Chinese
+delegates answered, was extorted by force. Japan, having vainly sought
+to obtain it by negotiations that lasted nearly four months, finally
+presented an ultimatum,[251] giving China forty-eight hours in which to
+accept it. She had no alternative. But at least she made it known to the
+world that she was being coerced. It was on the day on which that
+document was signed that the Japanese representative in Peking sent a
+spontaneous declaration to the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs,
+promising to return the leased territory to China on condition that all
+Kiaochow be opened as a commercial port, that a Japanese settlement be
+established, and also an international settlement, if the Powers desired
+it, and that an arrangement be made beforehand between the Chinese and
+Japanese governments with regard to "the disposal of German public
+establishments and populations, and with regard to other conditions and
+procedures."
+
+The Japanese further invoked another and later agreement, which was,
+they alleged, signed by the Chinese without demur.[252] This accord,
+coming after the entry of China into the war, was tantamount to the
+renunciation of any rights which China might have believed she possessed
+as a corollary of her belligerency. It also disposed, the Japanese
+argued, of her contention that the territory in question is
+indispensable and vital to her--a contention which Japan met with the
+promise to deliver it up--and which was invalidated by China's refusal
+to fight for it in the year 1914. This latter argument was controverted
+by the Chinese assertion that they were ready and willing to declare war
+against Germany at the outset, but that their co-operation was refused
+by the Entente, and subsequently by Japan. This allegation is credible,
+if we remember the eagerness exhibited by the British government that
+Japan should lose no time in co-operating with her allies, the
+representations made by the British Ambassador to Baron Kato on the
+subject,[253] and the alleged motive to prevent the retrocession of
+Shantung to China by the German government.
+
+The arguments of China and Japan were summarily put in the following
+questions by a delegate of each country: "Yes or no, does Kiaochow,
+whose population is exclusively Chinese, form an integral part of the
+Chinese state? Yes or no, was Kiaochow brutally occupied by the Kaiser
+in the teeth of right and justice and to the detriment of the peace of
+the Far East, and it may be of the world? Yes or no, did Japan enter the
+war against the aggressive imperialism of the German Empire, and for the
+purpose of arranging a lasting peace in the Far East? Yes or no, was
+Kiaochow captured by the English and Japanese troops in 1914 with the
+sole object of destroying a dangerous naval base? Yes or no, was China's
+co-operation against Germany, which was advocated and offered by
+President Yuan Shi Kai in August, 1914, refused at the instigation of
+Japan?"[254]
+
+The Japanese catechism ran thus: "Yes or no, was Kiaochow a German
+possession in the year 1914? Yes or no, was the world, including the
+United States, a consenting party to the occupation of that province by
+the Germans? Why did China, who to-day insists that that port is
+indispensable to her, cede it to Germany? Why in 1914 did she make no
+effort to recover it, but leave this task to the Japanese army? Further,
+who can maintain that juridically the last war abolished _ipso facto_
+all the cessions of territory previously effected? Turkey formerly ceded
+Cyprus to Great Britain. Will it be argued that this cession is
+abrogated and that Cyprus must return to Turkey directly and
+unconditionally? The Conference announced repeatedly that it took its
+stand on justice and the welfare of the peoples. It is in the name of
+the welfare of the peoples, as well as in the name of justice, that we
+assert our right to take over Kiaochow. The harvest to him whose hands
+soweth the seed."[255]
+
+If we add to all these conflicting data the circumstance that Great
+Britain, France, and Russia had undertaken[256] to support Japan's
+demands at the Conference, and that Italy had promised to raise no
+objection, we shall have a tolerable notion of the various factors of
+the Chino-Japanese dispute, and of its bearings on the Peace Treaty and
+on the principles of the Covenant. It was one of the many illustrations
+of the incompatibility of the Treaty and the Covenant, the respective
+scopes of which were radically and irreconcilably different. The
+Supreme Council had to adjudicate upon the matter from the point of view
+either of the Treaty or of the Covenant; as part of a vulgar bargain of
+the old, unregenerate days, or as an example of the self-renunciation of
+the new ethical system. The majority of the Council was pledged to the
+former way of contemplating it, and, having already promulgated a number
+of decrees running counter to the Covenant doctrine in favor of their
+own peoples, could not logically nor politically make an exception to
+the detriment of Japan.
+
+What actually happened at the Peace Table is still a secret, and
+President Wilson, who knows its nature, holds that it is in the best
+interests of humanity that it should so remain! The little that has as
+yet been disclosed comes mainly from State-Secretary Lansing's answers
+to the questions put by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
+America's second delegate, in answer to the questions with which he was
+there plied, affirmed that "President Wilson alone approved the Shantung
+decision, that the other members of the American delegation made no
+protest against it, and that President Wilson alone knows whether Japan
+has guaranteed to return Shantung to China."[257] Another eminent
+American, who claims to have been present when President Wilson's act
+was officially explained to the Chinese delegates, states that the
+President, disclosing to them his motives, pleaded that political
+exigencies, the menace that Japan would abandon the Conference, and the
+rumor that England herself might withdraw, had constrained him to accept
+the Shantung settlement in order to save the League.[258] Rumors appear
+to have played an undue part in the Conference, influencing the judgment
+or the decisions of the Supreme Council. The reader will remember that
+it was a rumor to the effect that the Italian government had already
+published a decree annexing Fiume that is alleged to have precipitated
+the quarrel between Mr. Wilson and the first Italian delegation. It is
+worth noting that the alleged menace that Japan would quit the
+Conference if her demands were rejected was not regarded by Secretary
+Lansing as serious. "Could Japan's signature to the League have been
+obtained without the Shantung decision?" he was asked. "I think so," he
+answered.
+
+The decision caused tremendous excitement among the Chinese and their
+numerous friends. At first they professed skepticism and maintained that
+there must be some misunderstanding, and finally they protested and
+refused to sign the Treaty. One of the American journals published in
+Paris wrote: "Shantung was at least a moral explosion. It blew down the
+front of the temple, and now everybody can see that behind the front
+there was a very busy market. The morals were the morals of a horse
+trade. If the muezzin were loud and constant in his calls to prayer, it
+probably was to drown the sound of the dickering in the market. There is
+no longer any obligation upon this nation to accept the Covenant as a
+moral document. It is not."[259]
+
+All that may be perfectly true, but it sounds odd that the discovery
+should not have been made until Japan's claim was admitted formally to
+take over Shantung, after she had solemnly promised to restore it to
+China. The Covenant was certainly transgressed long before this, and
+much more flagrantly than by President Wilson's indorsement of Japan's
+demand for the formal retrocession of Shantung. But by those infractions
+nobody seemed scandalized. _Quod licet Jovi non licet bovi._ Debts of
+gratitude had to be paid at the expense of the Covenant, and people
+closed their eyes or their lips. It was not until the Japanese asked for
+something which all her European allies considered to be her right that
+an outcry was raised and moral principles were invoked.
+
+The Japanese press was nowise jubilant over the finding of the Supreme
+Council. The journals of all parties argued that their country was
+receiving no more than had already been guaranteed to it by China, and
+ratified by the Allies before the Peace Conference met, and to have
+obtained what was already hers by rights of conquest and of treaties was
+anything but a triumph. What Japan desired was to have herself
+recognized practically, not merely in theory, as the nation which is the
+most nearly interested in China, and therefore deserving of a special
+status there. In other words, she aimed at the proclamation of something
+in the nature of a Far Eastern doctrine analogous to that of Monroe. As
+priority of interest had been conceded to her by the Ishii-Lansing
+Agreement with the United States, it was in this sense that her press
+was fain to construe the clause respecting non-interference with
+"regional understandings."
+
+That policy is open. The principles underlying it, always tenable, were
+never more so than since the Peace Conference set the Great Powers to
+direct the lesser states. Moreover, Japan, it is argued, knows by
+experience that China has always been a temptation to the Western
+peoples. They sent expeditions to fight her and divided her territory
+into zones of influence, although China was never guilty of an
+aggressive attitude toward them, as she was toward Japan. They were
+actuated by land greed and all that that implies, and if China were
+abandoned to her own resources to-morrow she would surely fall a prey to
+her Western protectors. In this connection they point to an incident
+which took place during the Conference, when Signor Tittoni demanded
+that Italy should receive the Austrian concession in Tientsin, which
+adjoins the Italian concession. But Viscount Chinda protested and the
+demand was ruled out. To sum up, the broad maxim underlying Japan's
+policy as defined by her own representatives is that in the resettlement
+of the world the principle adopted, whether the old or the new, shall be
+applied fairly and impartially at least to all the Great Powers.
+
+Every world conflict has marked the close of one epoch and the opening
+of another. Into the melting-pot on the fire kindled by the war many
+momentous problems have been flung, any one of which would have sufficed
+to bring about a new political, economic, and social constellation.
+Japan's advance along the road of progress is one of these far-ranging
+innovations. She became a Great Power in the wars against China and
+Russia, and is qualifying for the part of a World Power to-day. And her
+statesmen affirm that in order to achieve her purpose she will recoil
+from no sacrifice except those of honor and of truth.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[244] _Novoye Vremya_, June 13-26, 1915.
+
+[245] Cf. _The Problem of Asia_ (Capt. A.T. Mahan), pp. 150-151.
+
+[246] The late President of the Chinese Republic.
+
+[247] These demands were (1) an apology from the Chinese authorities;
+(2) an indemnity for the killed and wounded; (3) the policing of certain
+districts of Manchuria by the Japanese; and (4) the employment of
+Japanese officers to train Chinese troops in Manchuria.
+
+[248] Minister of Foreign Affairs. He repudiated his predecessor's
+policy.
+
+[249] November 8th.
+
+[250] May 25, 1915.
+
+[251] On May 6, 1915.
+
+[252] On September 24, 1918.
+
+[253] On August 7, 1914.
+
+[254] Cf. _Le Matin_, April 25, 1919.
+
+[255] _Le Matin_, April 23, 1919.
+
+[256] "His Majesty's Government accede with pleasure to the requests of
+the Japanese Government for assurances that they will support Japan's
+claims in regard to the disposal of Germany's rights in Shantung, and
+possessions in islands north of the Equator, on the occasion of a Peace
+Conference, it being understood that the Japanese Government will, in
+the event of a peace settlement, treat in the same spirit Great
+Britain's claims to German islands south of the Equator." (Signed)
+Conyngham Greene, British Ambassador, Tokio, February 16, 1917. France
+gave a similar assurance in writing on March 1, 1917, and the Russian
+government had made a like declaration on February 20, 1917.
+
+[257] As a matter of fact, the entire world knew and knows that she had
+guaranteed the retrocession. Baron Makino declared it at the Conference.
+Cf. _The_ (London) _Times_, February 13, 1919; also on May 5, 1919; and
+Viscount Uchida confirmed it on May 17, 1919. It had also been stated in
+the Japanese ultimatum to Germany, August 15, 1914, and repeated by
+Viscount Uchida at the beginning of August, 1919.
+
+[258] Mr. Thomas Millard, some of whose letters were published by _The
+New York Times_. Cf. _Le Temps_, July 29, 1919.
+
+[259] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 20, 1919.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+ATTITUDE TOWARD RUSSIA
+
+
+In their dealings with Russia the principal plenipotentiaries
+consistently displayed the qualities and employed the standards, maxims,
+and methods which had stood them in good stead as parliamentary
+politicians. The betterment of the world was an idea which took a
+separate position in their minds, quite apart from the other political
+ideas with which they usually operated. Overflowing with verbal
+altruism, they first made sure of the political and economic interests
+of their own countries, safeguarding or extending these sources of
+power, after which they proceeded to try their novel experiment on
+communities which they could coerce into obedience. Hence the aversion
+and opposition which they encountered among all the nations which had to
+submit to the yoke, and more especially among the Russians.
+
+Russia's opposition, widespread and deep-rooted, is natural, and history
+will probably add that it was justified. It starts from the assumption,
+which there is no gainsaying, that the Conference was convoked to make
+peace between the belligerents and that whatever territorial changes it
+might introduce must be restricted to the countries of the defeated
+peoples. From all "disannexations" not only the Allies' territories, but
+those of neutrals, were to be exempted. Repudiate this principle and the
+demands of Ireland, Egypt, India to the benefits of self-determination
+became unanswerable. Belgium's claim to Dutch Limburg and other
+territorial oddments must likewise be allowed. Indeed, the plea actually
+put forward against these was that the Conference was incompetent to
+touch any territory actually possessed by either neutral or Allied
+states. Ireland, Egypt, and Dutch Limburg Were all domestic matters with
+which the Conference had no concern.
+
+Despite this fundamental principle Russia, the whilom Ally, without
+whose superhuman efforts and heroic sacrifices her partners would have
+been pulverized, was tacitly relegated to the category of hostile and
+defeated peoples, and many of her provinces lopped off arbitrarily and
+without appeal. None of her representatives was convoked or consulted on
+the subject, although all of them, Bolshevist and anti-Bolshevist, were
+at one in their resistance to foreign dictation.
+
+The Conference repeatedly disclaimed any intention of meddling in the
+internal affairs of any other state, and the Irish, the Egyptian, and
+several other analogous problems were for the purposes of the Conference
+included in this category. On what intelligible grounds, then, were the
+Finnish, the Lettish, the Esthonian, the Georgian, the Ukrainian
+problems excluded from it? One cannot conceive a more flagrant violation
+of the sovereignty of a state than the severance and disposal of its
+territorial possessions against its will. It is a frankly hostile act,
+and as such was rightly limited by the Conference to enemy countries.
+Why, then, was it extended to the ex-Ally? Is it not clear that if
+reconstituted Russia should regard the Allied states as enemies and
+choose the potential enemies of these as its friends, it will be
+legitimately applying the principles laid down by the Allies themselves?
+No expert in international law and no person of average common sense
+will seriously maintain that any of the decisions reached in Paris are
+binding on the Russia of the future. No problem which concerns two
+equal parties can be rightfully decided by only one of them. The
+Conference which declared itself incompetent to impose on Holland the
+cession to Belgium even of a small strip of territory on one of the
+banks of the Belgian river Scheldt cannot be deemed authorized to sign
+away vast provinces that belonged to Russia. Here the plea of the
+self-determination of peoples possesses just as much or as little
+cogency as in the case of Ireland and Egypt.
+
+President Wilson and Mr. Lloyd George had inaugurated their East
+European policy by publicly proclaiming that Russia was the key to the
+world situation, and that the peace would be no peace so long as her
+hundred and fifty million inhabitants were left floundering in chaotic
+confusion, under the upas shade of Bolshevism. They had also held out
+hopes to their great ex-ally of efficient help and practical counsel.
+And there ended what may be termed the constructive side of their
+conceptions.
+
+It was followed by no coherent action. Discourses, promises, maneuvers,
+and counter-maneuvers were continuous and bewildering, but of systematic
+policy there was none. Statesmanship in the higher sense of the word was
+absent from every decision the delegates took and from every suggestion
+they proffered. Nor was it only by omission that they sinned. Their
+invincible turn for circuitous methods, to which severer critics give a
+less sonorous name, was manifested _ad nauseam_. They worked out cunning
+little schemes which it was hard to distinguish from intrigues, and
+which, if they had not been foiled in time, would have made matters even
+worse than they are. From the outset the British government was for
+summoning Bolshevist delegates to the Conference. A note to this effect
+was sent by the London Foreign Office to the Allied governments about a
+fortnight before the delegates began their work of making peace. But
+the suggestion was withdrawn at the instance of the French, who doubted
+whether the services of systematic lawbreakers would materially conduce
+to the establishment of a new society of law-abiding states. Soon
+afterward another scheme cropped up, this time for the appointment of an
+Inter-Allied committee to watch over Russia's destinies and serve as a
+sort of board of Providence. The representatives of the anti-Bolshevist
+governments resented this notion bitterly. They remarked that they could
+not be fairly asked to respect decisions imposed on them exactly as
+though they were vanquished enemies like the Germans. The British and
+American delegates were swayed in their views mainly by the assumptions
+that all central Russia was in the power of Lenin; that his army was
+well disciplined and powerful; that he might contrive to hold the reins
+of government and maintain anarchism indefinitely, and that the
+so-called constructive elements were inclined toward reaction.
+
+In other words, the delegates accepted two sets of premises, from which
+they drew two wholly different sets of conclusions. Now they felt
+impelled to act on the one, now on the other, but they could never make
+up their minds to carry out either. They agreed that Bolshevism is a
+potent solvent of society, fraught with peril to all organized
+communities, yet they could not resolve to use joint action to extirpate
+it.[260] They recognized that so long as it lasted there was no hope of
+establishing a community of nations, but they discarded military
+intervention on grounds of their own internal policy, and because it ran
+counter to the principle of self-determination. Over against that
+principle, however, one had to set the circumstance that they were
+already intermeddling in Russian affairs in Archangel, Murmansk,
+Odessa, and elsewhere, and that they ended by creating a new state and
+government in northwestern Russia, against which Kolchak and Denikin
+vehemently protested.
+
+In mitigation of judgment it is only fair to take into account the
+tremendous difficulties that faced them; their unfamiliarity with the
+Russian problem; the want of a touchstone by which to test the
+overwhelming mass of conflicting information which poured in upon them;
+their constitutional lack of moral courage, and the circumstance that
+they were striving to reconcile contradictories. Without chart or
+compass they drifted into strange and sterile courses, beginning with
+the Prinkipo incident and ending with the written examination to which
+they naively subjected Kolchak in order to legalize international
+relations, which could not truly be described as either war or peace.
+Neither the causes of Bolshevism in its morbid manifestations nor the
+unformulated ideas underlying whatever positive aspect it may be
+supposed to possess, nor the conditions governing its slow but
+perceptible evolution, were so much as glanced at, much less studied, by
+the statesmen who blithely set about dealing with it now by military
+force, now by economic pressure, and fitfully by tentative forbearance
+and hints to its leaders of forthcoming recognition.
+
+One cannot thus play fast and loose with the destinies of a community
+composed of one hundred and fifty million people whose members are but
+slackly linked together by a few tenuous social bonds, without
+forfeiting the right to offer them real guidance. And a blind man is a
+poor guide to those who can see. Alone the Americans were equipped with
+carefully tabulated statistics and huge masses of facts which they
+poured out as lavishly as coal-heavers hurl the contents of their sacks
+into the cellar. But they put them to no practical use. Losing
+themselves in a labyrinth of details, they failed to get a
+comprehensive view of the whole. The other delegations lacked both data
+and general ideas. And all the Allies were destitute of a powerful army
+in the East, and therefore of the means of asserting the authority which
+they assumed.
+
+They one and all dealt in vague theories and deceptive analogies, paying
+little heed to the ever-shifting necessities of time, place, and
+peoples, and indeed to the only conditions under which any new maxims
+could be fruitfully applied. And even such rules as they laid down were
+restricted and modified in accordance with their own countries'
+interests or their unavowed aims, without specific warrant or
+explanation. No account was taken of the historical needs or aspirations
+of the people for whom they were legislating, as though all nations were
+of the same age, capable of the same degree of culture, and impressible
+to identical motives. It never seemed to have crossed their minds that
+races and peoples, like individuals, have a soul, or that what is meat
+to one may be poison to another.
+
+One of the most Ententophil and moderate press organs in France put the
+matter forcibly and plainly as follows: "The governments of Washington
+and of London are aware that we are immutably attached to the alliance
+with them. But we owe them the truth. Far too often they make a bad
+choice of the agents whose business it is to keep them informed, and
+they affect too much disdain for friendly suggestions which emanate from
+any other source. American agents, in particular, civil as well as
+military, explore Europe much as their forebears 'prospected' the Far
+West, and they look upon the most ancient nations of Europe as Iroquois,
+Comanches, or Aztecs. They are astounded at not finding everything on
+the old Continent as in New York or Chicago, and they set to work to
+reform Europe according to the rules in force in Oklahoma or Colorado.
+Now we venture respectfully to point out to them that methods differ
+with countries. In the United States the Colonists were wont to set fire
+to the forests in order to clear and fertilize the land. Certain
+American agents recommend the employment in Europe of an analogous
+procedure in political matters. They rejoice to behold the Russian and
+Hungarian forests burst into flame. In Lenin, Trotzky, Bela Kuhn, they
+appreciate useful pioneers of the new civilization. We crave their
+permission to view these things from another side. In old Europe one
+cannot set fire to the forests without at the same time burning villages
+and cities."[261]
+
+Before and during the armistice I was in almost constant touch with all
+Russian parties within the country and without, and received detailed
+accounts of the changing conditions of the people, which, although
+conflicting in many details, enabled me to form a tolerably correct
+picture of the trend of things and to forecast what was coming.
+
+Among other communications I received proposals from Moscow with the
+request that I should present them to one of the British delegates, who
+was supposed to be then taking an active interest, or at any rate
+playing a prominent part, in the reconstruction of Russia, less for her
+own sake than for that of the general peace. But as it chanced, the
+eminent statesman lacked the leisure to take cognizance of the proposal,
+the object of which was to hit upon such a _modus vivendi_ with Russia
+as would enable her united peoples to enter upon a normal course of
+national existence without further delay. Incidentally it would have put
+an end to certain conversations then going forward with a view to a
+friendly understanding between Russia and Germany. It would also, I had
+reason to believe, have divided the speculative Bolshevist group from
+the extreme bloodthirsty faction, produced a complete schism in the
+party, and secured an armistice which would have prevented the Allies'
+subsequent defeats at Murmansk, Archangel, and Odessa. Truth prompts me
+to add that these desirable by-results, although held out as inducements
+and characterized as readily attainable, were guaranteed only by the
+unofficial pledge of men whose good faith was notoriously doubtful.
+
+The document submitted to me is worth summarizing. It contained a lucid,
+many-sided, and plausible account of the Russian situation. Among other
+things, it was a confession of the enormity of the crimes perpetrated,
+on both sides, it said, which it ascribed largely to the brutalizing
+effects of the World War, waged under disastrous conditions unknown in
+other lands. Myriads of practically unarmed men had been exposed during
+the campaign to wholesale slaughter, or left to die in slow agonies
+where they fell, or were killed off by famine and disease, for the
+triumph of a cause which they never understood, but had recently been
+told was that of foreign capitalists. In the demoralization that ensued
+all restraints fell away. The entire social fabric, from groundwork to
+summit, was rent, and society, convulsed with bestial passions, tore its
+own members to pieces. Russia ran amuck among the nations. That was the
+height of war frenzy. Since then, the document went on, passion had
+abated sensibly and a number of well-intentioned men who had been swept
+onward by the current were fast coming to their senses, while others
+were already sane, eager to stem it and anxious for moral sympathy from
+outside.
+
+From out of the revolutionary welter, the _expose_ continued, certain
+hopeful phenomena had emerged symptomatic of a new spirit. Conditions
+conducive to equality existed, although real equality was still a
+somewhat remote ideal. But the tendencies over the whole sphere of
+Russian social, moral, and political life had undergone remarkable and
+invigorating changes in the direction of "reasonable democracy." Many
+wholesome reforms had been attempted, and some were partially realized,
+especially in elementary instruction, which was being spread clumsily,
+no doubt, as yet, but extensively and equally, being absolutely
+gratuitous.[262]
+
+Various other so-called ameliorations were enumerated in this obviously
+partial _expose_, which was followed by an apology for certain prominent
+individuals, who, having been swept off their feet by the revolutionary
+floods, would gladly get back to firm land and help to extricate the
+nation from the Serbonian bog in which it was sinking. They admitted a
+share of the responsibility for having set in motion a vast juggernaut
+chariot, which, however, they had arrested, but hoped to expiate past
+errors by future zeal. At the same time they urged that it was not they
+who had demoralized the army or abolished the death penalty or thrown
+open the sluice-gates to anarchist floods. On the contrary, they claimed
+to have reorganized the national forces, reintroduced the severest
+discipline ever known, appointed experienced officers, and restored
+capital punishment. Nor was it they, but their predecessors, they added,
+who had ruined the transport service of the country and caused the food
+scarcity.
+
+These individuals would, it was said, welcome peace and friendship with
+the Entente, and give particularly favorable consideration to any
+proposal coming from the English-speaking peoples, in whom they were
+disposed to place confidence under certain simple conditions. The need
+for these conditions would not be gainsaid by the British and American
+governments if they recalled to mind the treatment which they had
+theretofore meted out to the Russian people. At that moment no Russian
+of any party regarded or could regard the Allies without grounded
+suspicions, for while repudiating interference in domestic affairs, the
+French, Americans, and British were striving hard to influence every
+party in Russia, and were even believed to harbor designs on certain
+provinces, such as the Caucasus and Siberia. Color was imparted to these
+misgivings by the circumstance that the Allied governments were openly
+countenancing the dismemberment of the country by detaching non-Russian
+and even Russian elements from the main body. It behooved the Allies to
+dissipate this mistrust by issuing a statement of their policy in
+unmistakable terms, repudiating schemes for territorial gains,
+renouncing interference in domestic affairs and complicity in the work
+of disintegrating the country. Russia and her affairs must be left to
+Russians, who would not grudge economic concessions as a reasonable
+_quid pro quo_.
+
+The proposal further insisted that the declaration of policy should be
+at once followed by the despatch of two or three well-known persons
+acquainted with Russia and Russian affairs, and enjoying the confidence
+of European peoples, to inquire into the conditions of the country and
+make an exhaustive report. This mission, it was added, need not be
+official, it might be intrusted to individuals unattached to any
+government.
+
+If a satisfactory answer to this proposal were returned within a
+fortnight, an armistice and suspension of the secret _pourparlers_ with
+Germany would, I was told, have followed. That this compact would have
+led to a settlement of the Russian problems is more than any one,
+however well informed, could vouch for, but I had some grounds for
+believing the move to be genuine and the promises overdone. No
+reasonable motive suggested itself for a vulgar hoax. Moreover, the
+overture disclosed two important facts, one of which was known at the
+time only to the Bolshevist government--namely, that secret
+_pourparlers_ were going forward between Berlin and Moscow for the
+purpose of arriving at a workable understanding between the two
+governments, and that the Allied troops at Odessa, Archangel, and
+Murmansk were in a wretched plight and in direr need of an armistice
+than the Bolsheviki.[263]
+
+I mentioned the matter summarily to one of the delegates, who evinced a
+certain interest in it and promised to discuss it at length later on
+with a view to action. Another to whom I unfolded it later thought it
+would be well if I myself started, together with two or three others,
+for Moscow, Petrograd, Ekaterinodar, and other places, and reported on
+the situation. But weeks went by and nothing was done.[264]
+
+I had interesting talks with some influential delegates on the eve of
+the invitation issued to all _de facto_ governments of Russia to
+forgather at Prinkipo for a symposium. They admitted frankly at the time
+that they had no policy and were groping in the dark, and one of them
+held to the dogma that no light from outside was to be expected. They
+gave me the impression that underlying the impending summons was the
+conviction that Bolshevism, divested of its frenzied manifestations, was
+a rough and ready government calumniously blackened by unscrupulous
+enemies, criminal perhaps in its outbursts, but suited in its feasible
+aims to the peculiar needs of a peculiar people, and therefore as worthy
+of being recognized as any of the others. It was urged that it had
+already lasted a considerable time without provoking a counter-movement
+worthy of the name; that the stories circulating about the horrors of
+which it was guilty were demonstrably exaggerated; that many of the
+bloody atrocities were to be ascribed to crazy individuals on both
+sides; that the witnesses against Lenin were partial and untrustworthy;
+that something should be done without delay to solve a pressing problem,
+and that the Conference could think of nothing better, nor, in fact, of
+any alternative.
+
+To me the principal scheme seemed a sinister mistake, both in form and
+in substance. In form, because it nullified the motives which determined
+the help given to the Greeks, Poles, and Serbs, who were being urged to
+crush the Bolshevists, and left the Allies without good grounds for
+keeping their own troops in Archangel, Odessa, and northern Russia to
+stop the onward march of Bolshevism. Some governments had publicly
+stigmatized the Bolshevists as cutthroats; one had pledged itself never
+to have relations with them, but the Prinkipo invitation bespoke a
+resolve to cancel these judgments and declarations and change their tack
+as an improvement on doing nothing at all. The scheme was also an error
+in substance, because the sole motive that could warrant it was the hope
+of reconciling the warring parties. And that hope was doomed to
+disappointment from the outset.
+
+According to the Prinkipo project, which was attributed to President
+Wilson,[265] an invitation was to be issued to all organized groups
+exercising or attempting to exercise political authority or military
+control in Siberia and northern Russia, to send representatives to
+confer with the delegates of the Allied and Associated Powers on
+Prince's Islands. It is difficult to discuss the expedient seriously.
+One feels like a member of the little people of yore, who are reported
+to have consulted an oracle to ascertain what they must do to keep from
+laughing during certain debates on public affairs. It exposed its
+ingenuous authors to the ridicule of the world and made it clear to the
+dullest apprehension that from that quarter, at any rate, the Russian
+people, as a whole, must expect neither light nor leading, nor
+intelligent appreciation of their terrible plight. There is a sphere of
+influence in the human intellect between the reason and the imagination,
+the boundary line of which is shadowy. That sphere would seem to be the
+source whence some of the most extraordinary notions creep into the
+minds of men who have suddenly come into a position of power which they
+are not qualified to wield--the _nouveaux puissants_ of the world of
+politics.
+
+To the credit of the Supreme Council it never let offended dignity stand
+between itself and the triumph of any of the various causes which it
+successively took in hand. Time and again it had been addressed by the
+Russian Bolshevist government in the most opprobrious terms, and accused
+not merely of clothing political expediency in the garb of spurious
+idealism, but of giving the fore place in political life to sordid
+interests, over which a cloak of humanitarianism had been deftly thrown.
+One official missive from the Bolshevist government to President Wilson
+is worth quoting from:[266] "We should like to learn with more precision
+how you conceive the Society of Nations? When you insist on the
+independence of Belgium, of Serbia, of Poland, you surely mean that the
+masses of the people are everywhere to take over the administration of
+the country. But it is odd that you did not also require the
+emancipation of Ireland, of Egypt, of India, and of the Philippines....
+
+"As we concluded peace with the German Kaiser, for whom you have no more
+consideration than we have for you, so we are minded to make peace with
+you. We propose, therefore, the discussion, in concert with our allies,
+of the following questions: (1) Are the French and English governments
+ready to give up exacting the blood of the Russian people if this people
+consent to pay them ransom and to compensate them in that way? (2) If
+the answer is in the affirmative, what ransom would the Allies want
+(railway concessions, gold mines, or territories)?
+
+"We also look forward to your telling us exactly whether the future
+Society of Nations will be a joint stock enterprise for the exploitation
+of Russia, and in particular--as your French allies require--for forcing
+Russia to refund the milliards which their bankers furnished to the
+Tsarist government, or whether the Society of Nations will be something
+different...."
+
+As soon as the Prinkipo motion was passed by the delegates I was
+informed by telephone, and I lost no time in communicating the tidings
+to Russia's official representatives in Paris. The plan astounded them.
+They could hardly believe that, while hopefully negotiating with the
+anti-Bolshevists, the Conference was desirous at the same time of
+opening _pourparlers_ with the Leninists, between whom and them
+antagonism was not merely political, but personal and vindictive, like
+that of two Albanians in a blood feud. I suggested that the scheme
+should be thwarted at its inception, and that for this purpose I should
+be authorized by the representatives of the four[267] constructive
+governments in Russia to make known their decision. I was accordingly
+empowered to announce to the world that they would categorically refuse
+to send any representatives to confer with the assassins of their
+kinsmen and the destroyers of their country, and that under no
+circumstances would they swerve from that attitude. Having received the
+authorization, I cabled to the United States and Britain that the
+projected meeting would come to naught, owing to the refusal of all
+constructive elements to agree to any compromise with the Bolsheviki;
+that in the opinion of Russia's representatives in Paris the advance
+made by the plenipotentiaries would strengthen the Bolshevist movement,
+render the civil war more merciless than before, and raise up formidable
+difficulties to the establishment of the League of Nations.
+
+But the plenipotentiaries did not yet give up their cause as lost. By
+way of "saving their face," they unofficially approached the Russian
+Ministers in Paris, whom they had not deigned to consult on the subject
+before making the plunge, and exhorted them to give at least a formal
+assent to the proposal, which would commit them to nothing and would
+enable them to withdraw without loss of dignity. They, on their part,
+undertook to smooth the road to the best of their ability. Thus it would
+be unnecessary, they explained, for the Ministers of the constructive
+governments or their substitutes to come into contact with the slayers
+of their kindred; they would occupy different wings of the hotel at
+Prinkipo, and never meet their adversaries. The delegates would see to
+that. "Then why should we go there at all if discussion be superfluous?"
+asked the Russians. "Because the Allied governments desire to ascertain
+the condition of Russia and your conception of the measures that would
+contribute to ameliorate it," was the reply. "Prince's Islands is not
+the right place to study the Russian situation, nor is it reasonable to
+expect us to journey thither in order to tell subordinates, who have no
+knowledge of our country, what we can tell them and their principals in
+Paris in greater detail and with confirmatory documents. Moreover, the
+delegates you have appointed have no qualification to judge of Russia's
+plight and potentialities. They know neither the country nor its
+language nor its people nor its politics, yet you want us to travel all
+the way to Turkey to tell them what we think, in order that they should
+return from Turkey to Paris and report to your Ministers what we said
+and what we could have unfolded directly to the Ministers themselves
+long ago and are ready to propound to them to-day or to-morrow.
+
+"The project is puerile and your tactics are baleful. Your Ministers
+branded the Bolshevists as criminals, and the French government publicly
+announced that it would enter into no relations with them. In spite of
+that, all the Allied governments have now offered to enter into
+relations with them. Now you admit that you made a slip, and you promise
+to correct it if only we consent to save your face and go on a
+wild-goose chase to Prinkipo. But for us that journey would be a
+recantation of our principles. That is why we are unable to make it."
+
+The Prinkipo incident, which began in the region of high politics, ended
+in comedy. A number of more or less witty epigrams were coined at the
+expense of the plenipotentiaries, the scheme, set in a stronger light
+than it was meant to endure, assumed a grotesque shape, and its
+promoters strove to consign it as best they could to oblivion. But the
+Sphinx question of Russia's future remained, and the penalties for
+failure to solve it aright waxed more and more deterrent. The supreme
+arbiters had cognizance of them, had, in fact, enumerated them when
+proclaiming the impossibility of establishing a durable peace or a solid
+League of Nations as long as Russia continued to be a prey to anarchy.
+But even with the prizes and penalties before their eyes to entice and
+spur them, they proved unequal to the task of devising an intelligent
+policy. Fitful and incoherent, their efforts were either incapable of
+being realized or, when feasible, were mischievous. Thus, by degrees,
+they hardened the great Slav nation against the Entente.
+
+The reader will be prepared to learn that the overtures made to the
+Bolsheviki kindled the anger of the patriotic Russians at home, who had
+been looking to the Western nations for salvation and making veritable
+holocausts in order to merit it. Every observer could perceive the
+repercussion of this sentiment in Paris, and I received ample proofs of
+it from Siberia. There the leaders and the population unhesitatingly
+turned for assistance to Japan. For this there were excellent reasons.
+The only government which throughout the war knew its own mind and
+pursued a consistent and an intelligible policy toward Russia was that
+of Tokio. This point is worth making at a time when Japan is regarded as
+a Laodicean convert to the invigorating ideas of the Western peoples, at
+heart a backslider and a potential schismatic. She is charged with
+making interest the mainspring of her action in her intercourse with
+other nations. The charge is true. Only a Candide would expect to see
+her moved by altruism and self-denial, in a company which penalizes
+these virtues. Community of interests is the link that binds Japan to
+Britain. A like bond had subsisted between her and Tsarist Russia. I
+helped to create it. Her statesmen, who have no taste for sonorous
+phraseology, did not think it necessary to give it a more fashionable
+name. This did not prevent the Japanese from being chivalrously loyal to
+their allies under the strain of powerful temptations, true to the
+spirit and the letter of their engagements. But although they made no
+pretense to lofty purpose, their political maxims differ nowise from
+those of the great European states, whose territorial, economic, and
+military interests have been religiously safeguarded by the Treaty of
+Versailles. True, the statesmen of Tokio shrink from the hybrid
+combination of two contradictions linked together by a sentimental
+fallacy. Their unpopularity among Anglo-Saxons is the result of
+speculations about their future intentions; in other words, they are
+being punished, as certain of the delegates at the Conference have been
+eulogized, not for what they actually did, but for what it is assumed
+they are desirous of achieving. Toward Russia they played the same game
+that their allies were playing there and in Europe, only more frankly
+and systematically. They applied the two principal maxims which lie at
+the root of international politics to-day--_do ut des_, and the nation
+that is capable of leading others has the right and the duty to lead
+them. And they established a valuable reputation for fulfilling their
+compacts conscientiously. Nippon, then, would have helped her Russian
+neighbors, and she expected to be helped by them in return. Have not the
+Allies, she asked, compelled Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Jugoslavia to
+pay them in cash for their emancipation?
+
+Russians, who have no color prejudices, hit it off with the Japanese, by
+whom they are liked in return. That the two peoples should feel drawn to
+each other politically is, therefore, natural, and that they will strike
+up economic agreements in the future seems to many inevitable and
+legitimate. One such agreement was on the point of being signed between
+them and the anti-Bolshevists of Omsk immediately after, and in
+consequence of, the Allies' ill-considered invitation to Lenin and
+Trotzky to delegate representatives to Prinkipo. This convention, I have
+reason to believe, was actually drafted, and was about to be signed. And
+the adverse influence that suddenly made itself felt and hindered the
+compact came not from Russia, but from western Europe. It would be
+unfruitful to dwell further on this matter here, beyond recording the
+belief of many Russians that the zeal of the English-speaking peoples
+for the well-being of Siberia, where they intend to maintain troops
+after having withdrawn them from Europe, is the counter-move to Japan's
+capacity and wish to co-operate with the population of that rich
+country. This assumption may be groundless, but it will surprise only
+those who fail to note how often the flag of principle is unfurled over
+economic interests.
+
+The delegates were not all discouraged by their discomfiture over the
+Prinkipo project. Some of them still hankered after an agreement with
+the Bolshevists which would warrant them in including the Russian
+problem among the tasks provisionally achieved. President Wilson
+despatched secret envoys to Moscow to strike up an accord with
+Lenin,[268] but although the terms which Mr. Bullitt obtained were those
+which had in advance been declared satisfactory, he drew back as soon as
+they were agreed to. And he assigned no reason for this change of
+attitude. Whether the brightening of the prospects of Kolchak and
+Denikin had modified his judgment on the question of expediency must
+remain a matter of conjecture. It is hardly necessary, however, to point
+out once more that this sudden improvisation of schemes which were
+abandoned again at the last moment tended to lower the not particularly
+high estimate set by the ethnic wards of the Anglo-Saxon peoples on the
+moral guidance of their self-constituted guardians.
+
+An ardent champion of the Allied nations in France wrote: "We have never
+had a Russian policy which was all of one piece. We have never
+synthetized any but contradictory conceptions. This is so true that one
+may safely affirm that if Russian patriotism has been sustained by our
+velleities of action, Russian destructiveness has been encouraged by our
+velleities of desertion. We joined, so to say, both camps, and our
+velleities of desertion occasionally getting the upper hand of our
+velleities of action ... we carry out nothing."[269]
+
+Toward Kolchak and Denikin the attitude of the Supreme Council varied
+considerably. It was currently reported in Paris that the Admiral had
+had the misfortune to arouse the displeasure of the two Conference
+chiefs by some casual manifestation of a frame of mind which was
+resented, perhaps a movement of independence, to which distance or the
+medium of transmission imparted a flavor of disrespect. Anyhow, the
+Russian leader was for some time under a cloud, which darkened the
+prospects of his cause. And as for Denikin, he appeared to the other
+great delegate as a self-advertising braggart.
+
+These mental portraits were retouched as the fortune of war favored the
+pair. And their cause benefited correspondingly. To this improvement
+influences at work in London contributed materially. For the
+anti-Bolshevist currents which made themselves felt in certain state
+departments in that capital, where there were several irreconcilable
+policies, were powerful and constant. By the month of May the Conference
+had turned half-heartedly from Lenin and Trotzky to Kolchak and Denikin,
+but its mode of negotiating bore the mark peculiar to the diplomacy of
+the new era of "open covenants openly arrived at." The delegates in
+Paris communicated with the two leaders in Russia "over the heads" and
+without the knowledge of their authorized representatives in Paris, just
+as they had issued peremptory orders to "the Rumanian government at
+Bucharest" over the heads of its chiefs, who were actually in the French
+capital.
+
+The proximate motives that determined several important decisions of
+the Secret Council, although of no political moment, are of sufficient
+psychological interest to warrant mention. They shed a light on the
+concreteness, directness, and simplicity of the workings of the
+statesmen's minds when engaged in transacting international business.
+For example, the particular moment for the recognition of new
+communities as states was fixed by wholly extrinsical circumstances. A
+food-distributer, for instance, or the Secretary of a Treasury, wanted a
+receipt for expenditure abroad from the people that benefited by it. As
+a document of this character presupposes the existence of a state and a
+government, the official dispenser of food or money was loath to go to
+the aid of any nation which was not a state or which lacked a properly
+constituted government. Hence, in some cases the Conference had to
+create both on the spur of the moment. Thus the reason why Finland's
+independence received the hall-mark of the Powers when it did was
+because the United States government was generously preparing to give
+aid to the Finns and had to get in return proper receipts signed by
+competent authorities representing the state.[270] Had it not been for
+this immediate need of valid receipts, the act of recognition might have
+been postponed in the same way as was the marking off of the frontiers.
+And like considerations led to like results in other cases.
+Czechoslovakia's independence was formally recognized for the same
+reason, as one of its leading men frankly admitted.
+
+One of the serious worries of the Conference chiefs in their dealings
+with Russia was the lack of a recognized government there, qualified to
+sign receipts for advances of money and munitions. And as they could not
+resolve to accord recognition to any of the existing administrations,
+they hit upon the middle course, that of promoting the anti-Bolshevists
+to the rank of a community, not, indeed, sovereign or independent, but
+deserving of every kind of assistance except the despatch of Allied
+troops. Assistance was already being given liberally, but the necessity
+was felt for justifying it formally. And the two delegates went to work
+as though they were hatching some dark and criminal plot. Secretly
+despatching a message to Admiral Kolchak, they put a number of questions
+to him which he was not qualified to answer without first consulting his
+official advisers in Paris. Yet these advisers were not apprised by the
+Secret Council of what was being done. Nay, more, the French Foreign
+Office was not notified. By the merest chance I got wind of the matter
+and published the official message.[271] It summoned the Admiral to bind
+himself to convene a Constituent Assembly as soon as he arrived in
+Moscow; to hold free elections; to repudiate definitely the old regime
+and all that it implied; to recognize the independence of Poland and
+Finland, whose frontiers would be determined by the League of Nations;
+to avail himself of the advice and co-operation of the League in coming
+to an understanding with the border states, and to acquiesce in the
+decision of the Peace Conference respecting the future status of
+Bessarabia. Kolchak's answer was described as clear when "decipherable,"
+and to his credit, he frankly declined to forestall the will of the
+Constituent Assembly respecting those border states which owed their
+separate existence to the initiative of the victorious governments. But
+the Secret Council of the Conference accepted his answer, and relied
+upon it as an adequate reason for continuing the assistance which they
+had been giving him theretofore.
+
+About the person of Kolchak it ought to be superfluous to say more than
+that he is an upright citizen of energy and resolution, as patriotic as
+Fabricius, as disinterested and unambitious as Cincinnatus. To his
+credit account, which is considerable, stands his wonder-working faith
+in the recuperative forces of his country when its fortunes were at
+their lowest ebb. With buoyancy and confidence he set himself the task
+of rescuing his fellow-countrymen when it looked as hopeless as that of
+Xenophon at Cunaxa. He created an army out of nothing, induced his men
+by argument, suasion, and example to shake off the virus of indiscipline
+and sacrifice their individual judgment and will to the well-being of
+their fellows. He enjoined nothing upon others that he himself was not
+ready to undertake, and he exposed himself time and again to risks
+greater far than any general should deliberately incur. Whether he
+succeeds or fails in his arduous enterprise, Kolchak, by his preterhuman
+patience and sustained energy and courage, has deserved exceptionally
+well of his country, and could afford to ignore the current legends that
+depict him in the crying colors of a reactionary, even though they were
+accepted for the time by the most exalted among the Great Unversed in
+Russian affairs. One may dissent from his policy and object to some of
+his lieutenants and to many of his partizans, but from the
+single-minded, patriotic soldier one cannot withhold a large meed of
+praise. Kolchak's defects are mostly exaggerations of his qualities. His
+remarkable versatility is purchased at the price of fitfulness, his
+energy displays itself in spurts, and his impulsiveness impairs at times
+the successful execution of a plan which requires unflagging constancy.
+His judgment of men is sometimes at fault, but he would never hesitate
+to confer a high post upon any man who deserved it. He is democratic in
+the current sense of the word, but neither a doctrinaire nor a faddist.
+A disciplinarian and a magnetic personality withal, he charms as
+effectually as he commands his soldiers. He is enlightened enough, like
+the great Western world-menders in their moments of theorizing, to
+discountenance secrecy and hole-and-corner agreements, and, what is
+still more praiseworthy, he is courageous enough to practise the
+doctrine.
+
+When the revolution broke out Kolchak was at Sebastopol. The telegram
+conveying the sensational tidings of the outbreak was kept secret by all
+military commanders--except himself. He unhesitatingly summoned the
+soldiers and sailors, apprised them of what had taken place, gave them
+an insight into the true meaning of the violent upheaval, and asked them
+to join with him in a heroic endeavor to influence the course of things,
+in the direction of order and consolidation. He gaged aright the
+significance of the revolution and the impossibility of confining it
+within any bounds, political, moral, or geographical. But he reasoned
+that a band of resolute patriots might contrive to wrest something for
+the country from the hands of Fate. It was with this faith and hope that
+he set to work, and soon his valiant army, the reclaimed provinces, and
+the improved Russian outlook were eloquent witnesses to his worth, whose
+testimony no legendary reports, however well received in the West, could
+weaken.
+
+How ingrained in the plenipotentiaries was their proneness for what, for
+want of a better word, may be termed conspirative and circuitous action
+may be inferred from the record of their official and unofficial
+conversations and acts. When holding converse with Kolchak's authorized
+agents in Paris they would lay down hard conditions, which were
+described as immutable; and yet when communicating with the Admiral
+direct they would submit to him terms considerably less irksome, unknown
+to his Paris advisers, thus mystifying both and occasioning friction
+between them. In many cases the contrast between the two sets of demands
+was disconcerting, and in all it tended to cause misunderstandings and
+complicate the relations between Kolchak and his Paris agents. But he
+continued to give his confidence to his representatives, although they
+were denied that of the delegates. It would, of course, be grossly
+unfair to impute anything like disingenuousness to plenipotentiaries
+engaged upon issues of this magnitude, but it was an unfortunate
+coincidence that they were known to regard some of the members of the
+Russian Council in Paris with disfavor, and would have been glad to see
+them superseded. When Nansen's project to feed the starving population
+of Russia was first mooted, Kolchak's Ministers in Paris were approached
+on the subject, and the Allies' plan was propounded to them so
+defectively or vaguely as to give them the impression that the
+co-operation of the Bolshevist government was part of the program. They
+were also allowed to think that during the work of feeding the people
+the despatch of munitions and other military necessaries to Kolchak and
+his army would be discontinued. Naturally, the scheme, weighted with
+these two accompaniments, was unacceptable to Kolchak's representatives
+in Paris. But, strange to say, in the official notification which the
+plenipotentiaries telegraphed at the same time to the Admiral direct,
+neither of these obnoxious riders was included, so that the proposal
+assumed a different aspect.
+
+Another example of these singular tactics is supplied by their
+_pourparlers_ with the Admiral's delegates about the future
+international status of Finland, whose help was then being solicited to
+free Petrograd from the Bolshevist yoke. The Finns insisted on the
+preliminary recognition of their complete independence by the Russians.
+Kolchak's representatives shrank from bartering any territories which
+had belonged to the state on their own sole responsibility. None the
+less, as the subject was being theoretically threshed out in all its
+bearings, the members of the Russian Council in Paris inquired of the
+Allies whether the Finns had at least renounced their pretensions to the
+province of Karelia. But the spokesmen of the Conference replied
+elusively, giving them no assurance that the claim had been
+relinquished. Thereupon they naturally concluded that the Finns either
+still maintained their demand or else had not yet modified their former
+decision on the matter, and they deemed it their duty to report in this
+sense to their chief. Yet the plenipotentiaries, in their message on the
+subject to Kolchak, which was sent about the same time, assured him that
+the annexation of Karelia was no longer insisted upon, and that the
+Finns would not again put forward the claim! One hardly knows what to
+think of tactics like these. In their talks with the spokesmen of
+certain border states of Russia the official representatives of the
+three European Powers at the Conference employed language that gave rise
+to misunderstandings which may have untoward consequences in the future.
+One would like to believe that these misunderstandings were caused by
+mere slips of the tongue, which should not have been taken literally by
+those to whom they were addressed; but in the meanwhile they have become
+not only the source of high, possibly delusive, hopes, but the basis of
+elaborate policies. For example, Esthonian and Lettish Ministers were
+given to understand that they would be permitted to send diplomatic
+legations to Petrograd as soon as Russia was reconstituted, a mode of
+intercourse which presupposes the full independence of all the countries
+concerned. A constitution was also drawn up for Esthonia by one of the
+Great Powers, which started with the postulate that each people was to
+be its own master. Consequently, the two nations in question were
+warranted in looking forward to receiving that complete independence.
+And if such was, indeed, the intention of the Great Powers, there is
+nothing further to be said on the score of straightforwardness or
+precision. But neither in the terms submitted to Kolchak nor in those to
+which his Paris agents were asked to give their assent was the
+independence of either country as much as hinted at.[272]
+
+These may perhaps seem trivial details, but they enable us to estimate
+the methods and the organizing arts of the statesmen upon whose skill in
+resource and tact in dealing with their fellows depended the new
+synthesis of international life and ethics which they were engaged in
+realizing. It would be superfluous to investigate the effect upon the
+Russians, or, indeed, upon any of the peoples represented in Paris, of
+the Secret Council's conspirative deliberations and circuitous
+procedure, which were in such strong contrast to the "open covenants
+openly arrived at" to which in their public speeches they paid such high
+tribute.
+
+The main danger, which the Allies redoubted from failure to restore
+tranquillity in Russia, was that Germany might accomplish it and, owing
+to her many advantages, might secure a privileged position in the
+country and use it as a stepping-stone to material prosperity, military
+strength, and political ascendancy. This feat she could accomplish
+against considerable odds. She would achieve it easily if the Allies
+unwittingly helped her, as they were doing.
+
+Unfortunately the Allied governments had not much hope of succeeding.
+If they had been capable of elaborating a comprehensive plan, they no
+longer possessed the means of executing it. But they devised none. "The
+fact is," one of the Conference leaders exclaimed, "we have no policy
+toward Russia. Neither do we possess adequate data for one."
+
+They strove to make good this capital omission by erecting a paper wall
+between Germany and her great Slav neighbor. The plan was simple. The
+Teutons were to be compelled to disinterest themselves in the affairs of
+Russia, with whose destinies their own are so closely bound up. But they
+soon realized that such a partition is useless as a breakwater against
+the tidal wave of Teutondom, and Germany is still destined to play the
+part of Russia's steward and majordomo.
+
+How could it be otherwise? Germany and Russia are near neighbors. Their
+economic relations have been continuous for ages, and the Allies have
+made them indispensable in the future; Russia is ear-marked as Germany's
+best colony. The two peoples are become interdependent. The Teuton will
+recognize the Slav as an ally in economics, and will pay himself
+politically. Who will now thwart or check this process? Russia must
+live, and therefore buy and sell, barter and negotiate. Can a parchment
+treaty hinder or invalidate her dealings? Can it prevent an admixture of
+politics in commercial arrangements, seeing that they are but two
+aspects of one and the same transaction? It is worthy of note that a
+question which goes to the quick of the matter was never mooted. It is
+this: Is it an essential element of the future ordering of the world
+that Germany shall play no part whatever in its progress? Is it to be
+assumed that she will always content herself with being treated as the
+incorrigible enemy of civilization? And, if not, what do all these
+checks and barriers amount to?
+
+In Russia there are millions of Germans conversant with the language,
+laws, and customs of the people. Many of them have been settled there
+for generations. They are passionately attached to their race, and
+neither unfriendly nor useless to the country of their adoption. The
+trade, commerce, and industry of the European provinces are largely in
+their hands and in those of their forerunners and helpers, the Jews. The
+Russo-German and Jewish middlemen in the country have their faces ever
+turned toward the Fatherland. They are wont to buy and sell there. They
+always obtained their credit in Berlin, Dresden, or Frankfurt. They
+acted as commercial travelers, agents, brokers, bankers, for Russians
+and Germans. They are constantly going and coming between the two
+countries. How are these myriads to be fettered permanently and kept
+from eking out a livelihood in the future on the lines traced by
+necessity or interest in the past? The Russians, on their side, must
+live, and therefore buy and sell. Has the Conference or the League the
+right or power to dictate to them the persons or the people with whom
+alone they may have dealings? Can it narrow the field of Russia's
+political activities? Some people flatter themselves that it can. In
+this case the League of Nations must transform itself into an alliance
+for the suppression of the German race.
+
+Burning indignation and moral reprobation were the sentiments aroused
+among the high-minded Allies by the infamous Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
+For that mockery of a peace, even coming from an enemy, transcended the
+bounds of human vengeance. It was justly anathematized by all Entente
+peoples as the loathsome creation of a frenzied people. But shortly
+afterward the Entente governments themselves, their turn having come,
+wrought what Russians of all parties regard as a political patchwork of
+variegated injustice more odious far, because its authors claimed to be
+considered as the devoted friends of their victims and the champions of
+right. Whereas the Brest-Litovsk Treaty provided for a federative Slav
+state, with provincial diets and a federal parliament, the system
+substituted by the Allies consisted in carving up Russia into an
+ever-increasing number of separate states, some of which cannot live by
+themselves, in debarring the inhabitants from a voice in the matter, in
+creating a permanent agency for foreign intervention, and ignoring
+Russia's right to reparation from the common enemy. The Russians were
+not asked even informally to say what they thought or felt about what
+was being done. This province and that were successively lopped off in a
+lordly way by statesmen who aimed at being classed as impartial
+dispensers of justice and sowers of the seeds of peace, but were
+unacquainted with the conditions and eschewed investigation. Here, at
+all events, the usual symptoms of hesitancy and procrastination were
+absent. Swift resolve and thoroughness marked the disintegrating action
+by which they unwittingly prepared the battlefields of the future.
+
+Nobody acquainted with Russian psychology imagines that the feelings of
+a high-souled people can be transformed by gifts of food, money, or
+munitions made to some of their fellow-countrymen. How little likely
+Russians are to barter ideal boons for material advantages may be
+gathered from an incident worth noting that occurred in the months of
+April and May, when the fall of the capital into the hands of the
+anti-Bolshevists was confidently expected.
+
+At that time, as it chanced, the one thing necessary for their success
+against Bolshevism was the capture of Petrograd. If that city, which,
+despite its cosmopolitan character, still retained its importance as the
+center of political Russia, could be wrested from the tenacious grasp
+of Lenin and Trotzky, the fall of the anarchist dictators was, people
+held, a foregone conclusion. The friends of Kolchak accordingly pressed
+every lever to set the machinery in motion for the march against Peter's
+city. And as, of all helpers, the Finns and Esthonians were admittedly
+the most efficacious, conversations were begun with their leaders. They
+were ready to drive a bargain, but it must be a hard and lucrative one.
+They would march on Petrograd for a price. The principal condition which
+they laid down was the express and definite recognition of their
+complete independence within frontiers which it would be unfruitful here
+to discuss. The Kolchak government was ready to treat with the Finnish
+Cabinet, as the _de facto_ government, and to recognize Finland's
+present status for what it is in international law; but as they could
+not give what they did not possess, their recognition must, they
+explained, be like their own authority, provisional. A similar reply was
+made to the Esthonians; to this those peoples demurred. The Russians
+stood firm and the negotiations fell through. It is to be supposed that
+when they have recovered their former status they will prove more
+amenable to the blandishments of the Allies than they were to the
+powerful bribe dangled before their eyes by the Esthonians and the
+Finns?
+
+But if the improvised arrangements entailing dismemberment which the
+Great Powers imposed on Russia during her cataleptic trance are revised,
+as they may be, whenever she recovers consciousness and strength, what
+course will events then follow? If she seeks to regather under her wing
+some of the peoples whose complete independence the League of Nations
+was so eager to guarantee, will that body respond to the appeal of these
+and fly to their assistance? Russia, who has not been consulted, will
+not be as bound by the canons of the League, and one need not be a
+prophet to foretell the reluctance of Western armies to wage another war
+in order to prevent territories, of which some of the plenipotentiaries
+may have heard as little as of Teschen, becoming again integral parts of
+the Slav state. Europe may then see its political axis once more shifted
+and its outlook obscured. Thus the system of equilibrium, which was
+theoretically abolished by the Fourteen Points, may be re-established by
+the hundred and one economico-political changes which Russia's recovery
+will contribute to bring about.
+
+A decade is but a twinkling in the history of a nation. Within a few
+years Russia may once more be united. The army that will have achieved
+this feat will constitute a formidable weapon in the hands of the state
+that wields it. As everything, even military strength, is relative, and
+as the armies of the rest of Europe will not be impatient to fight in
+the East, and will therefore count for considerably less than their
+numbers, there will be no real danger of an invasion. Russia is a
+country easy to get into, but hard to get out of, and military success
+against its armies there would in verity be a victory without glory,
+annexation, indemnities, or other appreciable gains.
+
+It is hard to believe that the distinguished statesmen of the Conference
+took these eventualities fully into account before attempting to reshape
+amorphous Russia after their own vague ideal. But whether we assess
+their work by the standards of political science or of international
+ethics, or explain it as a series of well-meant expedients begotten by
+the practical logic of momentary convenience, we must confess that its
+gifted authors lacked a direct eye for the wayward tides of national and
+international movements; were, in fact, smitten by political blindness,
+and did the best they could in these distressing circumstances.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[260] From whatever angle this Russian business is viewed, the policy of
+the Allies, if it can be dignified with that name, seems to be a
+compound of weakness, ineptitude, and shilly-shally."--Cf. _The
+Westminster Gazette_, July 5, 1919.
+
+[261] Cf. _Journal des Debats_, August 13, 1919. Article by M. Auguste
+Gauvain.
+
+[262] There can be no doubt that the Bolshevist government under
+Lunatcharsky has made a point of furthering the arts, sciences, and
+elementary instruction. All reports from foreign travelers and from
+eminent Russians--one of these my university fellow-student, now
+perpetual secretary of the Academy--agree about this silver lining to a
+dark cloud.
+
+[263] This latter fact was doubtless known to the British government,
+which decided as early as March to recall the British troops from
+northern Russia.
+
+[264] I published the facts in _The Daily Telegraph_, April 21, and _The
+Public Ledger_ of Philadelphia, April 10, 1919.
+
+[265] Colonel House is said to have dissociated himself from the
+President on this occasion.
+
+[266] It was sent at the end of October, 1918, and to my knowledge was
+not published in full.
+
+[267] Omsk, Ekaterinodar, Archangel, and the Crimea. The last-named
+disappeared soon afterward.
+
+[268] See Chapter IV "Censorship and Secrecy," p. 132.
+
+[269] Pertinax in _L'Echo de Paris_, July 5, 1919.
+
+[270] This admission was made to a distinguished member of the
+Diplomatic Corps.
+
+[271] In _The Daily Telegraph_, June 19, 1919, and in _The Public
+Ledger_ of Philadelphia.
+
+[272] In July M. Pichon told the Esthonian delegates that France
+recognized the independence of their country in principle. But this
+declaration was not taken seriously, either by the Russians or by the
+French.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+BOLSHEVISM
+
+
+What is Bolshevism? A generic term that stands for a number of things
+which have little in common. It varies with the countries where it
+appears. In Russia it is the despotism of an organized and unscrupulous
+group of men in a disorganized community. It might also be termed the
+frenzy of a few epileptics running amuck among a multitude of
+paralytics. It is not so much a political doctrine or a socialist theory
+as a psychic disease of a section of the community which cannot be cured
+without leaving permanent traces and perhaps modifying certain organic
+functions of the society affected. For some students at a distance who
+make abstraction from its methods--as a critic appreciating the
+performance of "Hamlet" might make abstraction from the part of the
+Prince of Denmark--it is a modification of the theory of Karl Marx, the
+newest contribution to latter-day social science. In Russia, at any
+rate, the general condition of society from which it sprang was
+characterized not by the advance of social science, but by a psychic
+disorder the germs of which, after a century of incubation, were brought
+to the final phase of development by the war. In its origins it is a
+pathological phenomenon.
+
+Four and a half years of an unprecedented campaign which drained to
+exhaustion the financial and economic resources of the European
+belligerents upset the psychical equilibrium of large sections of their
+populations. Goaded by hunger and disease to lawless action, and no
+longer held back by legal deterrents or moral checks, they followed the
+instinct of self-preservation to the extent of criminal lawlessness.
+Familiarity with death and suffering dispelled the fear of human
+punishment, while numbness of the moral sense made them insensible to
+the less immediate restraints of a religious character. These phenomena
+are not unusual concomitants of protracted wars. History records
+numerous examples of the homecoming soldiery turning the weapons
+destined for the foreign foe against political parties or social classes
+in their own country. In other European communities for some time
+previously a tendency toward root-reaching and violent change was
+perceptible, but as the state retained its hold on the army it remained
+a tendency. In the case of Russia--the country where the state, more
+than ordinarily artificial and ill-balanced, was correspondingly
+weak--Fate had interpolated a blood-stained page of red and white terror
+in the years 1906-08. Although fitful, unorganized, and abortive, that
+wild splutter was one of the foretokens of the impending cataclysm, and
+was recognized as such by the writer of these pages. During the
+foregoing quarter of a century he had watched with interest the sowing
+of the dragon's teeth from which was one day to spring up a race of
+armed and frenzied men. Few observers, however, even in the Tsardom,
+gaged the strength or foresaw the effects of the anarchist propaganda
+which was being carried on suasively and perseveringly, oftentimes
+unwittingly, in the nursery, the school, the church, the university, and
+with eminent success in the army and the navy. Hence the widespread
+error that the Russian revolution was preceded by no such era of
+preparation as that of the encylopedists in France.
+
+Recently, however, publicists have gone to the other extreme and
+asserted that Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gorky, and a host of other Russian
+writers were apostles of the tenets which have since received the name
+of Bolshevism, and that it was they who prepared the Russian upheaval
+just as it was the authors of the "Encyclopedia" who prepared the French
+Revolution. In this sweeping form the statement is misleading. Russian
+literature during the reigns of the last three Tsars--with few
+exceptions, like the writings of Leskoff--was unquestionably a vehicle
+for the spread of revolutionary ideas. But it would be a gross
+exaggeration to assert that the end deliberately pursued was that form
+of anarchy which is known to-day as Bolshevism, or, indeed, genuine
+anarchy in any form. Tolstoy and Gorky may be counted among the
+forerunners of Bolshevism, but Dostoyevsky, whom I was privileged to
+know, was one of its keenest antagonists. Nor was it only anarchism that
+he combated. Like Leskoff, he was an inveterate enemy of political
+radicalism, and we university students bore him a grudge in consequence.
+In his masterly delineation[273] of a group of "reformers," in
+particular of Verkhovensky--whom psychic tendency, intellectual anarchy,
+and political crime bring under the category of Bolshevists--he
+foreshadowed the logical conclusion, and likewise the political
+consummation, of the corrosive doctrines which in those days were
+associated with the name of Bakunin. In the year 1905-06, when the
+upshot of the conflict between Tsarism and the revolution was still
+doubtful, Count Witte and I often admired the marvelous intuition of the
+great novelist, whose gallery of portraits in the "Devils" seemed to
+have become suddenly endowed with life, and to be conspiring, shooting,
+and bomb-throwing in the streets of Moscow, Petersburg, Odessa, and
+Tiflis. The seeds of social revolution sown by the novelists, essayists,
+and professional guides of the nation were forced by the wars of 1904
+and 1914 into rapid germination.
+
+As far back as the year 1892, in a work published over a pseudonym, the
+present writer described the rotten condition of the Tsardom, and
+ventured to foretell its speedy collapse.[274] The French historian
+Michelet wrote with intuition marred by exaggeration and acerbity: "A
+barbarous force, a law-hating world, Russia sucks and absorbs all the
+poison of Europe and then gives it off in greater quantity and deadlier
+intensity. When we admit Russia, we admit the cholera, dissolution,
+death. That is the meaning of Russian propaganda. Yesterday she said to
+us, 'I am Christianity.' To-morrow she will say, 'I am socialism.' It is
+the revolting idea of a demagogy without an idea, a principle, a
+sentiment, of a people which would march toward the west with the gait
+of a blind man, having lost its soul and its will and killing at random,
+of a terrible automaton like a dead body which can still reach and slay.
+
+"It might commove Europe and bespatter it with blood, but that would not
+hinder it from plunging itself into nothingness in the abysmal ooze of
+definite dissolution."
+
+Russia, then, led by domiciled aliens without a fatherland, may be truly
+said to have been wending steadily toward the revolutionary vortex long
+before the outbreak of hostilities. Her progress was continuous and
+perceptible. As far back as the year 1906 the late Count Witte and
+myself made a guess at the time-distance which the nation still had to
+traverse, assuming the rate of progress to be constant, before reaching
+the abyss. This, however, was mere guesswork, which one of the many
+possibilities--and in especial change in the speed-rate--might belie. In
+effect, events moved somewhat more quickly than we anticipated, and it
+was the World War and its appalling concomitants that precipitated the
+catastrophe.
+
+As circumstances willed it, certain layers of the people of central
+Europe were also possessed by the revolutionary spirit at the close of
+the World War. In their case hunger, hardship, disease, and moral shock
+were the avenues along which it moved and reached them. This coincidence
+was fraught with results more impressive than serious. The governments
+of both these great peoples had long been the mainstays of monarchic
+tradition, military discipline, and the principle of authority. The
+Teutons, steadily pursuing an ideal which lay at the opposite pole to
+anarchy, had risked every worldly and well-nigh every spiritual
+possession to realize it. It was the hegemony of the world. This
+aspiration transfigured, possessed, fanaticized them. Teutondom became
+to them what Islam is to Mohammedans of every race, even when they shake
+off religion. They eschewed no means, however iniquitous, that seemed to
+lead to the goal. They ceased to be human in order to force Europe to
+become German. Offering up the elementary principles of morality on the
+altar of patriotism, they staked their all upon the single venture of
+the war. It was as the throw of a gambler playing for his soul with the
+Evil One. Yet the faith of these materialists waxed heroic withal, like
+their self-sacrifice. And in the fiery ardor of their enthusiasm, hard
+concrete facts were dissolved and set floating as illusions in the
+ambient mist. Their wishes became thoughts and their fears were
+dispelled as fancies. They beheld only what they yearned for, and when
+at last they dropped from the dizzy height of their castles in cloudland
+their whole world, era, and ideal was shattered. Unavailing remorse,
+impotent rage, spiritual and intense physical exhaustion completed their
+demoralization. The more harried and reckless among them became
+frenzied. Turning first against their rulers, then against one another,
+they finally started upon a work of wanton destruction relieved by no
+creative idea. It was at this time-point that they endeavored to join
+hands with their tumultuous Eastern neighbors, and that the one word
+"Bolshevism" connoted the revolutionary wave that swept over some of the
+Slav and German lands. But only for a moment. One may safely assert, as
+a general proposition, that the same undertaking, if the Germans and the
+Russians set their hands to it, becomes forthwith two separate
+enterprises, so different are the conceptions and methods of these two
+peoples. Bolshevism was almost emptied of its contents by the Germans,
+and little left of it but the empty shell.
+
+Comparisons between the orgasms of collective madness which accompanied
+the Russian welter, on the one hand, and the French Revolution, on the
+other, are unfruitful and often misleading. It is true that at the
+outset those spasms of delirium were in both cases violent reactions
+against abuses grown well-nigh unbearable. It is also a fact that the
+revolutionists derived their preterhuman force from historic events
+which had either denuded those abuses of their secular protection or
+inspired their victims with wonder-working faith in their power to sweep
+them away. But after this initial stage the likeness vanishes. The
+French Revolution, which extinguished feudalism as a system and the
+nobility as a privileged class, speedily ceased to be a mere dissolvent.
+In its latter phases it assumed a constructive character. Incidentally
+it created much that was helpful in substance if not beautiful in form,
+and from the beginning it adopted a positive doctrine as old as
+Christianity, but new in its application to the political sphere. Thus,
+although it uprooted quantities of wheat together with the tares, its
+general effect was to prepare the ground for a new harvest. It had a
+distinctly social purpose, which it partially realized. Nor should it
+be forgotten that in the psychological sphere it kindled a transient
+outburst of quasi-religious enthusiasm among its partizans, imbued them
+with apostolic zeal, inspired them with a marvelous spirit of
+self-abnegation, and nerved their arms to far-resonant exploits. And the
+forces which the revolution thus set free changed many of the forms of
+the European world, but without reshaping it after the image of the
+ideal.
+
+Has the withering blight known as Bolshevism any such redeeming traits
+to its credit account? The consensus of opinion down to the present
+moment gives an emphatic, if summary, answer in the negative. Every
+region over which it swept is blocked with heaps of unsightly ruins, It
+has depreciated all moral values. It passed like a tornado, spending its
+energies in demolition. Of construction hardly a trace has been
+discerned, even by indulgent explorers.[275] One might liken it to a
+so-called possession by the spirit of evil, wont of yore to use the
+human organs as his own for words of folly and deeds of iniquity.
+Bolshevism has operated uniformly as a quick solvent of the social
+organism. Doubtless European society in 1917 sorely needed purging by
+drastic means, but only a fanatic would say that it deserved
+annihilation.
+
+It has been variously affirmed that the political leaven of these
+destructive ferments in eastern and central Europe was wholesome. Slavs
+and Germans, it is argued, stung by the bankruptcy of their political
+systems, resolved to alter them on the lines of universal suffrage and
+its corollaries, but were carried farther than they meant to go. This
+mild judgment is based on a very partial survey of the phenomena. The
+improvement in question was the work, not of the Bolshevists, but of
+their adversaries, the moderate reformers. And the political strivings
+of these had no organic nexus with the doctrine which emanated from the
+nethermost depths in which vengeful pariahs, outlaws, and benighted
+nihilists were floundering before suffocating in the ooze of anarchism.
+Neither can one discern any degree of kinship between Spartacists like
+Eichhorn or Lenin and moderate reformers as represented, say, by Theodor
+Wolff and Boris Savinkoff. The two pairs are sundered from each other by
+the distance that separates the social and the anti-social instinct.
+Those are vulgar iconoclasts, these are would-be world-builders. That
+the Russian, or, indeed, the German constitutional reformers should have
+hugged the delusion that while thrones were being hurled to the ground,
+and an epoch was passing away in violent convulsions, a few alterations
+in the electoral law would restore order and bring back normal
+conditions to the agonizing nations, is an instructive illustration of
+the blurred vision which characterizes contemporary statesmen. The
+Anglo-Saxon delegates at the Conference were under a similar delusion
+when they undertook to regenerate the world by a series of merely
+political changes.
+
+No one who has followed attentively the work of the constitution-makers
+in Weimar can have overlooked their readiness to adopt and assimilate
+the positive elements of a movement which was essentially destructive.
+In this respect they displayed a remarkable degree of open-mindedness
+and receptivity. They showed themselves avid of every contribution which
+they could glean from any source to the work of national reorganization,
+and even in Teutonized Bolshevism they apparently found helpful hints of
+timely innovations. One may safely hazard the prediction that these
+adaptations, however little they may be relished, are certain to spread
+to the Western peoples, who will be constrained to accept them in the
+long run, and Germany may end by becoming the economic leader of
+democratic Europe. The law of politico-social interchange and
+assimilation underlying this phenomenon, had it been understood by the
+statesmen of the Entente, might have rendered them less desirous of
+seeing the German organism tainted with the germs of dissolution. For
+what Germany borrows from Bolshevism to-day western Europe will borrow
+from Germany to-morrow. And foremost among the new institutions which
+the revolution will impose upon Europe is that of the Soviets,
+considerably modified in form and limited in functions.
+
+"In the conception of the Soviet system," writes the most influential
+Jewish-German organ in Europe, "there is assuredly something
+serviceable, and it behooves us to familiarize ourselves therewith.
+Psychologically, it rests upon the need felt by the working-man to be
+something more than a mere cog in the industrial mechanism. The first
+step would consist in conferring upon labor committees juridical
+functions consonant with latter-day requirements. These functions would
+extend beyond those exercised by the labor committees hitherto. How far
+they could go without rendering the industrial enterprise impossible is
+a matter for investigation.... This is not merely a wish of the
+extremists; it is a psychological requirement, and therefore it
+necessitates the establishment of a closer nexus between legislation and
+practical life which unhappily is become so complicated. And this need
+is not confined to the laboring class. It is universal. Therefore, what
+is good for the one is meet for the other."[276]
+
+The Soviet system adapted to modern existence is one--and probably the
+sole--legacy of Bolshevism to the new age.
+
+During the Peace Conference Bolshevism played a large part in the
+world's affairs. By some of the eminent lawgivers there it was feared as
+a scourge; by others it was wielded as a weapon, and by a third set it
+was employed as a threat. Whenever a delegate of one of the lesser
+states felt that he was losing ground at the Peace Table, and that his
+country's demands were about to be whittled down as extravagant, he
+would point significantly to certain "foretokens" of an outbreak of
+Bolshevism in his country and class them as an inevitable consequence of
+the nation's disappointment. Thus the representative of nearly every
+state which had a territorial program declared that that program must be
+carried out if Bolshevism was to be averted there. "This or else
+Bolshevism" was the peroration of many a delegate's _expose_. More
+redoubtable than political discontent was the proselytizing activity of
+the leaders of the movement in Russia.
+
+Of the two pillars of Bolshevism one is a Russian, the other a Jew, the
+former, Ulianoff (better known as Lenin), the brain; the other,
+Braunstein (called Trotzky), the arm of the sect. Trotzky is an
+unscrupulous despot, in whose veins flows the poison of malignity. His
+element is cruelty, his special gift is organizing capacity. Lenin is a
+Utopian, whose fanaticism, although extensive, has well-defined limits.
+In certain things he disagrees profoundly with Trotzky. He resembles a
+religious preacher in this, that he created a body of veritable
+disciples around himself. He might be likened to a pope with a college
+of international cardinals. Thus he has French, British, German,
+Austrian, Czech, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Japanese, Hindu, Chinese,
+Buryat, and many other followers, who are chiefs of proselytizing
+sections charged with the work of spreading the Bolshevik evangel
+throughout the globe, and are working hard to discharge their duties.
+Lenin, however, dissatisfied with the measures of success already
+attained, is constantly stimulating his disciples to more strenuous
+exertions. He shares with other sectarian chiefs who have played a
+prominent part in the world's history that indefinable quality which
+stirs emotional susceptibility and renders those who approach him more
+easily accessible to ideas toward which they began by manifesting
+repugnance. Lenin is credibly reported to have made several converts
+among his Western opponents.
+
+The plenipotentiaries, during the first four months, approached
+Bolshevism from a single direction, unvaried by the events which it
+generated or the modifications which it underwent. They tested it solely
+by its accidental bearings on the one aim which they were intent on
+securing--a formal and provisional resettlement of Europe capable of
+being presented to their respective parliaments as a fair achievement.
+With its real character, its manifold corollaries, its innovating
+tendencies over the social, political, and ethnical domain, they were
+for the time being unconcerned. Without the slightest reference to any
+of these considerations they were ready to find a place for it in the
+new state system with which they hoped to endow the world. More than
+once they were on the point of giving it official recognition. There was
+no preliminary testing, sifting, or examining by these empiricists, who,
+finding Bolshevism on their way, and discerning no facile means of
+dislodging or transforming it, signified their willingness under easy
+conditions to hallmark and incorporate it as one of the elements of the
+new ordering. From the crimes laid to its charge they were prepared to
+make abstraction. The barbarous methods to which it owed its very
+existence they were willing to consign to oblivion. And it was only a
+freak of circumstance that hindered this embodiment of despotism from
+beginning one of their accepted means of rendering the world safe for
+democracy.
+
+Political students outside the Conference, going farther into the
+matter, inquired whether there was any kernel of truth in the doctrines
+of Lenin, any social or political advantage in the practices of
+Braunstein (Trotzky), and the conclusions which they reached were
+negative.[277] But inquiries of this theoretical nature awakened no
+interest among the empiricists of the Supreme Council. For them
+Bolshevism meant nothing more than a group of politicians, who directed,
+or misdirected, but certainly represented the bulk of the Russian
+people, and who, if won over and gathered under the cloak of the
+Conference, would facilitate its task and bear witness to its triumph.
+This inference, drawn by keen observers from many countries and parties,
+is borne out by the curious admissions and abortive acts of the
+principal plenipotentiaries themselves.
+
+In its milder manifestations on the social side Russian Bolshevism
+resembles communism, and may be described as a social revolution
+effected by depriving one set of people--the ruling and intelligent
+class--of power, property, and civil rights, putting another and less
+qualified section in their place, and maintaining the top-heavy
+structure by force ruthlessly employed. Far-reaching though this change
+undoubtedly is, it has no nexus with Marxism or kindred theories. Its
+proximate causes were many: such, for example, as the breakdown of a
+tyrannical system of government, state indebtedness so vast that it
+swallowed up private capital, the depreciation of money, and the
+corresponding appreciation of labor. It is fair, therefore, to say that
+a rise in the cost of production and the temporary substitution of one
+class for another mark the extent to which political forces
+revolutionized the social fabric. Beyond these limits they did not go.
+The notion had been widespread in most countries, and deep-rooted in
+Russia, that a political upheaval would effect a root-reaching and
+lasting alteration in the forces of social development. It was adopted
+by Lenin, a fanatic of the Robespierre type, but far superior to
+Robespierre in will-power, insight, resourcefulness, and sincerity, who,
+having seized the reins of power, made the experiment.
+
+It is no easy matter to analyze Lenin's economic policy, because of the
+veil of mist that conceals so much of Russian contemporary history. Our
+sources are confined to the untrustworthy statements of a censored press
+and travelers' tales.
+
+But it is common knowledge that the Bolshevist dictator requisitioned
+and "nationalized" the banks, took factories, workshops, and plants from
+their owners and handed them over to the workmen, deprived landed
+proprietors of their estates, and allowed peasants to appropriate them.
+It is in the matter of industry, however, that his experiment is most
+interesting as showing the practical value of Marxism as a policy and
+the ability of the Bolsheviki to deal with delicate social problems. The
+historic decree issued by the Moscow government on the nationalization
+of industry after the opening experiment had broken down contains data
+enough to enable one to affirm that Lenin himself judged Marxism
+inapplicable even to Russia, and left it where he had found it--among
+the ideals of a millennial future. That ukase ordered the gradual
+nationalization of all private industries with a capital of not less
+than one million rubles, but allowed the owners to enjoy the gratuitous
+usufruct of the concern, provided that they financed and carried it on
+as before. Consequently, although in theory the business was transferred
+to the state, in reality the capitalist retained his place and his
+profits as under the old system. Consequently, the principal aims of
+socialism, which are the distribution of the proceeds of industry among
+the community and the retention of a certain surplus by the state, were
+missed. In the Bolshevist procedure the state is wholly eliminated
+except for the purpose of upholding a fiction. It receives nothing from
+the capitalist, not even a royalty.
+
+The Slav is a dreamer whose sense of the real is often defective. He
+loses himself in vague generalities and pithless abstractions. Thus,
+before opening a school he will spin out a theory of universal
+education, and then bemoan his lack of resources to realize it. True,
+many of the chiefs of the sect--for it is undoubtedly a sect when it is
+not a criminal conspiracy, and very often it is both--were not Slavs,
+but Jews, who, for the behoof of their kindred, dropped their Semitic
+names and adopted sonorous Slav substitutes. But they were most
+unscrupulous peculators, incapable of taking an interest in the
+scientific aspect of such matters, and hypnotized by the dreams of lucre
+which the opportunity evoked. One has only to call to mind some of the
+shabby transactions in which the Semitic Dictator of Hungary, Kuhn, or
+Cohen, and Braunstein (Trotzky) of Petrograd, took an active part. The
+former is said to have offered for sale the historic crown of St.
+Stephen of Hungary--which to him was but a plain gold headgear adorned
+with precious stones and a jeweled cross--to an old curiosity dealer of
+Munich,[278] and when solemnly protesting that he was living only for
+the Soviet Republic and was ready to die for it, he was actively
+engaged in smuggling out of Hungary into Switzerland fifty million
+kronen bonds, thirty-five kilograms of gold, and thirty chests filled
+with objects of value.[279] His colleague Szamuelly's plunder is a
+matter of history.
+
+To such adventurers as those science is a drug. They are primitive
+beings impressible mainly to concrete motives of the barest kind. The
+dupes of Lenin were people of a different type. Many of them fancied
+that the great political clash must inevitably result in an equally
+great and salutary social upheaval. This assumption has not been borne
+out by events.
+
+Those fanatics fell into another error; they were in a hurry, and would
+fain have effected their great transformation as by the waving of a
+magician's wand. Impatient of gradation, they scorned to traverse the
+distance between the point of departure and that of the goal, and by way
+of setting up the new social structure without delay, they rolled away
+all hindrances regardless of consequences. In this spirit of absolutism
+they abolished the services of the national debt, struck out the claims
+of Russia's creditors to their capital or interest, and turned the shops
+and factories over to labor boards. That was the initial blunder which
+the ukase alluded to was subsequently issued to rectify. But it was too
+late. The equilibrium of the forces of production had been definitely
+upset and could no longer be righted.
+
+One of the basic postulates of profitable production is the equilibrium
+of all its essential factors--such as the laborer's wages, the cost of
+the machinery and the material, the administration. Bring discord into
+the harmony and the entire mechanism is out of gear.
+
+The Russian workman, who is at bottom an illiterate peasant with the old
+roots of serfdom still clinging to him, has seldom any bowels for his
+neighbor and none at all for his employer. "God Himself commands us to
+despoil such gentry," is one of his sayings. He is in a hurry to enrich
+himself, and he cares about nothing else. Nor can he realize that to
+beggar his neighbors is to impoverish himself. Hence he always takes and
+never gives; as a peasant he destroys the forests, hewing trees and
+planting none, and robs the soil of its fertility. On analogous lines he
+would fain deal with the factories, exacting exorbitant wages that eat
+up all profit, and naively expecting the owner to go on paying them as
+though he were the trustee of a fund for enriching the greedy. The only
+people to profit by the system, and even they only transiently, were the
+manual laborers. The bulk of the skilled, intelligent, and educated
+artisans were held up to contempt and ostracized, or killed as an odious
+aristocracy. That, it has been aptly pointed out,[280] is far removed
+from Marxism. The Marxist doctrine postulates the adhesion of
+intelligent workers to the social revolution, whereas the Russian
+experimenters placed them in the same category as the capitalists, the
+aristocrats, and treated them accordingly. Another Marxist postulate not
+realized in Russia was that before the state could profitably proceed to
+nationalization the country must have been in possession of a
+well-organized, smooth-running industrial mechanism. And this was
+possible only in those lands in which capitalism had had a long and
+successful innings, not in the great Slav country of husbandmen.
+
+By way of glozing over these incongruities Lenin's ukase proclaimed that
+the measures enacted were only provisional, and aimed at enabling Russia
+to realize the great transformation by degrees. But the impression
+conveyed by the history of the social side of Lenin's activity is that
+Marxism, whether as understood by its author or as interpreted and
+twisted by its Russian adherents, has been tried and found
+impracticable. One is further warranted in saying that neither the
+visionary workers who are moved by misdirected zeal for social
+improvement nor the theorists who are constantly on the lookout for new
+and stimulating ideas are likely to discover in Russian Bolshevism any
+aspect but the one alluded to above worthy of their serious
+consideration.
+
+A much deeper mark was made on the history of the century by its
+methods.
+
+Compared with the soul-searing horrors let loose during the Bolshevist
+fit of frenzy, the worst atrocities recorded of Deputy Carrier and his
+noyades during the French Revolution were but the freaks of
+compassionate human beings. In Bolshevist Russia brutality assumed forms
+so monstrous that the modern man of the West shrinks from conjuring up a
+faint picture of them in imagination. Tens, perhaps hundreds, of
+thousands were done to death in hellish ways by the orders of men and of
+women. Eyes were gouged out, ears hacked off, arms and legs torn from
+the body in presence of the victims' children or wives, whose agony was
+thus begun before their own turn came. Men and women and infants were
+burned alive. Chinese executioners were specially hired to inflict the
+awful torture of the "thousand slices."[281] Officers had their limbs
+broken and were left for hours in agonies. Many victims are credibly
+reported to have been buried alive. History, from its earliest dawn down
+to the present day, has recorded nothing so profoundly revolting as the
+nameless cruelties in which these human fiends reveled. One gruesome
+picture of the less loathsome scenes enacted will live in history on a
+level with the _noyades_ of Nantes. I have seen several moving
+descriptions of it in Russian journals. The following account is from
+the pen of a French marine officer:
+
+"We have two armed cruisers outside Odessa. A few weeks ago one of them,
+having an investigation to make, sent a diver down to the bottom. A few
+minutes passed and the alarm signal was heard. He was hauled up and
+quickly relieved of his accoutrements. He had fainted away. When he came
+to, his teeth were chattering and the only articulate sounds that could
+be got from him were the words: 'It is horrible! It is awful!' A second
+diver was then lowered, with the same procedure and a like result.
+Finally a third was chosen, this time a sturdy lad of iron nerves, and
+sent down to the bottom of the sea. After the lapse of a few minutes the
+same thing happened as before, and the man was brought up. This time,
+however, there was no fainting fit to record. On the contrary, although
+pale with terror, he was able to state that he had beheld the sea-bed
+peopled with human bodies standing upright, which the swaying of the
+water, still sensible at this shallow depth, softly rocked as though
+they were monstrous algae, their hair on end bristling vertically, and
+their arms raised toward the surface.... All these corpses, anchored to
+the bottom by the weight of stones, took on an appearance of eerie life
+resembling, one might say, a forest of trees moved from side to side by
+the wind and eager to welcome the diver come down among them.... There
+were, he added, old men, children numerous beyond count, so that one
+could but compare them to the trees of a forest."[282]
+
+From published records it is known that the Bolshevist thugs, when
+tired of using the rifle, the machine-gun, the cord, and the bayonet,
+expedited matters by drowning their victims by hundreds in the Black
+Sea, in the Gulf of Finland, and in the great rivers. Submarine
+cemeteries was the name given to these last resting-places of some of
+Russia's most high-minded sons and daughters.[283] It is not in the
+French Revolution that those deeds of wanton destruction and revolting
+cruelty which are indissolubly associated with Bolshevism find a
+parallel, but in Chinese history, which offers a striking and curious
+prefiguration of the Leninist structure.[284] Toward the middle of the
+tenth century, when the empire was plunged in dire confusion, a mystical
+sect was formed there for the purpose of destroying by force every
+vestige of the traditional social fabric, and establishing a system of
+complete equality without any state organization whatever, after the
+manner advocated by Leo Tolstoy. Some of the dicta of these sectarians
+have a decidedly Bolshevist flavor. This, for example: "Society rests
+upon law, property, religion, and force. But law is injustice and
+chicane; property is robbery and extortion; religion is untruth, and
+force is iniquity." In those days Chinese political parties were at
+strife with each other, and none of them scorned any means, however
+brutal, to worst its adversaries, but for a long while they were divided
+among themselves and without a capable chief.
+
+At last the Socialist party unexpectedly produced a leader, Wang Ngan
+Shen, a man of parts, who possessed the gift of drawing and swaying the
+multitude. Of agreeable presence, he was resourceful and unscrupulous,
+soon became popular, and even captivated the Emperor, Shen Tsung, who
+appointed him Minister. He then set about applying his tenets and
+realizing his dreams. Wang Ngan Shen began by making commerce and trade
+a state monopoly, just as Lenin had done, "in order," he explained, "to
+keep the poor from being devoured by the rich." The state was proclaimed
+the sole owner of all the wealth of the soil; agricultural overseers
+were despatched to each district to distribute the land among the
+peasants, each of these receiving as much as he and his family could
+cultivate. The peasant obtained also the seed, but this he was obliged
+to return to the state after the ingathering of the harvest. The power
+of the overseer went farther; it was he who determined what crops the
+husbandman might sow and who fixed day by day the price of every salable
+commodity in the district. As the state reserved to itself the right to
+buy all agricultural produce, it was bound in return to save up a part
+of the profits to be used for the benefit of the people in years of
+scarcity, and also at other times to be employed in works needed by the
+community. Wang Ngan Shen also ordained that only the wealthy should pay
+taxes, the proceeds of which were to be employed in relieving the wants
+of the poor, the old, and the unemployed. The theory was smooth and
+attractive.
+
+For over thirty years those laws are said to have remained in force, at
+any rate on paper. To what extent they were carried out is
+problematical. Probably a beginning was actually made, for during Wang's
+tenure of office confusion was worse confounded than before, and misery
+more intense and widespread. The opposition to his regime increased,
+spread, and finally got the upper hand. Wang Ngan Shen was banished,
+together with those of his partizans who refused to accept the return to
+the old system. Such would appear to have been the first appearance of
+Bolshevism recorded in history.
+
+Another less complete parallel, not to the Bolshevist theory, but to the
+plight of the country which it ruined, may be found in the Chinese
+rebellion organized in the year 1850 by a peasant[285] who, having
+become a Christian, fancied himself called by God to regenerate his
+people. He accordingly got together a band of stout-hearted fellows whom
+he fanaticized, disciplined, and transformed into the nucleus of a
+strong army to which brigands, outlaws, and malcontents of every social
+layer afterward flocked. They overran the Yangtse Valley, invaded twelve
+of the richest provinces, seized six hundred cities and towns, and put
+an end to twenty million people in the space of twelve years by fire,
+sword, and famine.[286] To this bloody expedition Hung Sew Tseuen, a
+master of modern euphemism, gave the name of Crusade of the Great Peace.
+For twelve years this "Crusade" lasted, and it might have endured much
+longer had it not been for the help given by outsiders. It was there
+that "Chinese" Gordon won his laurels and accomplished a beneficent
+work.
+
+There were politicians at the Conference who argued that Russia, being
+in a position analogous to that of China in 1854, ought, like her, to be
+helped by the Great Powers. It was, they held, quite as much in the
+interests of Europe as in hers. But however forcible their arguments,
+they encountered an insurmountable obstacle in the fear entertained by
+the chiefs of the leading governments lest the extreme oppositional
+parties in their respective countries should make capital out of the
+move and turn them out of office. They invoked the interests of the
+cause of which they were the champions for declining to expose
+themselves to any such risk. It has been contended with warmth, and
+possibly with truth, that if at the outset the Great Powers had
+intervened they might with a comparatively small army have crushed
+Bolshevism and re-established order in Russia. On the other hand, it was
+objected that even heavy guns will not destroy ideas, and that the main
+ideas which supplied the revolutionary movement with vital force were
+too deeply rooted to have been extirpated by the most formidable foreign
+army. That is true. But these ideas were not especially characteristic
+of Bolshevism. Far from that, they were incompatible with it: the
+bestowal of land on the peasants, an equitable reform of the relations
+between workmen and employers, and the abolition of the hereditary
+principle in the distribution of everything that confers an unfair
+advantage on the individual or the class are certainly not postulates of
+Lenin's party. It is a tenable proposition that timely military
+assistance would have enabled the constructive elements of Russia to
+restore conditions of normal life, but the worth of timeliness was never
+realized by the heads of the governments who undertook to make laws for
+the world. They ignored the maxim that a statesman, when applying
+measures, must keep his eye on the clock, inasmuch as the remedy which
+would save a nation at one moment may hasten its ruin at another.
+
+The expedients and counter-expedients to which the Conference had
+recourse in their fitful struggles with Bolshevism were so many
+surprises to every one concerned, and were at times redolent of comedy.
+But what was levity and ignorance on the part of the delegates meant
+death, and worse than death, to tens of thousands of their protegees. In
+Russia their agents zealously egged on the order-loving population to
+rise up against the Bolsheviki and attack their strong positions,
+promising them immediate military help if they succeeded. But when,
+these exploits having been duly achieved, the agents were asked how soon
+the foreign reinforcements might be expected, they replied, calling for
+patience. After a time the Bolsheviki assailed the temporary victors,
+generally defeated them, and then put a multitude of defenseless people
+to the sword. Deplorable incidents of this nature, which are said to
+have occurred several times during the spring of 1919, shook the credit
+of the Allies, and kindled a feeling of just resentment among all
+classes of Russians.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[273] In the _Biessy_ (Devils).
+
+[274] _Russian Characteristics_, by E.B. Lanin (Eblanin, a Russian word
+which means native of Dublin, Eblana).
+
+[275] Educational reforms have been mentioned among its achievements and
+attributed to Lunatcharsky. That he exerted himself to spread elementary
+instruction must be admitted. But this progress and the effective
+protection and encouragement which he has undoubtedly extended to arts
+and sciences would seem to exhaust the list of items in the credit
+account of the Bolshevist regime.
+
+[276] _Frankfurter Zeitung_, February 28, 1919.
+
+[277] A succinct but interesting study of this question appeared in the
+_Handels-Zeitung_ of the _Berliner Tageblatt_, over the signature of Dr.
+Felix Pinner, July 20, 1918.
+
+[278] Cf. _Bonsoir_, July 29, 1919. The price was not fixed, but the
+minimum was specified. It was one hundred thousand kronen.
+
+[279] Cf. _Der Tag_, Vienna, August 13, 1919. _L'Echo de Paris_, August
+15, 1919.
+
+[280] By Dr. F. Pinner, H. Vorst, and others.
+
+[281] The condemned man is tied to a post or a cross, his mouth gagged,
+and the execution is made to last several hours. It usually begins with
+a slit on the forehead and the pulling down of the skin toward the chin.
+After the lapse of a certain time the nose is severed from the face. An
+interval follows, then an ear is lopped off, and so the devilish work
+goes on with long pauses. The skill of the executioner is displayed in
+the length of time during which the victim remains conscious.
+
+[282] Cf. _Le Figaro_, February 18, 1919.
+
+[283] I do not suggest that these crimes were ordered by Lenin. But it
+will not be gainsaid that neither he nor his colleagues punished the
+mass murderers or even protested against their crimes. Neither can it be
+maintained that massacres were confined to any one party.
+
+[284] This pre-Bolshevist movement is described in an interesting study
+on the socialist movement and systems, down to the year 1848, by El.
+Luzatto. Cf. _Der Bund_, August 16, 1918.
+
+[285] Hung Sew Tseuen. The rebellion lasted from 1850 to 1864.
+
+[286] The superb city of Nankin, with its temples and porcelain towers,
+was destroyed.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+HOW BOLSHEVISM WAS FOSTERED
+
+
+The Allies, then, might have solved the Bolshevist problem by making up
+their minds which of the two alternative politics--war against, or
+tolerance of, Bolshevism--they preferred, and by taking suitable action
+in good time. If they had handled the Russian tangle with skill and
+repaid a great sacrifice with a small one before it was yet too late,
+they might have hoped to harvest in abundant fruits in the fullness of
+time. But they belonged to the class of the undecided, whose members
+continually suffer from the absence of a middle word between yes and no,
+connoting what is neither positive nor negative. They let the
+opportunity slip. Not only did they withhold timely succor to either
+side, but they visited some of the most loyal Russians in western Europe
+with the utmost rigor of coercion laws. They hounded them down as
+enemies. They cooped them up in cages as though they were Teuton
+enemies. They encircled them with barbed wire. They kept many of them
+hungry and thirsty, deprived them of life's necessaries for days, and in
+some cases reduced the discontented--and who in their place would not be
+discontented?--to pick their food in dustbins among garbage and refuse.
+I have seen officers and men in France who had shed their blood joyfully
+for the Entente cause gradually converted to Bolshevism by the misdeeds
+of the Allied authorities. In whose interests? With what helpful
+results?
+
+I watched the development of anti-Ententism among those Russians with
+painful interest, and in favorable conditions for observation, and I say
+without hesitation that rancor against the Allies burns as vehemently
+and intensely among the anti-Bolshevists as among their adversaries. "My
+country as a whole is bitterly hostile to her former allies," exclaimed
+an eminent Russian, "for as soon as she had rendered them inestimable
+services, at the cost of her political existence, they turned their
+backs upon her as though her agony were no affair of theirs. To-day the
+nation is divided on many issues. Dissensions and quarrels have riven
+and shattered it into shreds. But in one respect Russia is still
+united--in the vehemence of her sentiment toward the Allies, who first
+drained her life-blood and then abandoned her prostrate body to beasts
+of prey. Some part of the hatred engendered might have been mitigated if
+representatives of the provisional Russian government had been admitted
+to the Conference. A statesman would have insisted upon opening at least
+this little safety-valve. It would have helped and could not have harmed
+the Allies. It would have bound the Russians to them. For Russia's
+delegates, the men sent or empowered by Kolchak and his colleagues to
+represent them, would have been the exponents of a helpless community
+hovering between life and death. They could and would have gone far
+toward conciliating the world-dictators, to whose least palatable
+decisions they might have hesitated to offer unbending opposition. And
+this acquiescence, however provisional, would have tended to relieve the
+Allies of a sensible part of their load of responsibility. It would also
+have linked the Russians, loosely, perhaps, but perceptibly, to the
+Western Powers. It would have imparted a settled Ententophil direction
+to Kolchak's policy, and communicated it to the nation. In short, it
+might have dispelled some of the storm-clouds that are gathering in the
+east of Europe."
+
+But the Allies, true to their wont of drifting, put off all decisive
+action, and let things slip and slide, for the Germans to put in order.
+There were no Russians, therefore, at the Conference, and there lies no
+obligation on any political group or party in the anarchist Slav state
+to hold to the Allies. But it would be an error to imagine that they
+have a white sheet of paper on which to trace their line of action and
+write the names of France and Britain as their future friends. They are
+filled with angry disgust against these two ex-Allies, and of the two
+the feeling against France is especially intense.[287]
+
+It is a truism to repeat in a different form what Messrs. Lloyd George
+and Wilson repeatedly affirmed, but apparently without realizing what
+they said: that the peace which they regard as the crowning work of
+their lives deserves such value as it may possess from the assumption
+that Russia, when she recovers from her cataleptic fit, will be the ally
+of the Powers that have dismembered her. If this postulate should prove
+erroneous, Germany may form an anti-Allied league of a large number of
+nations which it would be invidious to enumerate here. But it is
+manifest that this consummation would imperil Poland, Czechoslovakia,
+and Jugoslavia, and sweep away the last vestiges of the peace
+settlement. And although it would be rash to make a forecast of the
+policy which new Russia will strike out, it would be impolitic to blink
+the conclusions toward which recent events significantly point.
+
+In April a Russian statesman said to me: "The Allied delegates are
+unconsciously thrusting from them the only means by which they can still
+render peace durable and a fellowship of the nations possible.
+Unwittingly they are augmenting the forces of Bolshevism and raising
+political enemies against themselves. Consider how they are behaving
+toward us. Recently a number of Russian prisoners escaped from Germany
+to Holland, whereupon the Allied representatives packed them off by
+force and against their will to Dantzig, to be conveyed thence to Libau,
+where they have become recruits of the Bolshevist Red Guards. Those men
+might have been usefully employed in the Allied countries, to whose
+cause they were devoted, but so exasperated were they at their forcible
+removal to Libau that many of them declared that they would join the
+Bolshevist forces.
+
+"Even our official representatives are seemingly included in the
+category of suspects. Our Minister in Peking was refused the right of
+sending ciphered telegrams and our charge d'affaires in a European
+capital suffered the same deprivation, while the Bolshevist envoy
+enjoyed this diplomatic privilege. A councilor of embassy in one Allied
+country was refused a passport visa for another until he declared that
+if the refusal were upheld he would return a high order which for
+extraordinary services he had received from the government whose embassy
+was vetoing his visa. On the national festival of a certain Allied
+country the charge d'affaires of Russia was the only member of the
+diplomatic corps who received no official invitation."
+
+One day in January, when a crowd had gathered on the Quai d'Orsay,
+watching the delegates from the various countries--British, American,
+Italian, Japanese, Rumanian, etc.--enter the stately palace to safeguard
+the interests of their respective countries and legislate for the human
+race, a Russian officer passed, accompanied by an illiterate soldier who
+had seen hard service first under the Grand Duke Nicholas, and then in a
+Russian brigade in France. The soldier gazed wistfully at the palace,
+then, turning to the officer, asked, "Are they letting any of our people
+in there?" The officer answered, evasively: "They are thinking it over.
+Perhaps they will." Whereupon his attendant blurted out: "Thinking it
+over! What thinking is wanted? Did we not fight for them till we were
+mowed down like grass? Did not millions of Russian bodies cover the
+fields, the roads, and the camps? Did we not face the German great guns
+with only bayonets and sticks? Have we done too little for them? What
+more could we have done to be allowed in there with the others? I fought
+since the war began, and was twice wounded. My five brothers were called
+up at the same time as myself, and all five have been killed, and now
+the Russians are not wanted! The door is shut in our faces...."
+
+Sooner or later Russian anarchy, like that of China, will come to an
+end, and the leaders charged with the reconstitution of the country, if
+men of knowledge, patriotism, and character, will adopt a program
+conducive to the well-being of the nation. To what extent, one may ask,
+is its welfare compatible with the _status quo_ in eastern Europe, which
+the Allies, distracted by conflicting principles and fitful impulse,
+left or created and hope to perpetuate by means of a parchment
+instrument?
+
+The zeal with which the French authorities went to work to prevent the
+growth of Bolshevism in their country, especially among the Russians
+there, is beyond dispute. Unhappily it proved inefficacious. Indeed, it
+is no exaggeration to say that it defeated its object and produced the
+contrary effect. For attention was so completely absorbed by the aim
+that no consideration remained over for the means of attaining it. A few
+concrete examples will bring this home to the reader. The following
+narratives emanate from an eminent Russian, who is devoted to the
+Allies.
+
+There were scores of thousands of Russian troops in France. Most of them
+fought valiantly, others half-heartedly, and a few refused to fight at
+all. But instead of making distinctions the French authorities, moved by
+the instinct of self-preservation, and preferring prevention to cure,
+tarred them all with the same brush. "Give a dog a bad name and hang
+him," says the proverb, and it was exemplified in the case of the
+Russians, who soon came to be regarded as a _tertium quid_ between
+enemies of public order and suspicious neutrals. They were profoundly
+mistrusted. Their officers were deprived of their authority over their
+own men and placed under the command of excellent French officers, who
+cannot be blamed for not understanding the temper of the Slavs nor for
+rubbing them against the grain. The privates, seeing their superiors
+virtually degraded, concluded that they had forfeited their claim to
+respect, and treated them accordingly. That gave the death-blow to
+discipline. The officers, most of whom were devoted heart and soul to
+the cause of the Allies, with which they had fondly identified their
+own, lost heart. After various attempts to get themselves reinstated,
+their feelings toward the nation, which was nowise to blame for the
+excessive zeal of its public servants, underwent a radical change.
+Blazing indignation consumed whatever affection they had originally
+nurtured for the French, and in many cases also for the other Allies,
+and they went home to communicate their animus to their countrymen. The
+soldiers, who now began to be taunted and vilipended as Boches, threw
+all discipline to the winds and, feeling every hand raised against them,
+resolved to raise their hands against every man. These were the
+beginnings of the process of "bolshevization."
+
+This anti-Russian spirit grew intenser as time lapsed. Thousands of
+Russian soldiers were sent out to work for private employers, not by the
+War Ministry, but by the Ministry of Agriculture, under whom they were
+placed. They were fed and paid a wage which under normal circumstances
+should have contented them, for it was more than they used to receive in
+pre-war days in their own country. But the circumstances were not
+normal. Side by side with them worked Frenchmen, many of whom were
+unable physically to compete with the sturdy peasants from Perm and
+Vyatka. And when propagandists pointed out to them that the French
+worker was paid 100 per cent. more, they brooded over the inequality and
+labeled it as they were told. For overwork, too, the rate of pay was
+still more unequal. One result of this differential treatment was the
+estrangement of the two races as represented by the two classes of
+workmen, and the growth of mutual dislike. But there was another. When
+they learned, as they did in time, that the employer was selling the
+produce of their labor at a profit of 400 and 500 per cent., they had no
+hesitation about repeating the formulas suggested to them by socialist
+propagandists: "We are working for bloodsuckers. The bourgeois must be
+exterminated." In this way bitterness against the Allies and hatred of
+the capitalists were inculcated in tens of thousands of Russians who a
+few months before were honest, simple-minded peasants and
+well-disciplined soldiers. Many of these men, when they returned to
+their country, joined the Red Guards of Bolshevism with spontaneous
+ardor. They needed no pressing.
+
+There was one young officer of the Guards, in particular, named G----,
+who belonged to a very good family and was an exceptionally cultured
+gentleman. Music was his recreation, and he was a virtuoso on the
+violin. In the war he had distinguished himself first on the Russian
+front and then on the French. He had given of his best, for he was
+grievously wounded, had his left hand paralyzed, and lost his power of
+playing the violin forever. He received a high decoration from the
+French government. For the English nation he professed and displayed
+great affection, and in particular he revered King George, perhaps
+because of his physical resemblance to the Tsar. And when King George
+was to visit Paris he rejoiced exceedingly at the prospect of seeing
+him. Orders were issued for the troops to come out and line the
+principal routes along which the monarch would pass. The French
+naturally had the best places, but the Place de l'Etoile was reserved
+for the Allied forces. G----, delighted, went to his superior officer
+and inquired where the Russians were to stand. The general did not know,
+but promised to ascertain. Accordingly he put the question to the French
+commander, who replied: "Russian troops? There is no place for any
+Russian troops." With tears in his eyes G---- recounted this episode,
+adding: "We, who fought and bled, and lost our lives or were crippled,
+had to swallow this humiliation, while Poles and Czechoslovaks, who had
+only just arrived from America in their brand-new uniforms, and had
+never been under fire, had places allotted to them in the pageant. Is
+that fair to the troops without whose exploits there would have been no
+Polish or Czechoslovak officers, no French victory, no triumphal entry
+of King George V into Paris?"
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[287] It is right to say that during the summer months a considerable
+section of the anti-Bolshevists modified their view of Britain's policy,
+and expressed gratitude for the aid bestowed on Kolchak, Denikin, and
+Yudenitch, without which their armies would have collapsed.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+SIDELIGHTS ON THE TREATY
+
+
+From the opening of the Conference fundamental differences sprang up
+which split the delegates into two main parties, of which one was
+solicitous mainly about the resettlement of the world and its future
+mainstay, the League of Nations, and the other about the furtherance of
+national interests, which, it maintained, was equally indispensable to
+an enduring peace. The latter were ready to welcome the League on
+condition that it was utilized in the service of their national
+purposes, but not if it countered them. To bridge the chasm between the
+two was the task to which President Wilson courageously set his hand.
+Unluckily, by way of qualifying for the experiment, he receded from his
+own strong position, and having cut his moorings from one shove, failed
+to reach the other. His pristine idea was worthy of a world-leader; had,
+in fact, been entertained and advocated by some of the foremost spirits
+of modern times. He purposed bringing about conditions under which the
+pacific progress of the world might be safeguarded in a very large
+measure and for an indefinite time. But being very imperfectly
+acquainted with the concrete conditions of European and Asiatic
+peoples--he had never before felt the pulsation of international
+life--his ideas about the ways and means were hazy, and his calculations
+bore no real reference to the elements of the problem. Consequently,
+with what seemed a wide horizon and a generous ambition, his grasp was
+neither firm nor comprehensive enough for such a revolutionary
+undertaking. In no case could he make headway without the voluntary
+co-operation of the nations themselves, who in their own best interests
+might have submitted to heavy sacrifices, to which their leaders, whom
+he treated as true exponents of their will, refused their consent. But
+he scouted the notion of a world-parliament. Whenever, therefore,
+contemplating a particular issue, not as an independent question in
+itself, but as an integral part of a larger problem, he made a
+suggestion seemingly tending toward the ultimate goal, his motion
+encountered resolute opposition in the face of which he frequently
+retreated.
+
+At the outset, on which so much depended, the peoples as distinguished
+from the governments appeared to be in general sympathy with his
+principal aim, and it seemed at the time that if appealed to on a clear
+issue they would have given him their whole-hearted support, provided
+always that, true to his own principles, he pressed these to the fullest
+extent and admitted no such invidious distinctions as privileged and
+unprivileged nations. This belief was confirmed by what I heard from men
+of mark, leaders of the labor people, and three Prime Ministers. They
+assured me that such an appeal would have evoked an enthusiastic
+response in their respective countries. Convinced that the principles
+laid down by the President during the last phases of the war would go
+far to meet the exigencies of the conjuncture, I ventured to write on
+one of the occasions, when neither party would yield to the other: "The
+very least that Mr. Wilson might now do, if the deadlock continues, is
+to publish to the world the desirable objects which the United States
+are disinterestedly, if not always wisely, striving for, and leave the
+judgment to the peoples concerned."[288]
+
+But he recoiled from the venture. Perhaps it was already too late. In
+the judgment of many, his assent to the suppression of the problem of
+the freedom of the seas, however unavoidable as a tactical expedient,
+knelled the political world back to the unregenerate days of strategical
+frontiers, secret alliances, military preparations, financial burdens,
+and the balance of power. On that day, his grasp on the banner relaxing,
+it fell, to be raised, it may be, at some future time by the peoples
+whom he had aspired to lead. The contests which he waged after that
+first defeat had little prospect of success, and soon the pith and
+marrow of the issue completely disappeared. The utmost he could still
+hope for was a paper covenant--- which is a different thing from a
+genuine accord--to take home with him to Washington. And this his
+colleagues did not grudge him. They were operating with a different cast
+of mind upon a wholly different set of ideas. Their aims, which they
+pursued with no less energy and with greater perseverance than Mr.
+Wilson displayed, were national. Some of them implicitly took the ground
+that Germany, having plunged the world in war, would persist
+indefinitely in her nefarious machinations, and must, therefore, in the
+interests of general peace, be crippled militarily, financially,
+economically, and politically, for as long a time as possible, while her
+potential enemies must for the same reason be strengthened to the utmost
+at her expense, and that this condition of things must be upheld through
+the beneficent instrumentality of the League of Nations.
+
+On these conflicting issues ceaseless contention went on from the start,
+yet for lack of a strong personality of sound, over-ruling judgment the
+contest dragged on without result. For months the demon of
+procrastination seemed to have possessed the souls of the principal
+delegates, and frustrated their professed intentions to get through the
+work expeditiously. Even unforeseen incidents led to dangerous delay.
+Every passing episode became a ground for postponing the vital issue,
+although each day lost increased the difficulties of achieving the
+principal object, which was the conclusion of peace. For example, the
+committee dealing with the question of reparations would reach a
+decision, say, that Germany must pay a certain sum, which would entail a
+century of strenuous effort, accompanied with stringent thrift and
+self-denial; while the Economic Committee decided that her supply of raw
+material should be restricted within such narrow limits as to put such
+payment wholly out of her power. And this difference of view
+necessitated a postponement of the whole issue. Mr. Hughes, the Premier
+of Australia, commenting on this shilly-shallying, said with truth:[289]
+"The minds of the people are grievously perturbed. The long delay,
+coupled with fears lest that the Peace Treaty, when it does come, should
+prove to be a peace unworthy, unsatisfactory, unenduring, has made the
+hearts of the people sick. We were told that the Peace Treaty would be
+ready in the coming week, but we look round and see half a world engaged
+in war, or preparation for war. Bolshevism is spreading with the
+rapidity of a prairie fire. The Allies have been forced to retreat from
+some of the most fertile parts of southern Russia, and Allied troops,
+mostly British, at Murmansk and Archangel are in grave danger of
+destruction. Yet we were told that peace was at hand, and that the world
+was safe for liberty and democracy. It is not fine phrases about peace,
+liberty, and making the world safe for democracy that the world wants,
+but deeds. The peoples of the Allied countries justifiably desire to be
+reassured by plain, comprehensible statements, instead of
+long-drawn-out negotiations and the thick veil of secrecy in which
+these were shrouded."
+
+It requires an effort to believe that procrastination was raised to the
+level of a theory by men whose experience of political affairs was
+regarded as a guarantee of the soundness of their judgment. Yet it is an
+incontrovertible fact that dilatory tactics were seriously suggested as
+a policy at the Conference. It was maintained that, far from running
+risks by postponing a settlement, the Entente nations were, on the
+contrary, certain to find the ground better prepared the longer the day
+of reckoning was put off. Germany, they contended, had recovered
+temporarily from the Bolshevik fever, but the improvement was fleeting.
+The process of decomposition was becoming intenser day by day, although
+the symptoms were not always manifest. Lack of industrial production, of
+foreign trade and sound finances, was gnawing at the vitals of the
+Teuton Republic. The army of unemployed and discontented was swelling.
+Soon the sinister consequences of this stagnation would take the form of
+rebellions and revolts, followed by disintegration. And this conjunction
+would be the opportunity of the Entente Powers, who could then step in,
+present their bills, impose their restrictions, and knead the Teuton
+dough into any shape they relished. Then it would be feasible to
+prohibit the Austrian-Germans from ever entering the Republic as a
+federated state. In a word, the Allied governments need only command,
+and the Teutons would hasten to obey. It is hardly credible that men of
+experience in foreign politics should build upon such insecure
+foundations as these. It is but fair to say the Conference rejected this
+singular program in theory while unintentionally carrying it out.
+
+Although everybody admitted that the liquidation of the world conflict
+followed by a return to normal conditions was the one thing that pressed
+for settlement, so intent were the plenipotentiaries on preventing wars
+among unborn generations that they continued to overlook the pressing
+needs of their contemporaries. It is at the beginning and end of an
+enterprise that the danger of failure is greatest, and it was the
+opening moves of the Allies that proved baleful to their subsequent
+undertakings. Germany, one would think, might have been deprived
+summarily of everything which was to be ultimately and justly taken from
+her, irrespective of its final destination. The first and most important
+operation being the severance of the provinces allotted to other
+peoples, their redistribution might safely have been left until
+afterward. And hardly less important was the despatch of an army to
+eastern Europe. Then Germany, broken in spirit, with Allied troops on
+both her fronts, between the two jaws of a vise, could not have said nay
+to the conditions. But this method presupposed a plan which unluckily
+did not exist. It assumed that the peace terms had been carefully
+considered in advance, whereas the Allies prepared for war during
+hostilities, and for peace during the negotiations. And they went about
+this in a leisurely, lackadaisical way, whereas expedition was the key
+to success.
+
+As for a durable peace, involving general disarmament, it should have
+been outlined in a comprehensive program, which the delegates had not
+drawn up, and it would have become feasible only if the will to pursue
+it proceeded from principle, not from circumstances. In no case could it
+be accomplished without the knowledge and co-operation of the peoples
+themselves, nor within the time-limits fixed for the work of the
+Conference. For the abolition of war and the creation of a new ordering,
+like human progress, is a long process. It admits of a variety of
+beginnings, but one can never be sure of the end, seeing that it
+presupposes a radical change in the temper of the peoples, one might
+almost say a remodeling of human nature. It can only be the effect of a
+variety of causes, mainly moral, operating over a long period of time.
+Peace with Germany was a matter for the governments concerned; the
+elimination of war could only be accomplished by the peoples. The one
+was in the main a political problem, the other social, economical, and
+ethical.
+
+Mr. Balfour asserted optimistically[290] that the work of concluding
+peace with Germany was a very simple matter. None the less it took the
+Conference over five months to arrange it. So desperately slow was the
+progress of the Supreme Council that on the 213th day of the Peace
+Conference,[291] two months after the Germans had signed the conditions,
+not one additional treaty had been concluded, nay, none was even ready
+for signature. The Italian plenipotentiary, Signor Tittoni, thereupon
+addressed his colleagues frankly on the subject and asked them whether
+they were not neglecting their primary duty, which was to conclude
+treaties with the various enemies who had ceased to fight in November of
+the previous year and were already waiting for over nine months to
+resume normal life, and whether the delegates were justified in seeking
+to discharge the functions of a supreme board for the government of all
+Europe. He pointed out that nobody could hope to profit by the state of
+disorder and paralysis for which this procrastination was answerable,
+the economic effects making themselves felt sooner or later in every
+country. He added that the cost of the war had been calculated for every
+month, every week, every day, and that the total impressed every one
+profoundly; but that nobody had thought it worth his while to count up
+the atrocious cost of this incredibly slow peace and of the waste of
+wealth caused every week and month that it dragged on. Italy, he
+lamented, felt this loss more keenly than her partners because her peace
+had not yet been concluded. He felt moved, therefore, he said, to tell
+them that the business of governing Europe to which the Conference had
+been attending all those months was not precisely the work for which it
+was convoked.[292]
+
+This sharp and timely admonition was the preamble of a motion. The
+Conference was just then about to separate for a "well-earned holiday,"
+during which its members might renew their spent energies and return in
+October to resume their labors, the peoples in the meanwhile bearing the
+cost in blood and substance. The Italian delegate objected to any such
+break and adjured them to remain at their posts. Why, he asked, should
+ill-starred Italy, which had already sustained so many and such painful
+losses, be condemned to sacrifice further enormous sums in order that
+the delegates who had been frittering away their time tackling
+irrelevant issues, and endeavoring to rule all Europe, might have a
+rest? Why should they interrupt the sessions before making peace with
+Austria, with Hungary, with Bulgaria, with Turkey, and enabling Italy to
+return to normal life? Why should time and opportunity be given to the
+Turks and Kurds for the massacre of Armenian men, women, and children?
+This candid reminder is said to have had a sobering effect on the
+versatile delegates yearning for a holiday. The situation that evoked it
+will arouse the passing wonder of level-headed men.
+
+It is worth recording that such was the atmosphere of suspicion among
+the delegates that the motives for this holiday were believed by some to
+be less the need of repose than an unavowable desire to give time to
+the Hapsburgs to recover the Crown of St. Stephen as the first step
+toward seizing that of Austria.[293] The Austrians desired exemption
+from the obligation to make reparations and pay crushing taxes, and one
+of the delegates, with a leaning for that country, was not averse to the
+idea. As the states that arose on the ruins of the Hapsburg monarchy
+were not considered enemies by the Conference, it was suggested that
+Austria herself should enjoy the same distinction. But the Italian
+plenipotentiaries objected and Signor Tittoni asked, "Will it perhaps be
+asserted that there was no enemy against whom we Italians fought for
+three years and a half, losing half a million slain and incurring a debt
+of eighty thousand millions?"
+
+A French journal, touching on this Austrian problem, wrote:[294]
+"Austria-Hungary has been killed and now France is striving to raise it
+to life again. But Italy is furiously opposed to everything that might
+lead to an understanding among the new states formed out of the old
+possessions of the Hapsburgs. That, in fact, is why our transalpine
+allies were so favorable to the union of Austria with Germany. France on
+her side, whose one overruling thought is to reduce her vanquished enemy
+to the most complete impotence, France who is afraid of being afraid,
+will not tolerate an Austria joined to the German Federation." Here the
+principle of self-determination went for nothing.
+
+Before the Conference had sat for a month it was angrily assailed by the
+peoples who had hoped so much from its love of justice--Egyptians,
+Koreans, Irishmen from Ireland and from America, Albanians, Frenchmen
+from Mauritius and Syria, Moslems from Aderbeidjan, Persians, Tartars,
+Kirghizes, and a host of others, who have been aptly likened to the halt
+and maimed among the nations waiting round the diplomatic Pool of Siloam
+for the miracle of the moving of the waters that never came.[295]
+
+These peoples had heard that a great and potent world-reformer had
+arisen whose mission it was to redress secular grievances and confer
+liberty upon oppressed nations, tribes, and tongues, and they sent their
+envoys to plead before him. And these wandered about the streets of
+Paris seeking the intercession of delegates, Ministers, and journalists
+who might obtain for them admission to the presence of the new Messiah
+or his apostles. But all doors were closed to them. One of the
+petitioners whose language was vernacular English, as he was about to
+shake the dust of Paris from his boots, quoting Sydney Smith, remarked:
+"They, too, are Pharisees. They would do the Good Samaritan, but without
+the oil and twopence. How has it come to pass that the Jews without an
+official delegate commanded the support--the militant support--of the
+Supreme Council, which did not hesitate to tyrannize eastern Europe for
+their sake?"
+
+Involuntarily the student of politics called to mind the report written
+to Baron Hager[296] by one of his secret agents during the Congress of
+Vienna: "Public opinion continues to be unfavorable to the Congress. On
+all sides one hears it said that there is no harmony, that they are no
+longer solicitous about the re-establishment of order and justice, but
+are bent only on forcing one another's hands, each one grabbing as much
+as he can.... It is said that the Congress will end because it must, but
+that it will leave things more entangled than it found them.... The
+peoples, who in consequence of the success, the sincerity, and the
+noble-mindedness of this superb coalition had conceived such esteem for
+their leaders and such attachment to them, and now perceive how they
+have forgotten what they solemnly promised--justice, order, peace
+founded on the equilibrium and legitimacy of their possessions--will end
+by losing their affection and withdrawing their confidence in their
+principles and their promises."
+
+Those words, written a hundred and five years ago, might have been
+penned any day since the month of February, 1919.
+
+The leading motive of the policy pursued by the Supreme Council and
+embodied in the Treaty was aptly described at the time as the systematic
+protection of France against Germany. Hence the creation of the powerful
+barrier states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, Greater Rumania, and
+Greater Greece. French nationalists pleaded for further precautions more
+comprehensive still. Their contention was that France's economic,
+strategic, financial, and territorial welfare being the cornerstone of
+the future European edifice, every measure proposed at the Conference,
+whether national or general, should be considered and shaped in
+accordance with that, and consequently that no possibility should be
+accorded to Germany of rising again to a commanding position because, if
+she once recovered her ascendancy in any domain whatsoever, Europe would
+inevitably be thrust anew into the horrors of war. Territorially,
+therefore, the dismemberment of Germany was obligatory; the annexation
+of the Saar Valley, together with its six hundred thousand Teuton
+inhabitants, was necessary to France, and either the annexation of the
+left bank of the Rhine or its transformation into a detached state to be
+occupied and administered by the French until Germany pays the last
+farthing of the indemnity. Further, Austria must be deprived of the
+right of determining her own mode of existence and constrained to
+abandon the idea of becoming one of the federated states of the German
+Republic, and, if possible, northern Germany should be kept entirely
+separate from southern. The Allies should divide the Teutons in order to
+sway them. All Germany's other frontiers should be delimitated in a like
+spirit. And at the same time the work of knitting together the peoples
+and nations of Europe and forming them into a friendly sodality was to
+go forward without interruption.
+
+"How to promote our interests in the Rhineland," wrote M. Maurice
+Barres,[297] "is a life-and-death question for us. We are going to carry
+to the Rhine our military and, I hope, our economic frontier. The rest
+will follow in its own good time. The future will not fail to secure for
+us the acquiescence of the population of the Rhineland, who will live
+freely under the protection of our arms, their faces turned toward
+Paris."
+
+Financially it was proposed that the Teutons should be forced to
+indemnify France, Belgium, and the other countries for all the damage
+they had inflicted upon them; to pay the entire cost of the war, as well
+as the pensions to widows, orphans, and the mutilated. And the military
+occupation of their country should be maintained until this huge debt is
+wholly wiped out.
+
+A Nationalist organ,[298] in a leading article, stated with brevity and
+clearness the prevailing view of Germany's obligations. Here is a
+characteristic passage: "She is rich, has reserves derived from many
+years of former prosperity; she can work to produce and repair all the
+evil she has done, rebuild all the ruins she has accumulated, and
+restore all the fortunes she has destroyed, however irksome the burden."
+After analyzing Doctor Helfferich's report published six years ago, the
+article concluded, "Germany must pay; she disposes of the means because
+she is rich; if she refuses we must compel her without hesitation and
+without ruth."
+
+As France, whose cities and towns and very soil were ruined, could not
+be asked to restore these places at her own expense and tax herself
+drastically like her allies, the Americans and British, the prior and
+privileged right to receive payment on her share of the indemnity should
+manifestly appertain to her. Her allies and associates should, it was
+argued, accordingly waive their money claims until hers were satisfied
+in full. Moreover, as France's future expenditure on her army of
+occupation, on the administration of her colonies and of the annexed
+territories, must necessarily absorb huge sums for years to come, which
+her citizens feel they ought not to be asked to contribute, and as her
+internal debt was already overwhelming, it is only meet and just that
+her wealthier partners should pool their war debts with hers and share
+their financial resources with her and all their other allies. This, it
+was argued, was an obvious corollary of the war alliance. Economically,
+too, the Germans, while permitted to resume their industrial occupations
+on a sufficiently large scale to enable them to earn the wherewithal to
+live and discharge their financial obligations, should be denied free
+scope to outstrip France, whose material prosperity is admittedly
+essential to the maintenance of general peace and the permanence of the
+new ordering. In this condition, it is further contended, our chivalrous
+ally was entitled to special consideration because of her low
+birth-rate, which is one of the mainsprings of her difficulties. This
+may permanently keep her population from rising above the level of forty
+million, whereas Germany, by the middle of the century, will have
+reached the formidable total of eighty million, so that competition
+between them would not be on a footing of equality. Hence the chances
+should be evenly balanced by the action of the Conference, to be
+continued by the League. Discriminating treatment was therefore a
+necessity. And it should be so introduced that France should be free to
+maintain a protective tariff, of which she had sore need for her foreign
+trade, without causing umbrage to her allies. For they could not gainsay
+that her position deserved special treatment.
+
+Some of the Anglo-Saxon delegates took other ground, feeling unable to
+countenance the postulate underlying those demands, namely, that the
+Teuton race was to be forever anathema. They looked far enough ahead to
+make due allowance for a future when conditions in Europe will be very
+different from what they are to-day. The German race, they felt, being
+numerous and virile, will not die out and cannot be suppressed. And as
+it is also enterprising and resourceful it would be a mistake to render
+it permanently hostile by the Allies overstepping the bounds of justice,
+because in this case neither national nor general interests would be
+furthered. You may hinder Germany, they argued, from acquiring the
+hegemony of the world, but not from becoming the principal factor in
+European evolution. If thirty years hence the German population totals
+eighty million or more, will not their attitude and their sentiment
+toward their neighbors constitute an all-important element of European
+tranquillity and will not the trend of these be to a large extent the
+outcome of the Allies' policy of to-day? The present, therefore, is the
+time for the delegates to deprive that sentiment of its venomous,
+anti-Allied sting, not by renouncing any of their countries' rights, but
+by respecting those of others.
+
+That was the reasoning of those who believed that national striving
+should be subordinated to the general good, and that the present time
+and its aspirations should be considered in strict relation to the
+future of the whole community of nations. They further contended that
+while Germany deserved to suffer condignly for the heinous crimes of
+unchaining the war and waging it ruthlessly, as many of her own people
+confessed, she should not be wholly crippled or enthralled in the hope
+that she would be rendered thereby impotent forever. Such hope was vain.
+With her waxing strength her desire of vengeance would grow, and
+together with it the means of wreaking it. She might yet knead Russia
+into such a shape as would make that Slav people a serviceable
+instrument of revenge, and her endeavors might conceivably extend
+farther than Russia. The one-sided resettlement of Europe charged with
+explosives of such incalculable force would frustrate the most elaborate
+attempts to create not only a real league of nations, but even such a
+rough approximation toward one as might in time and under favorable
+circumstances develop into a trustworthy war preventive. They concluded
+that a league of nations would be worse than useless if transformed into
+a weapon to be wielded by one group of nations against another, or as an
+artificial makeshift for dispensing peoples from the observance of
+natural laws.
+
+At the same time all the governments of the Allies were sincere and
+unanimous in their desire to do everything possible to show their
+appreciation of France's heroism, to recognize the vastness of her
+sacrifices, and to pay their debt of gratitude for her services to
+humanity. All were actuated by a resolve to contribute in the measure of
+the possible to compensate her for such losses as were still reparable
+and to safeguard her against the recurrence of the ordeal from which she
+had escaped terribly scathed. The only limits they admitted to this
+work of reparation were furnished by the aim itself and by the means of
+attaining it. Thus Messrs. Wilson and Lloyd George held that to
+incorporate in renovated France millions or even hundreds of thousands
+of Germans would be to introduce into the political organism the germs
+of fell disease, and on this ground they firmly refused to sanction the
+Rhine frontier, which the French were thus obliged to relinquish. The
+French delegates themselves admitted that if granted it could not be
+held without a powerful body of international troops ever at the beck
+and call of the Republic, vigilantly keeping watch and ward on the banks
+of the Rhine and with no reasonable prospect of a term to this
+servitude. For the real ground of this dependence upon foreign forces is
+the disproportion between the populations of Germany and France and
+between the resources of the two nations. The ratio of the former is at
+present about six to four and it is growing perceptibly toward seven to
+four. The organizing capacity in commerce and industry is said to be
+even greater. If, therefore, France cannot stand alone to-day, still
+less could she stand alone in ten or fifteen years, and the necessity of
+protecting her against aggression, assuming that the German people does
+not become reconciled to its status of forced inferiority, would be more
+urgent and less practicable with the lapse of time. For, as we saw, it
+is largely a question of the birth-rate. And as neither the British nor
+the American people, deeply though they are attached to their gallant
+comrades in arms, would consent to this arrangement, which to them would
+be a burden and to the Germans a standing provocation, their
+representatives were forced to the conclusion that it would be the
+height of folly to do aught that would give the Teutons a convenient
+handle for a war of revenge. Let there be no annexation of territory,
+they said, no incorporation of unwilling German citizens. The Americans
+further argued that an indefinite occupation of German territory by a
+large body of international troops would be a direct encouragement to
+militarism.
+
+The indemnities for which the French yearned, and on which their
+responsible financiers counted, were large. The figures employed were
+astronomical. Hundreds of milliards of francs were operated with by
+eminent publicists in an offhand manner that astonished the survivor of
+the expiring budgetary epoch and rejoiced the hearts of the Western
+taxpayers. For it was not only journalists who wrote as though a stream
+of wealth were to be turned into these countries to fertilize industry
+and commerce there and enable them to keep well ahead of their pushing
+competitors. Responsible Ministers likewise hall-marked these forecasts
+with their approval. Before the fortune of war had decided for the
+Allies, the finances of France had sorely embarrassed the Minister, M.
+Klotz, of whom his chief, M. Clemenceau, is reported to have said: "He
+is the only Israelite I have ever known who is out of his element when
+dealing with money matters." Before the armistice, M. Klotz, when
+talking of the complex problem and sketching the outlook, exclaimed: "If
+we win the war, I undertake to make both ends meet, far though they now
+seem apart. For I will make the Germans pay the entire cost of the war."
+After the armistice he repeated his promise and undertook not to levy
+fresh taxation.
+
+Thus, despite fitful gleams of idealism, the atmosphere of the Paris
+Conclave grew heavy with interests, passions, and ambitions. Only people
+in blinkers could miss the fact that the elastic formulas launched and
+interpreted by President Wilson were being stretched to the
+snapping-point so as to cover two mutually incompatible policies. The
+chasm between his original prospects and those of his foreign associates
+they both conscientiously endeavored to ignore, and after a time they
+hit upon a _tertium quid_ between territorial equilibrium and a
+sterilized league tempered by the Monroe Doctrine and a military
+compact. This composite resultant carried with it the concentrated evils
+of one of these systems and was deprived of its redeeming features by
+the other. At a conjuncture in the world's affairs which postulated
+internationalism of the loftiest kind, the delegates increased and
+multiplied nations and states which they deprived of sovereignty and
+yoked to the first-class races. National ambitions took precedence of
+larger interests; racial hatred was raised to its highest power. In a
+word, the world's state system was so oddly pieced together that only
+economic exhaustion followed by a speedy return to militarism could
+insure for it a moderate duration.
+
+Territorial self-sufficiency, military strength, and advantageous
+alliances were accordingly looked to as the mainstays of the new
+ordering, even by those who paid lip tribute to the Wilsonian ideal. The
+ideal itself underwent a disfiguring change in the process of
+incarnation. The Italians asked how the Monroe Doctrine could be
+reconciled with the charter of the League of Nations, seeing that the
+League would be authorized to intervene in the domestic affairs of other
+member-states, and if necessary to despatch troops to keep Germany,
+Italy, and Poland in order; whereas if the United States were guilty of
+tyrannical aggression against Brazil, the Argentine Republic, or Mexico,
+the League, paralyzed by that Doctrine, must look on inactive. The
+Germans, alleging capital defects in the Wilsonian Covenant, which was
+adjusted primarily to the Allies' designs, went to Paris prepared with a
+substitute which, it must in fairness be admitted, was considerably
+superior to that of their adversaries, and incidentally fraught with
+greater promise to themselves.
+
+It is superfluous to add that the continental view prevailed, but Mr.
+Wilson imagined that, while abandoning his principles in favor of
+Britain, France, and Bulgaria, he could readjust the balance by applying
+them with rigor to Italy and exaggerating them when dealing with Greece.
+He afterward communicated his reasons for this belief in a message
+published in Washington.[299] The alliance--he was understood to have
+been opposed to all partial alliances on principle--which guarantees
+military succor to France, he had signed, he said, in gratitude to that
+country, for he seriously doubted whether the American Republic could
+have won its freedom against Britain's opposition without the gallant
+and friendly aid of France. "We recently had the privilege of assisting
+in driving enemies, who also were enemies of the world, from her soil,
+but that does not pay our debt to her. Nothing can pay such a debt." His
+critics retorted that that is a sentimental reason which might with
+equal force have been urged by France and Britain in justification of
+their promises to Italy and Rumania, yet was rejected as irrelevant by
+Mr. Wilson in the name of a higher principle.
+
+
+The President of the United States, it was further urged, is a
+historian, and history tells him that the help given to his country
+against England neither came from the French people nor was actuated by
+sympathy for the American cause. It was the vindictive act of one of
+those kings whose functions Mr. Wilson is endeavoring to abolish. The
+monarch who helped the Americans was merely utilizing a favorable
+opportunity for depriving with a minimum of effort his adversary of
+lucrative possessions. Moreover, the debt which nothing can pay was
+already due when in the years 1914-16 France was in imminent danger of
+being crushed by a ruthless enemy. But at that time Mr. Wilson owed his
+re-election largely to his refusal to extricate her from that peril.
+Instead of calling to mind the debt that can never be repaid he merely
+announced that he could not understand what the belligerents were
+fighting for and that in any case France's grateful debtor was too proud
+to fight. The motive which finally brought the United States into the
+World War may be the noblest that ever yet actuated any state, but no
+student of history will allow that Mr. Wilson has correctly described
+it.
+
+The fact is that the French delegates and their supporters were
+consistent and, except in their demand for the Rhine frontier,
+unbending. They drew up a program and saw that it was substantially
+carried out. They declared themselves quite ready to accept Mr. Wilson's
+project, but only on condition that their own was also realized,
+heedless of the incompatibility of the two. And Mr. Wilson felt
+constrained to make their position his own, otherwise he could not have
+obtained the Covenant he yearned for. And yet he must have known that
+acquiescence in the demands put forward by M. Clemenceau would lower the
+practical value of his Covenant to that of a sheet of paper.
+
+A blunt American journal, commenting on the handiwork of the Conference,
+gave utterance to views which while making no pretense to courtly
+phraseology are symptomatic of the way in which the average man thought
+and spoke of the Covenant which emanated from the Supreme Council. "We
+are convinced," it said, "that the elder statesmen of Europe, typified
+by Clemenceau, consider it a hoax. Clemenceau never before was so
+extremely bored by anything in his life as he was by the necessity of
+making a pious pretense in the Covenant when what he wanted was the
+assurance of the Triple Alliance. He got that assurance, which, along
+with the French watch on the Rhine, the French in the Saar Valley and
+in Africa, with German money going into French coffers, makes him
+tolerably indulgent of the altruistic rhetoricians.
+
+"The English, the intelligent English, we know have their tongues in
+their cheeks. The Italians are petulant imperialists, and Japan doesn't
+care what happens to the League so long as Japan says what shall happen
+in Asia."[300]
+
+Peace was at last signed, not on the basis of the Fourteen Points nor
+yet entirely on the lines of territorial equilibrium, but on those of a
+compromise which, missing the advantages of each, combined many of the
+evils of both and of others which were generated by their conjunction,
+and laid the foundations of the new state fabric on quick-sands. That
+was at bottom the view to which Italy, Rumania, and Greece gave
+utterance when complaining that their claims were being dealt with on
+the principle of self-denial, whereas those of France had been settled
+on the traditional basis of territorial guaranties and military
+alliances. Further, the Treaty failed to lay an ax to the roots of war,
+did, in fact, increase their number while purporting to destroy them.
+Far from that: germs of future conflicts not only between the late
+belligerents, but also between the recent Allies, were plentifully
+scattered and may sprout up in the fullness of time.
+
+
+The Paris press expressed its satisfaction with France's share of the
+fruits of victory. For the provisions of the Treaty went as far as any
+merely political arrangement could go to check the natural inequality,
+numerical, economical, industrial, and financial, between the Teuton and
+French peoples. To many this problem seemed wholly insoluble, because
+its solution involved a suspension or a corrective of a law of nature.
+Take the birth-rate in France, for example. Before the war it had long
+been declining at a rate which alarmed thoughtful French patriots. And,
+according to official statistics, it is falling off still more rapidly
+to-day, whereas the increase in other countries is greater than ever
+before.[301] Thus, whereas in the year 1911 there were 73,599 births in
+the Seine Department, there were only 47,480 in 1918. Wet nurses, too,
+are disappearing. Of these, in the year 1911, in the same territory
+there were 1,363, but in 1918 only 65. The mortality among foundlings
+rose from 5 per cent. before the war to 40 per cent. in the year
+1918.[302] M. Bertillon calculates that for France to increase merely at
+the same rate as other nations--not to recover the place among them
+which she has already lost, but only to keep her present one--she needs
+five hundred thousand more births than are registered at present. A
+statistical table which he drew up of the birth-rate of four European
+nations during five decades, beginning with the year 1861, is unpleasant
+reading[303] for the friends of that heroic and artistic people. France,
+containing in round numbers 40,000,000 inhabitants, ought to increase
+annually by 500,000. Before the war the total number of births in
+Germany was computed at one million nine hundred and fifty thousand, but
+hardly more than one million of the children born were viable.[304] The
+general conclusion to be drawn from these figures and from the
+circumstances that the falling off in the French population still goes
+on unchecked, is disquieting for those who desire to see the French
+race continue to play the leading part in continental Europe. One of the
+shrewdest observers in contemporary Germany--himself a distinguished
+Semite--commented on this decisive fact as follows:[305] "Within ten
+years Germany will contain seventy million inhabitants, and in the
+torrent of her fecundity will drown anemic and exhausted France.... The
+French nation is dying of exhaustion. There is no reason, however, for
+the world to get alarmed ... for before the French will have vanished
+from the earth, other races, virile and healthy, will have come to their
+country to take their place." That is what is actually happening, and it
+is impressively borne in upon the visitor to various French cities by
+the vast number of exotic names over houses of business and in other
+ways.
+
+With this formidable obstacle, then, the three members of the Supreme
+Council strenuously coped by exercising to the fullest extent the power
+conferred on the victors over the vanquished. And the result of their
+combinations challenged and received the unstinted approval of all those
+numerous enemies of Teutondom who believe the Germans to be incapable of
+contributing materially to human progress, unless they are kept in
+leading-strings by one of the superior races. The Treaty represents the
+potential realization of France's dream, achieved semi-miraculously by
+the very statesmen on whom the Teutons were relying to dispel it.
+Defeated, disarmed, incapable of military resistance, and devoid of
+friends, Germany thought she could discern her sheet-anchor of salvation
+in the Wilsonian gospel, and it was the preacher of this gospel himself
+who implicitly characterized her salvation as more difficult than the
+passage of a camel through the eye of a needle. The crimes perpetrated
+by the Teutons were unquestionably heinous beyond words, and no
+punishment permitted by the human conscience is too drastic to atone for
+them. How long this punishment should endure, whether it should be
+inflicted on the entire people as well as on their leaders, and what
+form should be given to it, were among the questions confronting the
+Secret Council, and they implicitly answered them in the way we have
+seen.
+
+People who consider the answer adequate and justified give as their
+reason that it presupposes and attains a single object--the efficacious
+protection of France as the sentinel of civilization against an
+incorrigible arch-enemy. And in this they may be right. But if you
+enlarge the problem till it covers the moral fellowship of nations, and
+if you postulate that as a safeguard of future peace and neighborliness
+in the world, then the outcome of the Treaty takes on a different
+coloring. Between France and Germany it creates a sea of bitterness
+which no rapturous exultation over the new ethical ordering can sweeten.
+The latter nation is assumed to be smitten with a fell moral disease, to
+which, however, the physicians of the Conference have applied no moral
+remedy, but only measures of coercion, mostly powerful irritants. The
+reformed state of Europe is consequently a state of latent war between
+two groups of nations, of which one is temporarily prostrate and both
+are naively exhorted to join hands and play a helpful part in an idyllic
+society of nations. This expectation is the delight of cynics and the
+despair of those serious reformers who are not interested politicians.
+Heretofore the most inveterate optimists in politics were the
+revolutionaries. But they have since been outdone by the Paris
+world-reformers, who tempt Providence by calling on it to accomplish by
+a miracle an object which they have striven hard and successfully to
+render impossible by the ordinary operation of cause and effect. Thus
+the Covenant mars the Treaty, and the Treaty the Covenant.
+
+In Weimar and Berlin the Treaty was termed the death-sentence of
+Germany, not only as an empire, but as an independent political
+community. Henceforward her economic efforts, beyond a certain limit,
+will be struck with barrenness, her industry will be hindered from
+outstripping or overtaking that of the neighboring countries, and her
+population will be indirectly kept within definite bounds. For, instead
+of exporting manufactures, she will be obliged to export human beings,
+whose intellect and skill will be utilized by such rivals of her own
+race as vouchsafe to admit them. Already before the Conference was over
+they began to emigrate eastward. And those who remain at home will not
+be masters in their own house, for the doors will be open to various
+foreign commissions.
+
+The assumption upon which the Treaty-framers proceeded is that the
+abominations committed by the German military and civil authorities were
+constructively the work of the entire nation, for whose reformation
+within a measurable period hope is vain. This view predominated among
+the ruling classes of the Entente peoples with few exceptions. If it be
+correct, it seems superfluous to constrain the enemy to enter the league
+of law-abiding nations, which is to be cemented only by voluntary
+adherence and by genuine attachment to liberty, right, and justice.
+Hence the Covenant, by being inserted in the Peace Treaty, necessarily
+lost its value as an eirenicon, and became subsequent to that
+instrument, and seems likely to be used as an anti-German safeguard. But
+even then its efficacy is doubtful, and manifestly so; otherwise the
+reformers, who at the start set out to abolish alliances as recognized
+causes of war, would not have ended by setting up a new Triple
+Alliance, which involves military, naval, and aerial establishments, and
+the corresponding financial burdens inseparable from these. An alliance
+of this character, whatever one may think of its economic and financial
+aspects, runs counter to the spirit of the Covenant, but was an obvious
+corollary of the Allies' attitude as mirrored in the Treaty. And the
+spirit of the Treaty destroys the letter of the Covenant. For the world
+is there implicitly divided into two camps--the friends and the enemies
+of liberty, right, and justice; and the main functions of the League as
+narrowed by the Treaty will be to hinder or defeat the machinations of
+the enemies. Moreover, the deliberate concessions made by the Conference
+to such agencies of the old ordering as the grouping of two or three
+Powers into defensive alliances bids fair to be extended in time. For
+the stress of circumstance is stronger than the will of man. At this
+rate the last state may be worse than the first.
+
+The world situation, thus formally modified, remained essentially
+unchanged, and will so endure until other forces are released. The
+League of Nations forfeited its ideal character under the pressure of
+national interests, and became a coalition of victors against the
+vanquished. By the insertion of the Covenant in the Treaty the former
+became a means for the execution of the latter. For even Mr. Wilson,
+faced with realities and called to practical counsel, affectionately
+dismissed the high-souled speculative projects in which he delighted
+during his hours of contemplation. Although the German delegates signed
+the Treaty, no one can honestly say that he expects them to observe it
+longer than constraint presses, however solemn the obligations imposed.
+
+In the press organ of the most numerous and powerful political party in
+Germany one might read in an article on the Germans in Bohemia annexed
+by Czechoslovakia: "Assuredly their destiny will not be determined for
+all time by the Versailles peace of violence. It behooves the German
+nation to cherish its affection for its oppressed brethren, even though
+it be powerless to succor them immediately. What then can it do? Italy
+has given it a marvelous lesson in the policy of irredentism, which she
+pursued in respect of the Trentino and Trieste."[306]
+
+With the Treaty as it stands, nationalist France of this generation has
+reason to be satisfied. One of its framers, himself a shrewd business
+man and politician, publicly set forth the grounds for this
+satisfaction.[307] Alsace and Lorraine reunited to the metropolis, he
+explained, will assist France materially with an industrious population
+and enormous resources in the shape of mineral wealth and a fruitful
+soil. Germany's former colonies, Kamerun and Togoland, are become
+French, and will doubtless offer a vast and attractive field for the
+expansion and prosperity of the French population. Morocco, freed from
+German enterprise, can henceforth be developed by the French population
+alone and without let or hindrance, for the benefit of the natives and
+in the true sense of Mr. Wilson's humanitarian ordinances. The potash
+deposits, to which German agriculture largely owed its prosperity, will
+henceforward be utilized in the service of French agriculture. "In iron
+ore the wealth of France is doubled, and her productive capacity as
+regards pig-iron and steel immensely increased. Her production of
+textiles is greater than before the war by about a third."[308] In a
+word, a vast area of the planet inhabited by various peoples will look
+to the French people for everything that makes their collective life
+worth living.
+
+The sole arrangement which for a time caused heart-burnings in France
+was that respecting the sums of money which Germany should have been
+made to pay to her victorious enemies. For the opinions on that subject
+held by the average man, and connived at or approved by the authorities,
+were wholly fantastic, just as were some of the expectations of other
+Allied states. The French people differ from their neighbors in many
+respects--and in a marked way in money matters. They will sacrifice
+their lives rather than their substance. They will leave a national debt
+for their children and their children's children, instead of making a
+resolute effort to wipe it out or lessen it by amortization. In this
+respect the British, the Americans, and also the Germans differ from
+them. These peoples tax themselves freely, create sinking funds, and
+make heavy sacrifices to pay off their money obligations. This habit is
+ingrained. The contrary system is become second nature to the French,
+and one cannot change a nation's habits overnight. The education of the
+people might, however, have been undertaken during the war with
+considerable chances of satisfactory results. The government might have
+preached the necessity of relinquishing a percentage of the war gains to
+the state. It was done in Britain and Germany. The amount of money
+earned by individuals during the hostilities was enormous. A
+considerable percentage of it should have been requisitioned by the
+state, in view of the peace requirements and of the huge indebtedness
+which victory or defeat must inevitably bring in its train. But no
+Minister had the courage necessary to brave the multitude and risk his
+share of popularity or tolerance. And so things were allowed to slide.
+The people were assured that victory would recompense their efforts, not
+only by positive territorial gains, but by relieving them of their new
+financial obligations.
+
+That was a sinister mistake. The truth is that the French nation, if
+defeated, would have paid any sum demanded. That was almost an axiom. It
+would and could have expected no ruth. But, victorious, it looked to the
+enemy for the means of refunding the cost of the war. The Finance
+Minister--M. Klotz--often declared to private individuals that if the
+Allies were victorious he would have all the new national debt wiped out
+by the enemy, and he assured the nation that milliards enough would be
+extracted from Germany to balance the credit and debit accounts of the
+Republic. And the people naturally believed its professional expert.
+Thus it became a dogma that the Teuton state was to provide all the cost
+of the war. In that illusion the nation lived and worked and spent money
+freely, nay, wasted it woefully.
+
+And yet M. Klotz should have known better. For he was supplied with
+definite data to go upon. In October, 1918, the French government, in
+doubt about the full significance of that one of Mr. Wilson's Fourteen
+Points which dealt with reparations, asked officially for explanations,
+and received from Mr. Lansing the answer by telegraph that it involved
+the making good by the enemy of all losses inflicted directly and
+lawlessly upon civilians, but none other. That surely was a plain answer
+and a just principle. But, in accordance with the practice of secrecy in
+vogue among Allied European governments, the nation was not informed of
+these restrictive conditions, but was allowed to hug dangerous
+delusions.
+
+But the Ministers knew them, and M. Klotz was a Minister. Not only,
+however, did he not reveal what he knew, but he behaved as though his
+information was of a directly contrary tenor, and he also stated that
+Germany must also refund the war indemnities of 1870, capitalized down
+to November, 1918, and he set down the sum at fifty milliards of
+francs. This procedure was not what reasonably might have been expected
+from the leader of a heroic nation stout-hearted enough to face
+unpleasant facts. Some of the leading spirits in the country, despite
+the intensity of their feelings toward Germany, disapproved this kind of
+bookkeeping, but M. Klotz did not relinquish his method of keeping
+accounts. He drew up a bill against the Teutons for one thousand and
+eighty-six milliards of francs.
+
+The Germans at the Conference maintained that if the wealth of their
+nation were realized and liquid, it would amount at most to four hundred
+milliards, but that to realize it would involve the stripping of the
+population of everything--of its forests, its mines, its railways, its
+factories, its cattle, its houses, its furniture, and its ready money.
+They further pleaded that the territorial clauses of the Treaty deprived
+them of important resources, which would reduce their solvency to a
+greater degree than the Allies realized. These clauses dispossessed the
+nation of 21 per cent. of the total crops of cereals and potatoes. A
+further falling off in the quantities of food produced would result from
+the restrictions on the importation of raw materials for the manufacture
+of fertilizers. Of her coal, Germany was forfeiting about one-third;
+three-fourths of her iron ore was also being taken away from her; her
+total zinc production would be cut down by over three-fifths. Add to
+this the enormous shortage of tonnage, machinery, and man-power, the
+total loss of her colonies, the shrinkage of available raw stuffs, and
+the depreciation of the mark.
+
+At the Conference the Americans maintained their ground. Invoking the
+principle laid down by Mr. Wilson and clearly formulated by Mr. Lansing,
+they insisted that reparations should be claimed only for damage done to
+civilians directly and lawlessly. After a good deal of fencing,
+rendered necessary by the pledges given by European statesmen to their
+electors, it was decided that the criteria provided by that principle
+should be applied. But even with that limitation the sums claimed were
+huge. It was alleged by the Germans that some of the demands were for
+amounts that exceeded the total national wealth of the country filing
+the claim. And as no formula could be devised that would satisfy all the
+claimants, it was resolved in principle that, although Germany should be
+obliged to make good only certain classes of losses, the Conference
+would set no limits to the sums for which she would thus be liable.
+
+At this juncture M. Loucheur suggested that a minimum sum should be
+demanded of the enemy, leaving the details to be settled by a
+commission. And this was the solution which was finally adopted.[309] It
+was received with protests and lamentations, which, however, soon made
+place for self-congratulations, official and private.
+
+The French Minister of Finances, for example, drew a bright picture in
+the Chamber of the financial side of the Treaty, so far as it affected
+his country: "Within two years," he announced, "independently of the
+railway rolling stock, of agricultural materials and restitutions, we
+receive a part, still to be fixed, of the payment of twenty milliards of
+marks in gold; another share, also to be determined, of an emission of
+bonds amounting to forty milliard gold marks, bearing interest at the
+rate of 2 per cent.; a third part, to be fixed, of German shipping and
+dyes; seven million tons of coal annually for a period of ten years,
+followed by diminishing quantities during the following years; the
+repayment of the expenses of occupation; the right of taking over a part
+of Germany's interests in Russia, in particular that of obtaining the
+payment of pre-war debts at the pre-war rate of exchange, likewise the
+maintenance of such contracts as we may desire to maintain in force and
+the return of Alsace-Lorraine free from all incumbrances. Nor is that
+all. In Morocco we have the right to liquidate German property, to
+transfer the shares that represent Germany's interests in the Bank of
+Morocco, and finally the allotment under a French mandate of a portion
+of the German colonies free from incumbrances of any kind.... We shall
+receive four hundred and sixty-three milliard francs, payable in
+thirty-six years, without counting the restitutions which will have been
+effected. Nor should it be forgotten that already we have received eight
+milliards' worth of securities stolen from French bearers. So do not
+consider the Treaty as a misfortune for France."[310]
+
+Soon after the outburst of joy with which the ingathering of the fruits
+of France's victory was celebrated, clouds unexpectedly drifted athwart
+the cerulean blue of the political horizon, and dark shadows were flung
+across the Allied countries. The second-and third-class nations fell out
+with the first-class Powers. Italy, for example, whose population is
+almost equal to that of her French sister, demanded compensation for the
+vast additions that were being made to France's extensive possessions.
+The grounds alleged were many. Compensation had been promised by the
+secret treaty. The need for it was reinforced by the rejection of
+Italy's claims in the Adriatic. The Italian people required, desired,
+and deserved a fair and fitting field for legitimate expansion. They are
+as numerous as the French, and have a large annual surplus population,
+which has to hew wood and draw water for foreign peoples. They are
+enterprising, industrious, thrifty, and hard workers. Their country
+lacks some of the necessaries of material prosperity, such as coal,
+iron, and cotton. Why should it not receive a territory rich in some of
+these products? Why should a large contingent of Italy's population have
+to go to the colonies of Spain, France, and Britain or to South American
+republics for a livelihood? The Italian press asked whether the Supreme
+Council was bent on fulfilling the Gospel dictum, "Whosoever hath, to
+him shall be given...."
+
+One of the first demands made by Italy was for the port and town of
+Djibouti, which is under French sway. It was rejected, curtly and
+emphatically. Other requests elicited plausible explanations why they
+could not be complied with. In a word, Italy was treated as a poor and
+importunate relation, and was asked to console herself with the
+reflection that she was working in the vineyard of idealism. In vain
+eminent publicists in Rome, Turin, and Milan pleaded their country's
+cause. Adopting the principle which Mr. Wilson had applied to France and
+Britain, they affirmed that even before the war France, with a larger
+population and fewer possessions, had shown that she was incapable of
+discharging the functions which she had voluntarily taken upon herself.
+Tunis, they alleged, owed its growth and thriving condition to Italian
+emigrants. With all the fresh additions to her territories, the
+population of the Republic would be utterly inadequate to the task. To
+the Supreme Council this line of reasoning was distinctly unpalatable.
+Nor did the Italians further their cause when, by way of giving emphatic
+point to their reasoning, their press quoted that eminent Frenchman, M.
+d'Estournelles de Constant, who wrote at that very moment: "France has
+too many colonies already--far more in Asia, in Africa, in America, in
+Oceania than she can fructify. In this way she is immobilizing
+territories, continents, peoples, which nominally she takes over. And it
+is childish and imprudent to take barren possession of them, when other
+states allege their power to utilize them in the general interest. By
+acting in this manner, France, do what she may, is placing herself in
+opposition to the world's interests, and to those of the League of
+Nations. In the long run it is a serious business. Spain, Portugal, and
+Holland know this to their cost. Do what she would, France was not able
+before the war to utilize all her immense colonial domain ... for lack
+of population. She will be still less able after the war...."[311]
+
+The discussion grew dangerously animated. Epigrams were coined and sent
+floating in the heavily charged air. A tactless comparison was made
+between the French nation and a _bon vivant_ of sixty-five who flatters
+himself that he can enjoy life's pleasures on the same scale as when he
+was only thirty. Little arrows thus barbed with biting acid often make
+more enduring mischief than sledge-hammer blows. Soon the estrangement
+between the two sister nations unhappily became wider and led to marked
+divergences in their respective policies, which seem fraught with grave
+consequences in the future.
+
+The Italy of to-day is not the Italy of May, 1915. She now knows exactly
+where she stands. When she unsheathed her sword to fight against the
+allies of the state that declared a treaty to be but a scrap of paper,
+she was heartened by a solemn promise given in writing by her comrades
+in arms. But when she had accomplished her part of the contract, that
+document turned out to be little more than another scrap of paper. Thus
+it was one of the piquant ironies of Fate, Italian publicists said, that
+the people who had mostly clamored against that doctrine were indirectly
+helping it to triumph. Mr. Wilson, unwittingly sapping public faith in
+written treaties, was held up as one of the many pictures in which the
+Conference abounded of the delegates refuting their words by acts. The
+unbiased historian will readily admit that the secret treaties were
+profoundly immoral from the Wilsonian angle of vision, but that the only
+way of canceling them was by a general principle rigidly upheld and
+impartially applied. And this the Supreme Council would not entertain.
+
+With her British ally, too, France had an unpleasant falling out about
+Eastern affairs, and in especial about Syria and Persia. There was also
+a demand for the retrocession by Britain of the island of Mauritius, but
+it was not made officially, nor is it a subject for two such nations to
+quarrel over. The first rift in the lute was caused by the deposition of
+Emir Faisal respecting the desires of the Arab population. This
+picturesque chief, the French press complained, had been too readily
+admitted to the Conference and too respectfully listened to there,
+whereas the Persian delegation tramped for months over the Paris streets
+without once obtaining a hearing. The Hedjaz, which had been independent
+from time immemorial, was formally recognized as a separate kingdom
+during the war, and the Grand Sheriff of Mecca was suddenly raised to
+the throne in the European sense by France and Britain. Since then he
+was formally recognized by the five Powers. His representatives in Paris
+demanded the annexation of all the countries of Arabic speech which were
+under Turkish domination. These included not only Mesopotamia, but also
+Syria, on which France had long looked with loving eyes and respecting
+which there existed an accord between her and Britain. The project
+community would represent a Pan-Arab federation of about eleven million
+souls, over which France would have no guardianship. And yet the
+written accord had never been annulled. Palestine was excluded from
+this Pan-Arabian federation, and Syria was to be consulted, and instead
+of being handed over to France, as M. Clemenceau demanded, was to be
+allowed to declare its own wishes without any injunctions from the
+Conference. Mesopotamia would be autonomous under the League of Nations,
+but a single mandatory was asked for by the king of the Hedjaz for the
+entire eleven million inhabitants.
+
+The comments of the French press on Britain's attitude, despite their
+studied reserve and conventional phraseology, bordered on recrimination
+and hinted at a possible cooling of friendship between the two nations,
+and in the course of the controversy the evil-omened word "Fashoda" was
+pronounced. The French _Temps's_ arguments were briefly these: The
+populations claimed occupy such a vast stretch of territory that the
+sovereignty of the Hedjaz could hardly be more than nominal and
+symbolical. In fact, they cover an area of one-half of the Ottoman
+Empire. These different provinces would, in reality, be under the
+domination of the Great Power which was the real creator of this new
+kingdom, and the monarch of the Hedjaz would be a mere stalking-horse of
+Britain. This, it was urged, would not be independence, but a masked
+protectorate, and in the name of the higher principles must be
+prevented. Syria must be handed over to France without consulting the
+population. The financial resources of the Hedjaz are utterly inadequate
+for the administration of such a vast state as was being compacted. Who,
+then, it was asked, would supply the indispensable funds? Obviously
+Britain, who had been providing the Emir Faisal with funds ever since
+his father donned the crown. If this political entity came into
+existence, it would generate continuous friction between France and
+Britain, separate comrades in arms, delight a vigilant enemy, and
+violate a written compact which should be sacred. For these reasons it
+should be rejected and Syria placed under the guardianship of France.
+
+The Americans took the position that congruously with the high ethical
+principles which had guided the labors of the Conference throughout, it
+was incumbent on its members, instead of bartering civilized peoples
+like chattels, to consult them as to their own aspirations. If it were
+true that the Syrians were yearning to become the wards of France, there
+could be no reasonable objection on the part of the French delegates to
+agree to a plebiscite. But the French delegates declined to entertain
+the suggestion on the ground that Syria's longing for French guidance
+was a notorious fact.
+
+After much discussion and vehement opposition on the part of the French
+delegates an Inter-Allied commission under Mr. Charles Crane was sent to
+visit the countries in dispute and to report on the leanings of their
+populations. After having visited forty cities and towns and more than
+three hundred villages, and received over fifteen hundred delegations of
+natives, the commission reported that the majority of the people "prefer
+to maintain their independence," but do not object to live under the
+mandatory system for fifty years _provided the United States accepts_
+the mandate. "Syria desires to become a sovereign kingdom, and most of
+the population supports the Emir Faisal as king.[312] The commission
+further ascertained that the Syrians, "who are singularly enlightened as
+to the policies of the United States," invoked and relied upon a
+Franco-British statement of policy[313] which had been distributed
+broadcast throughout their country, "promising complete liberation from
+the Turks and the establishment of free governments among the native
+population and recognition of these governments by France and
+Britain."[314]
+
+The result of the investigation by the Inter-Allied commission reminds
+one of the story of the two anglers who were discussing the merits of
+two different sauces for the trout which one of them had caught. As they
+were unable to agree they decided to refer the matter to the trout, who
+answered: "Gentlemen, I do not wish to be eaten with any sauce. I desire
+to live and be free in my own element." "Ah, now you are wandering from
+the question," exclaimed the two, who thereupon struck up a compromise
+on the subject of the sauce.
+
+The tone of this long-drawn-out controversy, especially in the press,
+was distinctly acrimonious. It became dangerously bitter when the French
+political world was apprised one day of the conclusion of a treaty
+between Britain and Persia as the outcome of secret negotiations between
+London and Teheran. And excitement grew intenser when shortly afterward
+the authentic text of this agreement was disclosed. In France, Italy,
+Germany, Russia, and the United States the press unanimously declared
+that Persia's international status as determined by the new diplomatic
+instrument could best be described by the evil-sounding words
+"protectorate" and the violation of the mandatory system adopted by the
+Conference.
+
+This startling development shed a strong light upon the new ordering of
+the world and its relation to the Wilsonian gospel, complicated with
+secret negotiations, protectorates without mandates, and the one-sided
+abrogation of compacts.
+
+Persia is one of the original members of the League of Nations,[315] and
+as such was entitled, the French argued, to a hearing at the
+Conference. She had grievances that called for redress: her neutrality
+had been violated, many of her subjects had been put to death, and her
+titles to reparation were undeniable. President Wilson, the comforter of
+small states and oppressed nationalities, having proclaimed that the
+weakest communities would command the same friendly treatment as the
+greatest, the Persian delegates repaired to Paris in the belief that
+this treatment would be accorded them. But there they were
+disillusioned. For them there was no admission. Whether, if they had
+been heard and helped by the Supreme Council, they would have contrived
+to exist as an independent state is a question which cannot be discussed
+here. The point made by the French was that on its own showing the
+Conference was morally bound to receive the Persian delegation. The
+utmost it obtained was that the Persian Minister of Foreign Affairs,
+Monalek, who was head of the delegation, had a private talk with
+President Wilson, Colonel House, and Mr. Lansing. These statesmen
+unhesitatingly promised to help Persia to secure full sovereign rights,
+or at any rate to enable her delegates to unfold their country's case
+and file their protests before the Conference. The delegates were
+comforted and felt sure of the success of their mission. They told the
+American plenipotentiaries that the United States would be Persia's
+creditor for this help and that she would invite American financiers to
+put her money matters in order, American engineers to develop her mining
+industries, and the American oil firms to examine and exploit her petrol
+deposits.[316] In a word, Persia would be Americanized. This naive
+announcement of the role reserved for American benefactors in the land
+of the Shah might have impressed certain commercial and financial
+interests in the United States, but was wholly alien to the only order
+of motives that could properly move the American plenipotentiaries to
+interpose in favor of their would-be wards.
+
+The promises made by Messrs. Wilson, House, and Lansing came to nothing.
+For months the Persian envoys lived in hope which was strengthened by
+the assurances of various members of the Conference that the
+intervention of Mr. Wilson would infallibly prove successful. But events
+belied this forecast, whereupon the head of the Persian delegation,
+after several months of hopes deferred, quitted France for
+Constantinople, and his country's position among the nations was settled
+in detail by the new agreement.
+
+That position does undoubtedly resemble very closely Egypt's status
+before the outbreak of the World War. And Egypt's status could hardly be
+termed independence. Henceforward Great Britain has a strong hold on the
+Persian customs, the control of the waterways and carriage routes, the
+rights of railway construction, the oil-fields--these were ours
+before--the right to organize the army and direct the foreign policy of
+the kingdom. And it may fairly be argued that this arrangement may prove
+a greater blessing to the Persians than the realization of their own
+ambitions. That, at any rate, is my own personal belief, which for many
+years I have held and expressed. None the less it runs diametrically
+counter to the letter and the spirit of Wilsonianism, which is now seen
+to be a wall high enough to keep out the dwarf states, but which the
+giants can easily clear at a bound.
+
+Against this violation of the new humanitarian doctrine French
+publicists flared up. The glaring character of the transgression
+revolted them, the plight of the Persians touched them, and the right of
+self-determination strongly appealed to them. Was it not largely for the
+assertion of that right that all the Allied peoples had for five years
+been making unheard-of sacrifices? What would become of the League of
+Nations if such secret and selfish doings were connived at? In a word,
+French sympathy for the victims of British hegemony waxed as strong as
+the British fellow-feeling for the Syrians, who objected to be drawn
+into the orbit of the French. Those sharp protests and earnest appeals,
+it may be noted, were the principal, perhaps the only, symptoms of
+tenderness for unprotected peoples which were evoked by the great
+ethical movement headed by the Conference.
+
+The French further pointed out that the system of Mandates had been
+specially created for countries as backward and helpless as Persia was
+assumed to be, and that the only agency qualified to apply it was either
+the Supreme Council or the League of Nations. The British press answered
+that no such humiliating assumption about the Shah's people was being
+made, that the Foreign Office had distinctly disclaimed the intention of
+establishing a protectorate over Persia, who is, and will remain, a
+sovereign and independent state. But these explanations failed to
+convince our indignant Allies. They argued, from experience, that no
+trust was to be placed in those official assurances and euphemistic
+phrases which are generally belied by subsequent acts.[317] They further
+lamented that the long and secret negotiations which were going forward
+in Teheran while the Persian delegation was wearily and vainly waiting
+in Paris to be allowed to plead its country's cause before the great
+world-dictators was not a good example of loyalty to the new cosmic
+legislation. Had not Mr. Wilson proclaimed that peoples were no longer
+to be bartered and swapped as chattels? Here the Italians and Rumanians
+chimed in, reminding their kinsmen that it was the same American
+statesmen who in the peace conditions first presented to Count
+Brockdorff-Rantzau made over the German population of the Saar Valley to
+France at the end of fifteen years as the fair equivalent of a sum of
+money payable in gold, and that France at any rate had raised no
+objection to the barter nor to the principle at the root of it. They
+reasoned that if the principle might be applied to one case it should be
+deemed equally applicable to the other, and that the only persons or
+states that could with propriety demur to the Anglo-Persian arrangements
+were those who themselves were not benefiting by similar transactions.
+
+At last the Paris press, laying due weight on the alliance with Britain,
+struck a new note. "It seems that these last Persian bargainings offer a
+theme for conversations between our government and that of the Allies,"
+one influential journal wrote.[318] At once the amicable suggestion was
+taken up by the British press. The idea was to join the Syrian with the
+Persian transactions and make French concessions on the other. This
+compromise would compose an ugly quarrel and settle everything for the
+best. For France's intentions toward the people of Syria were, it was
+credibly asserted, to the full as disinterested and generous as those of
+Britain toward Persia, and if the Syrians desired an English-speaking
+nation rather than the French to be their mentor, it was equally true
+that the Persians wanted Americans rather than British to superintend
+and accelerate their progress in civilization. But instead of harkening
+to the wishes of only one it would be better to ignore those of both. By
+this prudent compromise all the demands of right and justice, for which
+both governments were earnest sticklers, would thus be amply satisfied.
+
+Our American associates were less easily appeased. In sooth there was
+nothing left wherewith to appease them. Their press condemned the
+"protectorate" as a breach of the Covenant. Secretary Lansing let it be
+known[319] that the United States delegation had striven to obtain a
+hearing for the Persians at the Conference, but had "lost its fight." A
+Persian, when apprized of this utterance, said: "When the United States
+delegation strove to hinder Italy from annexing Fiume and obtaining the
+territories promised her by a secret treaty, they accomplished their aim
+because they refused to give way. Then they took care not to lose their
+fight. When they accepted a brief for the Jews and imposed a Jewish
+semi-state on Rumania and Poland, they were firm as the granite rock,
+and no amount of opposition, no future deterrents, made any impression
+on their will. Accordingly, they had their way. But in the cause of
+Persia they lost the fight, although logic, humanity, justice, and the
+ordinances solemnly accepted by the Great Powers were all on their
+side." ... One American press organ termed the Anglo-Persian accord "a
+coup which is a greater violation of the Wilsonian Fourteen Points than
+the Shantung award to Japan, as it makes the whole of Persia a mere
+protectorate for Britain."[320]
+
+Generally speaking, illustrations of the meaning of non-intervention in
+the home affairs of other nations were numerous and somewhat perplexing.
+Were it not that Mr. Wilson had come to Europe for the express purpose
+of interpreting as well as enforcing his own doctrine, one would have
+been warranted in assuming that the Supreme Council was frequently
+travestying it. But as the President was himself one of the leading
+members of that Council, whose decisions were unanimous, the utmost
+that one can take for granted is that he strove to impose his tenets on
+his intractable colleagues and "lost the fight."
+
+Here is a striking instance of what would look to the average man very
+like intervention in the domestic politics of another nation--well-meant
+and, it may be, beneficent intervention--were it not that we are assured
+on the highest authority that it is nothing of the sort. It was devised
+as an expedient for getting outside help for the capture of Petrograd by
+the anti-Bolshevists. The end, therefore, was good, and the means seemed
+effectual to those who employed them. The Kolchak-Denikin party could,
+it was believed, have taken possession of that capital long before, by
+obtaining the military co-operation of the Esthonians. But the price
+asked by these was the recognition of their complete independence by the
+non-Bolshevist government in the name of all Russia. Kolchak, to his
+credit, refused to pay this price, seeing that he had no powers to do
+so, and only a dictator would sign away the territory by usurping the
+requisite authority. Consequently the combined attack on Petrograd was
+not undertaken. The Admiral's refusal was justified by the circumstances
+that he was the spokesman only of a large section of the Russian people,
+and that a thoroughly representative assembly must be consulted on the
+subject previous to action being taken. The military stagnation that
+ensued lasted for months. Then one day the press brought the tidings
+that the difficulty was ingeniously overcome. This is the shape in which
+the intelligence was communicated to the world: "Colonel Marsh, of the
+British army, who is representing General Gough, organized a republic in
+northwest Russia at Reval, August 12th, _within forty-five minutes_,
+General Yudenitch being nominally the head of the new government, which
+is affiliated with the Kolchak government. Northwest Russia opposes the
+Esthonian government only in principle because it wants guaranties that
+the Esthonians will not be the stepping-stone for some big Power like
+Germany to control the Russian outlet through the Baltic. If the
+Esthonians give such guaranties, the northwestern Russians are perfectly
+willing to let them become an independent state."[321]
+
+Here then was a "British colonel" who, in addition to his military
+duties, was, according to this account, willing and able to create an
+independent republic without any Supreme Council to assist him, whereas
+professional diplomatists and military men of other nations had been
+trying for months to found a Rhine republic under Dorten and had failed.
+Nor did he, if the newspaper report be correct, waste much time at the
+business. From the moment of its inception until northwestern Russia
+stood forth an independent state, promulgating and executing grave
+decisions in the sphere of international politics, only forty-five
+minutes are said to have elapsed. Forty-five minutes by the clock. It
+was almost as quick a feat as the drafting of the Covenant of Nations.
+Further, the resourceful statemaker forged a republic which was
+qualified to transfer sovereignly Russian territory to unrecognized
+states without consulting the nation or obtaining authority from any
+one. More marvelous than any other detail, however, is the circumstance
+that he did his work so well that it never amounted to
+intervention.[322]
+
+One cannot affect surprise if the distinction between this amazing
+exploit of diplomatico-military prestidigitation and intermeddling in
+the internal affairs of another nation prove too subtle for the mental
+grasp of the average unpolitical individual.
+
+It is practices like these which ultimately determine the worth of the
+treaties and the Covenant which Mr. Wilson was content to take back with
+him to Washington as the final outcome of what was to have been the most
+superb achievement of historic man. Of the new ethical principles, of
+the generous renunciation of privileges, of the righting of secular
+wrongs, of the respect that was to be shown for the weak, which were to
+have cemented the union of peoples into one pacific if not blissful
+family, there remained but the memory. No such bitter draught of
+disappointment was swallowed by the nations since the world first had a
+political history. Many of the resounding phrases that once foretokened
+a new era of peace, right, and equity were not merely emptied of their
+contents, but made to connote their opposites. Freedom of the seas
+became supremacy of the seas, which may possibly turn out to be a
+blessed consummation for all concerned, but should not have been
+smuggled in under a gross misnomer. The abolition of war means, as
+British and American and French generals and admirals have since told
+their respective fellow-citizens, thorough preparations for the next
+war, which are not to be confined, as heretofore, to the so-called
+military states, but are to extend over all Anglo-Saxondom.[323] "Open
+covenants openly arrived at" signify secret conclaves and conspirative
+deliberations carried on in impenetrable secrecy which cannot be
+dispensed with even after the whole business has passed into
+history.[324] The self-determination of peoples finds its limit in the
+rights of every Great Power to hold its subject nationalities in thrall
+on the ground that their reciprocal relations appertain to the domestic
+policy of the state. It means, further, the privilege of those who wield
+superior force to put irresistible pressure upon those who are weak, and
+the lever which it places in their hands for the purpose is to be known
+under the attractive name of the protection of minorities. Abstention
+from interference in the home affairs of a neighboring community is made
+to cover intermeddling of the most irksome and humiliating character in
+matters which have no nexus with international law, for if they had, the
+rule would be applicable to all nations. The lesser peoples must harken
+to injunctions of the greater states respecting their mode of treating
+alien immigrants and must submit to the control of foreign bodies which
+are ignorant of the situation and its requirements. Nor is it enough
+that those states should accord to the members of the Jewish and other
+races all the rights which their own citizens enjoy--they must go
+farther and invest them with special privileges, and for this purpose
+renounce a portion of their sovereignty. They must likewise allow their
+more powerful allies to dictate to them their legislation on matters of
+transit and foreign commerce.[325] For the Great Powers, however, this
+law of minorities was not written. They are above the law. Their warrant
+is force. In a word, force is the trump card in the political game of
+the future as it was in that of the past. And M. Clemenceau's reminder
+to the petty states at the opening of the Conference that the wielders
+of twelve million troops are the masters of the situation was
+appropriate. Thus the war which was provoked by the transformation of a
+solemn treaty into a scrap of paper was concluded by the presentation of
+two scraps of paper as a treaty and a covenant for the moral renovation
+of the world.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[288] _The Daily Telegraph_, March 28, 1919.
+
+[289] In a speech delivered at a dinner given in Paris on April 19,
+1919, by the Commonwealth of Australia to Australian soldiers.
+
+[290] In March, 1919.
+
+[291] August 19, 1919.
+
+[292] Cf. _Corriere delta Sera_, August 20, 1919.
+
+[293] _Ibidem_ (_Corriere della Sera_, August 20, 1919).
+
+[294] _L'Humanite,_ May 21, 1919.
+
+[295] _The Nation_, August 23, 1919.
+
+[296] Chief of the Austrian police at Vienna Congress in the years
+1814-15.
+
+[297] In _L'Echo de Paris_, March 2,1919. Cf. _The Daily Telegraph_,
+March 4th.
+
+[298] _Le Gaulois_, March 8, 1919. Cf. _The Daily Telegraph_, March
+10th.
+
+[299] Cf. _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 21, 1919.
+
+[300] Cf. _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 23, 1919
+
+[301] Report of Dr. Jacques Bertillon. Cf. _L'Information_, January 20,
+1919.
+
+[302] Cf. _Le Matin_, August 13, 1919.
+
+30
+3: Excess of births over deaths (yearly average).--Cf.
+_L'Information,_ January 20, 1919:
+
+          Germany  Great Britain  Italy   France
+1861-70   408,333    365,499     183,196  93,515
+1871-80   511,034    431,436     191,538  64,063
+1881-90   551,308    442,112     307,082  66,982
+1891-1900 730,265    430,000     339,409  23,961
+1901-10   866,338    484,822     369,959  46,524
+
+[304] Professor L. Marchand. Cf. _La Democratie Nouvelle_, April 26,
+1919.
+
+[305] Dr. Walter Rathenau, in a book entitled _The Death of France_. I
+have not been able to procure a copy of this book. The extracts given
+above are taken from a statement published by M. Brudenne in the _Matin_
+of February 16, 1919.
+
+[306] _Germania_, August 11, 1919. Cf. _Le Temps_, September 9, 1919.
+
+[307] M. Andre Tardieu in a speech delivered on August 17, 1919. Cf.
+Paris newspapers of following two days, and in particular _New York
+Herald_, August 19th.
+
+[308] Cf. speech delivered by M. Andre Tardieu on August 17, 1919.
+
+[309] On this subject of reparations the _Journal de Geneve_ published
+several interesting articles at various times, as, for example, on May
+15, 1919.
+
+[310] Speech of M. Klotz in the Chamber on September 5, 1919. Cf.
+_L'Echo de Paris_, September 6, 1919.
+
+[311] D'Estournelles de Constant. _Bulletin des Droits de l'Homme_, May
+15, 1919.
+
+[312] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 24, 1919.
+
+[313] Issued on November 9, 1918.
+
+[314] See _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 30, 1919.
+
+[315] An American Senator uncharitably conjectured that she received
+this honorable distinction in order to contribute an additional vote to
+the British.
+
+[316] Cf. interview with a Persian official, published in the Paris
+edition of _The Chicago Tribune_, August 19, 1919.
+
+[317] "Unfortunately, Mr. Lloyd George, who has stripped the Foreign
+Office of real power, has frequently given assurances of this nature,
+and his acts have always contradicted them. As a proof, his last
+interview with M. Clemenceau will serve." Cf. _L'Echo de Paris_, August
+15, 1919, article by Pertinax.
+
+[318] _Le Journal des Debats_, August 15, 1919.
+
+[319] In Washington on August 16, 1919.
+
+[320] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 19, 1919.
+
+[321] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 24, 1919.
+
+[322] After the above was written, a French journal, the _Echo de Paris_
+of September 19, 1919, announced that General Marsh declares that his
+agents acted without his instructions, but none the less it holds him
+responsible for this Baltic policy.
+
+[323] Marshal Douglas Haig, Lord French, the American pacifist, Sydney
+Baker, Senator Chamberlain, Representative Kahn, and a host of others
+have been preaching universal military training. The press, too, with
+considerable exceptions, favors the movement. "We want a democratized
+army, which represents all the nation, and it can be found only in
+universal service.... Universal service is our best guaranty of peace."
+Cf. _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 22, 1919.
+
+[324] President Wilson, when at the close of his conference with the
+Senate Committee on Foreign Relations--at the White House--asked how the
+United States had voted on the Japanese resolution in favor of race
+equality, replied: "I am not sure of being free to answer the question,
+because it affects a large number of points that were discussed in
+Paris, and in the interest of international harmony I think I had better
+not reply."--_The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), August 22, 1919.
+
+[325] In virtue of Article LX of the Treaty with Austria.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE TREATY WITH GERMANY
+
+
+To discuss in detail the peace terms which after many months' desultory
+talk were finally presented to Count Brockdorff-Rantzau would transcend
+the scope of these pages. Like every other act of the Supreme Council,
+they may be viewed from one of two widely sundered angles of
+survey--either as the exercise by a victorious state of the power
+derived from victory over the vanquished enemy, or as one of the
+measures by which the peace of the world is to be enforced in the
+present and consolidated in the future. And from neither point of view
+can it command the approval of unbiased political students. At first the
+Germans, and not they alone, expected that the conditions would be based
+on the Fourteen Points, while many of the Allies took it for granted
+that they would be inspired by the resolve to cripple Teutondom for all
+time. And for each of these anticipations there were good formal
+grounds.
+
+The only legitimate motive for interweaving the Covenant with the Treaty
+was to make of the latter a sort of corollary of the former and to
+moderate the instincts of vengeance by the promptings of higher
+interests. On this ground, and only on this, did the friends of
+far-ranging reform support Mr. Wilson in his contention that the two
+documents should be rendered mutually interdependent. Reparation for the
+damage done in violation of international law and sound guaranties
+against its recurrence are of the essence of every peace treaty that
+follows a decisive victory. But reparation is seldom this and nothing
+more. The lower instincts of human nature, when dominant as they are
+during a bloody war and in the hour of victory, generally outweigh
+considerations not only of right, but also of enlightened egotism,
+leaving justice to merge into vengeance. And the fruits are treasured
+wrath and a secret resolve on the part of the vanquished to pay out his
+victor at the first opportunity. The war-loser of to-day aims at
+becoming the war-winner of to-morrow. And this frame of mind is
+incompatible with the temper needed for an era of moral fellowship such
+as Mr. Wilson was supposed to be intent on establishing. Consequently, a
+peace treaty unmodified by the principles underlying the Covenant is
+necessarily a negation of the main possibilities of a society of nations
+based upon right and a decisive argument against joining together the
+two instruments.
+
+The other kind of peace which Mr. Wilson was believed to have had at
+heart consisted not merely in the liquidation of the war, but in the
+uprooting of its permanent causes, in the renunciation by the various
+nations of sanguinary conflicts as a means of determining rival claims,
+and in such an amicable rearrangement of international relations as
+would keep such disputes from growing into dangerous quarrels. Right, or
+as near an approximation to it as is attainable, would then take the
+place of violence, whereby military guaranties would become not only
+superfluous, but indicative of a spirit irreconcilable with the main
+purpose of the League. Each nation would be entitled to equal
+opportunity within the limits assigned to it by nature and widened by
+its own mental and moral capacities. Thus permanently to forbid a
+numerous, growing, and territorially cramped nation to possess overseas
+colonies for its superfluous population while overburdening others with
+possessions which they are unable to utilize, would constitute a
+negation of one of the basic principles of the new ordering.
+
+Those were the grounds which seemed to warrant the belief that the
+Treaty would be not only formally, but substantially and in its spirit
+an integral, part of the general settlement based on the Fourteen
+Points.
+
+This anticipation turned out to be a delusion. Wilsonianism proved to be
+a very different system from that of the Fourteen Points, and its author
+played the part not only of an interpreter of his tenets, but also of a
+sort of political pope alone competent to annul the force of laws
+binding on all those whom he should refuse to dispense from their
+observance. He had to do with patriotic politicians permeated with the
+old ideas, desirous of providing in the peace terms for the next war and
+striving to secure the maximum of advantage over the foe presumptive, by
+dismembering his territory, depriving him of colonies, making him
+dependent on others for his supplies of raw stuffs, and artificially
+checking his natural growth. Nearly all of them had principles to invoke
+in favor of their claims and some had nothing else. And it was these
+tendencies which Mr. Wilson sought to combine with the ethical ideals to
+be incarnated in the Society of Nations. Now this was an impossible
+synthesis. The spirit of vindictiveness--for that was well represented
+at the Conference--was to merge and lose itself in an outflow of
+magnanimity; precautions against a hated enemy were to be interwoven
+with implicit confidence in his generosity; a military occupation would
+provide against a sudden onslaught, while an approach to disarmament
+would bear witness to the absence of suspicion. Thus Poland would
+discharge the function of France's ally against the Teutons in the east,
+but her frontiers were to leave her inefficiently protected against
+their future attacks from the west. Germany was dismembered, yet she
+was credited with self-discipline and generosity enough to steel her
+against the temptation to profit by the opportunity of joining together
+again what France had dissevered. The League of Nations was to be based
+upon mutual confidence and good fellowship, yet one of its most powerful
+future members was so distrusted as to be declared permanently unworthy
+to possess any overseas colonies. Germany's territory in the Saar Valley
+is admittedly inhabited by Germans, yet for fifteen years there is to be
+a foreign administration there, and at the end of it the people are to
+be asked whether they would like to cut the bonds that link them with
+their own state and place themselves under French sway, so that a
+premium is offered for French immigration into the Saar Valley.
+
+Those are a few of the consequences of the mixture of the two
+irreconcilable principles.
+
+That Germany richly deserved her punishment cannot be gainsaid. Her
+crime was without precedent. Some of its most sinister consequences are
+irremediable. Whole sections of her people are still unconscious not
+only of the magnitude, but of the criminal character, of their misdeeds.
+None the less there is a future to be provided for, and one of the
+safest provisions is to influence the potential enemy's will for evil if
+his power cannot be paralyzed. And this the Treaty failed to do.
+
+The Germans, when they learned the conditions, discussed them angrily,
+and the keynote was refusal to sign the document. The financial clauses
+were stigmatized as masked slavery. The press urged that during the war
+less than one-tenth of France's territory had been occupied by their
+countrymen and that even of this only a fragment was in the zone of
+combat. The entire wealth of France, they alleged, had been estimated
+before the war at from three hundred and fifty milliard to four hundred
+milliard francs, consequently for the devastated provinces hardly more
+than one-twentieth of that sum could fairly be demanded as reparation,
+whereas the claim set forth was incomparably more. They objected to the
+loss of their colonies because the justification alleged--that they were
+disqualified to administer them because of their former cruelties toward
+the natives--was groundless, as the Allies themselves had admitted
+implicitly by offering them the right of pre-emption in the case of the
+Portuguese and other overseas possessions on the very eve of the war.
+
+But the most telling objections turned upon the clauses that dealt with
+the Saar Valley. Its population is entirely German, yet the
+treaty-makers provided for its occupation by the French for a term of
+fifteen years and its transference to them if, after that term, the
+German government was unable to pay a certain sum in gold for the coal
+mines it contained. If that sum were not forthcoming the population and
+the district were to be handed over to France for all time, even though
+the former should vote unanimously for reunion with Germany. Count
+Brockdorff-Rantzau remarked in his note on the Treaty "that in the
+history of modern times there is no other example of a civilized Power
+obliging a state to abandon its people to foreign domination as an
+equivalent for a cash payment." One of the most influential press organs
+complained that the Treaty "bartered German men, women, and children for
+coal; subjected some districts with a thoroughly German population to an
+obligatory plebiscite[326] under interested supervision; severed others
+without any consultation from the Fatherland; delivered over the
+proceeds of German industry to the greed of foreign capitalists for an
+indefinite period; ... spread over the whole country a network of alien
+commissions to be paid by the German nation; withdrew streams, rivers,
+railways, the air service, numerous industrial establishments, the
+entire economic system, from the sovereignty of the German state by
+means either of internationalization or financial control; conferred on
+foreign inspectors rights such as only the satraps of absolute monarchs
+in former ages were empowered to exercise; in a word, they put an end to
+the existence of the German nation as such. Germany would become a
+colony of white slaves...."[327]
+
+Fortunately for the Allies, the reproach of exchanging human beings for
+coal was seen by their leaders to be so damaging that they modified the
+odious clause that warranted it. Even the comments of the friendly
+neutral press were extremely pungent. They found fault with the Treaty
+on grounds which, unhappily, cannot be reasoned away. "Why dissimulate
+it?" writes the foremost of these journals; "this peace is not what we
+were led to expect. It dislodges the old dangers, but creates new ones.
+Alsace and Lorraine are, it is true, no longer in German hands, but ...
+irredentism has only changed its camp. In 1914 Germany put her faith in
+force because she herself wielded it. But crushed down under a peace
+which appears to violate the promises made to her, a peace which in her
+heart of hearts she will never accept, she will turn toward force anew.
+It will stand out as the great misfortune of this Treaty that it has
+tainted the victory with a moral blight and caused the course of the
+German revolution to swerve.... The fundamental error of the instrument
+lies in the circumstance that it is a compromise between two
+incompatible frames of mind. It was feasible to restore peace to Europe
+by pulling down Germany definitely. But in order to accomplish this it
+would have been necessary to crush a people of seventy millions and to
+incapacitate them from rising to their feet again. Peace could also have
+been secured by the sole force of right. But in this case Germany would
+have had to be treated so considerately as to leave her no grievance to
+brood over. M. Clemenceau hindered Mr. Wilson from displaying sufficient
+generosity to get the moral peace, and Mr. Wilson on his side prevented
+M. Clemenceau from exercising severity enough to secure the material
+peace. And so the result, which it was easy to foresee, is a regime
+devoid of the real guaranties of durability."[328]
+
+The judge of the French syndicalists was still more severe. "The
+Versailles peace," exclaimed M. Verfeuil, "is worse than the peace of
+Brest-Litovsk ... annexations, economic servitudes, overwhelming
+indemnities, and a caricature of the Society of Nations--these
+constitute the balance of the new policy,"[329] The Deputy Marcel Cachin
+said: "The Allied armies fought to make this war the last. They fought
+for a just and lasting peace, but none of these boons has been bestowed
+on us. We are confronted with the failure of the policy of the one man
+in whom our party had put its confidence--President Wilson. The peace
+conditions ... are inacceptable from various points of view, financial,
+territorial, economic, social, and human."[330]
+
+It is in this Treaty far more than in the Covenant that the principles
+to which Mr. Wilson at first committed himself are in decisive issue.
+True, he was wont after every surrender he made during the Conference to
+invoke the Covenant and its concrete realization--the League of
+Nations--as the corrective which would set everything right in the
+future. But the fact can hardly be blinked that it is the Treaty and its
+effects that impress their character on the Covenant and not the other
+way round. As an eminent Swiss professor observed: "No league of nations
+would have hindered the Belgian people in 1830 from separating from
+Holland. Can the future League of Nations hinder Germany from
+reconstituting its geographical unity? Can it hinder the Germans of
+Bohemia from smiting the Czech? Can it prevent the Magyars, who at
+present are scattered, from working for their reunion?"[331]
+
+These potential disturbances are so many dangers to France. For if war
+should break out in eastern Europe, is it to be supposed that the United
+States, the British colonies, or even Britain herself will send troops
+to take part in it? Hardly. Suppose, for instance, that the Austrians,
+who ardently desire to be merged in Germany, proclaim their union with
+her, as I am convinced they will one day, does any statesman believe
+that democratic America will despatch troops to coerce them back? If the
+Germans of Bohemia secede from the Czechoslovaks or the Croats from the
+Serbs, will British armies cross the sea to uphold the union which those
+peoples repudiate? And in the name of which of the Fourteen Points would
+they undertake the task? That of self-determination? France's interests,
+and hers alone, would be affected by such changes. And France would be
+left to fight single-handed. For what?
+
+It is interesting to note how the conditions imposed upon Germany were
+appreciated by an influential body of Mr. Wilson's American partizans
+who had pinned their faith to his Fourteen Points. Their view is
+expressed by their press organ as follows:[332]
+
+"France remains the strongest Power on the Continent. With her military
+establishment intact she faces a Germany without a general staff,
+without conscription, without universal military training, with a
+strictly limited amount of light artillery, with no air service, no
+fleet, with no domestic basis in raw materials for armament manufacture,
+with her whole western border fifty kilometers east of the Rhine
+demilitarized. On top of this France has a system of military alliances
+with the new states that touch Germany. On top of this she secured
+permanent representation in the Council of the League, from which
+Germany is excluded. On top of that economic terms which, while they
+cannot be fulfilled, do cripple the industrial life of her neighbor.
+With such a balance of forces France demands for herself a form of
+protection which neither Belgium, nor Poland, nor Czechoslovakia, nor
+Italy is granted."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[326] One of the three districts of Schleswig. A curious phenomenon was
+this zeal of the Supreme Council for Denmark's interests, as compared
+with Denmark's refusal to profit by it, the champions of
+self-determination urging the Danes to demand a district, as Danish,
+which the Danes knew to be German!
+
+[327] _Das Berliner Tageblatt_, June 4, 1919.
+
+[328] _Le Journal de Geneve_, June 24, 1919.
+
+[329] Cf. _L'Echo de Paris_, May 12, 1919.
+
+[330] _Ibidem_.
+
+[331] In a monograph entitled _Plus Jamais_.
+
+[332] Cf. _The New Republic_, August 13, 1919, p. 43.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE TREATY WITH BULGARIA
+
+
+Among all the strange products of the many-sided outbursts of the
+leading delegates' reconstructive activity, the Treaty with Bulgaria
+stands out in bold relief. It reveals the high-water mark reached by
+those secret, elusive, and decisive influences which swayed so many of
+the mysterious decisions adopted by the Conference. As Bulgaria disposed
+of an abundant source of those influences, her chastisement partakes of
+some of the characteristics of a reward. Not only did she not fare as
+the treacherous enemy that she showed herself, but she emerged from the
+ordeal much better off than several of the victorious states. Unlike
+Serbia, Rumania, France, and Belgium, she escaped the horrors of a
+foreign invasion and she possessed and fructified all her resources down
+to the day when the armistice was concluded. Her peasant population made
+huge profits during the campaign and her armies despoiled Serbia,
+Rumania, and Greek Macedonia and sent home enormous booty. In a word,
+she is richer and more prosperous than before she entered the arena
+against her protectors and former allies.
+
+For, owing to the intercession of her powerful friends, she was treated
+with a degree of indulgence which, although expected by all who were
+initiated into the secrets of "open diplomacy," scandalized those who
+were anxious that at least some simulacrum of justice should be
+maintained. Germany was forced to sign a blank check which her enemies
+will one day fill in. Austria was reduced to the status of a parasite
+living on the bounty of the Great Powers and denied the right of
+self-determination. Even France, exhausted by five years' superhuman
+efforts, beholds with alarm her financial future entirely dependent upon
+the ability or inability of Germany to pay the damages to which she was
+condemned.
+
+But the Prussia of the Balkans, owing to the intercession of influential
+anonymous friends, had no such consequences to deplore. Although she
+contracted heavy debts toward Germany, she was relieved of the effort to
+pay them. Her financial obligations were first transferred[333] to the
+Allies and then magnanimously wiped out by these, who then limited all
+her liabilities for reparations to two and a quarter milliard francs. An
+Inter-Allied commission in Sofia is to find and return the loot to its
+lawful owners, but it is to charge no indemnity for the damage done. Nor
+will it contain representatives of the states whose property the Bulgars
+abstracted. Serbia is allowed neither indemnity nor reparation. She is
+to receive a share which the Treaty neglected to fix of the two and a
+quarter milliard francs on a date which has also been left undetermined.
+She is not even to get back the herds of cattle of which the Bulgars
+robbed her. The lawgivers in Paris considered that justice would be met
+by obliging the Bulgars to restore 28,000 head of cattle in lieu of the
+3,200,000 driven off, so that even if the ill-starred Serbs should
+identify, say, one million more, they would have no right to enforce
+their claim.[334]
+
+Nor is that the only disconcerting detail in the Treaty. The Supreme
+Council, which sanctioned the military occupation of a part of Germany
+as a guaranty for the fulfilment of the peace conditions, dispenses
+Bulgaria from any such irksome conditions. Bulgaria's good faith
+appeared sufficient to the politicians who drafted the instrument. "For
+reasons which one hardly dares touch upon," writes an eminent French
+publicist,[335] "several of the Powers that constitute the famous world
+areopagus count on the future co-operation of Bulgaria. We shrink in
+dismay from the perspective thus opened to our gaze."[336]
+
+The territorial changes which the Prussia of the Balkans was condemned
+to undergo are neither very considerable nor unjust. Rumania receives no
+Bulgarian territory, the frontiers of 1913 remaining unaltered. Serbia
+nets some on grounds which cannot be called in question, and a large
+part of Thrace which is inhabited, not by Bulgars, but mainly by Greeks
+and Turks, was taken from Bulgaria, but allotted to no state in
+particular. The upshot of the Treaty, as it appeared to most of the
+leading publicists on the Continent of Europe, was to leave Bulgaria,
+whose cruelty and destructiveness are described by official and
+unofficial reports as unparalleled, in a position of economic
+superiority to Serbia, Greece, and Rumania. And in the Inter-Allied
+commission Bulgaria is to have a representative, while Serbia, Greece,
+and Rumania, a part of whose stolen property the commission has to
+recover, will have none.
+
+A comparison between the indulgence lavished upon Bulgaria and the
+severity displayed toward Rumania is calculated to disconcert the
+stanchest friends of the Supreme Council. The Rumanian government, in a
+dignified note to the Conference, explained its refusal to sign the
+Treaty with Austria by enumerating a series of facts which amount to a
+scathing condemnation of the work of the Supreme Council. On the one
+hand the Council pleaded the engagements entered into between Japan and
+her European allies as a cogent motive for handing over Shantung to
+Japan. For treaties must be respected. And the argument is sound. On the
+other hand, they were bound by a similar treaty[337] to give Rumania the
+whole Banat, the Rumanian districts of Hungary and the Bukovina as far
+as the river Pruth. But at the Conference they repudiated this
+engagement. In 1916 they stipulated that if Rumania entered the war they
+would co-operate with ample military forces. They failed to redeem their
+promise. And they further undertook that "Rumania shall have the same
+rights as the Allies in the peace preliminaries and negotiations and
+also in discussing the issues which shall be laid before the Peace
+Conference for its decisions." Yet, as we saw, she was denied these
+rights, and her delegates were not informed of the subjects under
+discussion nor allowed to see the terms of peace, which were in the
+hands of the enemies, and were only twice admitted to the presence of
+the Supreme Council.
+
+It has been observed in various countries and by the Allied and the
+neutral press that between the German view about the sacredness of
+treaties and that of the Supreme Council there is no substantial
+difference.[338] Comments of this nature are all the more distressing
+that they cannot be thrust aside as calumnious. Again it will not be
+denied that Rumania rendered inestimable services to the Allies. She
+sacrificed three hundred thousand of her sons to their cause. Her soil
+was invaded and her property stolen or ruined. Yet she has been deprived
+of part of her sovereignty by the Allies to whom she gave this help. The
+Supreme Council, not content with her law conferring equal rights on
+all her citizens, to whatever race or religion they may belong, ordered
+her to submit to the direction of a foreign board in everything
+concerning her minorities and demanded from her a promise of obedience
+in advance to their future decrees respecting her policy in matters of
+international trade and transit. These stipulations constitute a
+noteworthy curtailment of her sovereignty.
+
+That any set of public men should be carried by extrinsical motives thus
+far away from justice, fair play, and good faith would be a misfortune
+under any circumstances, but that at a conjuncture like the present it
+should befall the men who set up as the moral guides of mankind and
+wield the power to loosen the fabric of society is indeed a dire
+disaster.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[333] In June, 1919.
+
+[334] The comments on these terms, published by M. Gauvain in the
+_Journal des Debats_ (September 20, 1919), are well worth reading.
+
+[335] M. Auguste Gauvain.
+
+[336] _Le Journal des Debats_, September 20, 1919.
+
+[337] Concluded in the year 1916.
+
+[338] Cf. _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), September 21, 1919.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE COVENANT AND MINORITIES
+
+
+In Mr. Wilson's scheme for the establishment of a society of nations
+there was nothing new but his pledge to have it realized. And that
+pledge has still to be redeemed under conditions which he himself has
+made much more unfavorable than they were. The idea itself--floating in
+the political atmosphere for ages--has come to seem less vague and
+unattainable since the days of Kant. The only heads of states who had
+set themselves to embody it in institutions before President Wilson took
+it up not only disappointed the peoples who believed in them, but
+discredited the idea itself.
+
+That a merely mechanical organization such as the American statesman
+seems to have had in mind, formed by parliamentary politicians
+deliberating in secret, could bind nations and peoples together in moral
+fellowship, is conceivable in the abstract. But if we turn to the
+reality, we shall find that in that direction nothing durable can be
+effected without a radical change in the ideas, aspirations, and temper
+of the leaders who speak for the nations to-day, and, indeed, in those
+of large sections of the nations themselves. For to organize society on
+those unfamiliar lines is to modify some of the deepest-rooted instincts
+of human nature. And that cannot be achieved overnight, certainly not in
+the span of thirty minutes, which sufficed for the drafting of the
+Covenant. The bulk of mankind might not need to be converted, but whole
+classes must first be educated, and in some countries re-educated, which
+is perhaps still more difficult. Mental and moral training must
+complement and reinforce each other, and each political unit be brought
+to realize that the interests of the vaster community take precedence
+over those of any part of it. And to impress these novel views upon the
+peoples of the world takes time.
+
+An indispensable condition of success is that the compact binding the
+members together must be entered into by the peoples, not merely by
+their governments. For it is upon the masses that the burden of the war
+lies heaviest. It is the bulk of the population that supplies the
+soldiers, the money, and the work for the belligerent states, and
+endures the hardships and makes the sacrifices requisite to sustain it.
+Therefore, the peoples are primarily interested in the abolition of the
+old ordering and the forging of the new. Moreover, as latter-day
+campaigns are waged with all the resources of the warring peoples, and
+as the possession of certain of these resources is often both the cause
+of the conflict and the objective of the aggressor, it follows that no
+mere political enactments will meet contemporary requirements. An
+association of nations renouncing the sword as a means of settling
+disputes must also reduce as far as possible the surface over which
+friction with its neighbors is likely to take place. And nowadays most
+of that surface is economic. The possession of raw materials is a more
+potent attraction than territorial aggrandizement. Indeed, the latter is
+coveted mainly as a means of securing or safeguarding the former. On
+these and other grounds, in drawing up a charter for a society of
+nations, the political aspect should play but a subsidiary part. In
+Paris it was the only aspect that counted for anything.
+
+A parliament of peoples, then, is the only organ that can impart
+viability to a society of nations worthy of the name. By joining the
+Covenant with the Peace Treaty, and turning the former into an
+instrument for the execution of the latter, thus subordinating the ideal
+to the egotistical, Mr. Wilson deprived his plan of its sole
+justification, and for the time being buried it. The philosopher
+Lichtenberg[339] wrote, "One man brings forth a thought, another holds
+it over the baptismal font, the third begets offspring with it, the
+fourth stands at its deathbed, and the fifth buries it." Mr. Wilson has
+discharged the functions of gravedigger to the idea of a pacific society
+of nations, just as Lenin has done to the system of Marxism, the only
+difference being that Marxism is as dead as a door-nail, whereas the
+society of nations may rise again.
+
+It was open, then, to the three principal delegates to insure the peace
+of the world by moral means or by force. Having eschewed the former by
+adopting the doctrines of Monroe, abandoning the freedom of the seas,
+and by according to France strategic frontiers and other privileges of
+the militarist order, they might have enlarged and systematized these
+concessions to expediency and forged an alliance of the three states or
+of two, and undertaken to keep peace on the planet against all marplots.
+I wrote at the time: "The delegates are becoming conscious of the
+existence of a ready-made league of nations in the shape of the
+Anglo-Saxon states, which, together with France, might hinder wars,
+promote good-fellowship, remold human destinies; and they are delighted
+thus to possess solid foundations on which a noble edifice can be raised
+in the fullness of time. Tribunals will be created, with full powers to
+adjudge disputes; facilities will be accorded to litigious states, and
+even an obligation will be imposed to invoke their arbitration. And the
+sum total of these reforms will be known to contemporary annals as an
+inchoate League of Nations. The delegates are already modestly
+disavowing the intention of realizing the ideal in all its parts. That
+must be left to coming generations; but what with the exhaustion of the
+peoples, their aversion from warfare, and the material obstacles to the
+renewal of hostilities in the near future, it is calculated that the
+peace will not soon be violated. Whether more salient results will be
+attained or attempted by the Conference nobody can foretell."[340]
+
+This expedient, even had it been deliberately conceived and skilfully
+wrought out, would not have been an adequate solution of the world's
+difficulties, nor would it have commended itself to all the states
+concerned. But it would at least have been a temporary makeshift capable
+of being transmuted under favorable circumstances into something less
+material and more durable. But the amateur world-reformers could not
+make up their minds to choose either alternative. And the result is one
+of the most lamentable failures recorded in human history.
+
+I placed my own opinion on record at the time as frankly as the
+censorship which still existed for me would permit. I wrote: "What every
+delegate with sound political instinct will ask himself is, whether the
+League of Nations will eliminate wars in future, and, if not, he will
+feel conscientiously bound to adopt other relatively sure means of
+providing against them, and these consist of alliances, strategic
+frontiers, and the permanent disablement of the potential enemy. On one
+or other of these alternative lines the resettlement must be devised. To
+combine them would be ruinous. Now of what practical use is a league of
+nations devoid of supernational forces and faced by a numerous, virile,
+and united race, smarting under a sense of injustice, thirsting for the
+opportunities for development denied to it, but granted to nations which
+it despises as inferior? Would a league of nations combine militarily
+against the gradual encroachments or sudden aggression of that Power
+against its weaker neighbors? Nobody is authorized to answer this
+question affirmatively. To-day the Powers cannot agree to intervene
+against Bolshevism, which they deem a scourge of the world, nor can they
+agree to tolerate it.
+
+"In these circumstances, what compelling motives can be laid before
+those delegates who are asked to dispense with strategic frontiers and
+rely upon a league of nations for their defense? Take France's outlook.
+Peace once concluded, she will be confronted with a secular enemy who
+numbers some seventy millions to her forty-five millions. In ten years
+the disproportion will be still greater. Discontented Russia is almost
+certain to be taken in hand by Germany, befriended, reorganized,
+exploited, and enlisted as an ally."[341]
+
+
+Conscious of these reefs and shoals, the French government, which was at
+first contemptuous of the Wilsonian scheme, discerned the use it might
+be put to as a military safeguard, and sought to convert it into that.
+"The French," wrote a Francophil English journal published in Paris,
+"would like the League to maintain what may be called a permanent
+military general staff. The duties of this organization would be to keep
+a hawklike eye on the misdemeanors, actual or threatened, of any state
+or group of states, and to be empowered with authority to call into
+instant action a great international military force for the frustration
+or suppression of such aggression. The French have frankly in mind the
+possibility that an unrepentant and unregenerate Germany is the most
+likely menace not only to the security of France, but to the peace of
+the world in general."[342]
+
+And other states cherished analogous hopes. The spirit of right and
+justice was to be evoked like the spirit that served Aladdin, and to be
+compelled to enter the service of nationalism and militarism, and
+accomplish the task of armies.
+
+The paramount Powers prescribed the sacrifices of sovereignty which
+membership of the League necessitated, and forthwith dispensed
+themselves from making them. The United States government maintained its
+Monroe Doctrine for America--nay, it went farther and identified its
+interests with the Hay doctrine for the Far East.[343] It decided to
+construct a powerful navy for the defense of these political assets, and
+to give the youth of the country a semi-military training.[344] Defense
+presupposes attack. War, therefore, is not excluded--nay, it is admitted
+by the world-reformers, and preparations for it are indispensable.
+Equally so are the burdens of taxation. But if liberty of defense be one
+of the rights of two or three Powers, by what law is it confined to them
+and denied to the others? Why should the other communities be
+constrained to remain open to attack? Surely they, too, deserve to live
+and thrive, and make the most of their opportunities. Now if in lieu of
+a misnamed League of Nations we had an Anglo-Saxon board for the better
+government of the world, these unequal weights and measures would be
+intelligible on the principle that special obligations and
+responsibilities warrant exceptional rights. But no such plea can be
+advanced under an arrangement professing to be a society of free
+nations. All that can with truth be said is what M. Clemenceau told the
+delegates of the lesser states at the opening of the Conference--that
+the three great belligerents represent twelve million soldiers and that
+their supreme authority derives from that. The role of the other peoples
+is to listen to the behests of their guardians, and to accept and
+execute them without murmur. Might is still a source of right.
+
+It is fair to say that the disclosure of the true base of the new
+ordering, as blurted out by M. Clemenceau at that historic meeting,
+caused little surprise among the initiated. For there was no reason to
+assume that he, or, indeed, the bulk of the continental statesmen, were
+converts to a doctrine of which its own apostle accepted only those
+fragments which commended themselves to his country or his party. Had
+not the French Premier scoffed at the League in public as in private?
+Had he not said in the Chamber: "I do not believe that the Society of
+Nations constitutes the necessary conclusion of the present war. I will
+give you one of my reasons. It is this: if to-morrow you were to propose
+to me that Germany should enter into this society I would not
+consent."[345]
+
+"I am certain," wrote one of the ablest and most ardent champions of the
+League in France, Senator d'Estournelles de Constant--"I am certain that
+he [M. Clemenceau] made an effort against himself, against his entire
+past, against his whole life, against all his convictions, to serve the
+Society of Nations. And his Minister of Foreign Affairs followed
+him."[346] Exactly. And as with M. Clemenceau, so it was with the
+majority of European statesmen; most of them made strenuous and, one
+may add, successful efforts against their convictions. And the result
+was inevitable.
+
+"The governments," we read in the organ of syndicalists, who had
+supported Mr. Wilson as long as they believed him determined to redeem
+his promises--"the governments have acquiesced in the Fourteen
+Points.... Hypocrisy. Each one cherished mental reservations. Virtue was
+exalted and vice practised. The poltroon eulogized heroism; the
+imperialist lauded the spirit of justice. For the past month we have
+been picking up ideas about the worth of the adhesions to the Fourteen
+Points, and never before has a more sinister or a more odious comedy
+been played. Territorial demands have been heaved one upon the other;
+contempt of the rights of peoples--the only right that we can
+recognize--has been expressed in striking terms; the last restraints
+have vanished; the masks have fallen."[347]
+
+
+From every country in Europe the same judgment came pitched in varying
+keys. The Italian press condemned the proceedings of the Conference in
+language to the full as strong as that of the German or Austrian
+journals. The _Stampa_ affirmed that those who, like Bissolati, were in
+the beginning for placing their trust in one of the two coteries at the
+Conference were guilty of a fatal mistake. "The mistake lay in their
+belief in the ideal strivings of one of the parties, and in the horror
+with which the cupidity of the others was contemplated, whereas both of
+them were fighting for ... their interests.... In verity France was no
+less militarist or absolutist than Germany, nor was England less avid
+than either. And the proof is enshrined in the peace treaties which have
+masked the results of their respective victories. _Versailles is a
+Brest-Litovsk_, aggravated in the same proportion as the victory of the
+Entente over Germany, is more complete than was that of Germany over
+Russia. Cupidity does not alter its character, even when it seeks to
+conceal itself under a Phrugian cap rather than wear a helmet."[348]
+
+M. Clemenceau's opening utterance about the twelve million men, and the
+unlimited right which such formidable armies confer on their possessors
+to sit in judgment on the tribes and peoples of the planet, was the true
+keynote to the Conference. After that the leading statesmen trimmed
+their ship, touched the rudder, and sailed toward downright absolutism.
+
+The effect of such utterances and acts on the minds of the peoples are
+distinctly mischievous. For they tend to obliterate the sense of public
+right, which is the main foundation of international intercourse among
+progressive nations.
+
+And already it had been shaken and weakened by the campaigns of the past
+fifty years, and in particular by the last war. In the relations of
+nation to nation there were certain principles--derivatives of ethics
+diluted with maxims of expediency--which kept the various governments
+from too flagrant breaches of faith. These checks were the only
+substitute for morality in politics. Their highest power was connoted by
+the word Europeanism, which stood for a supposed feeling of solidarity
+among all the peoples of the old Continent, and for a certain respect
+for the treaties on which the state-system reposed. But it existed
+mainly among defeated nations when apprehensive of being isolated or
+chastised by their victors. None the less, the idea marked a certain
+advance toward an ethical bond of union.
+
+
+Now this embryonic sense, together with respect for the binding force of
+a nation's plighted troth, were numbered by the demoralizing influence
+of the wars of the last fifty years. And one of the first and peremptory
+needs of the world was their restoration. This could be effected only by
+bringing the peoples, not merely of Europe, but of the world, more
+closely together, by engrafting on them a feeling of close solidarity,
+and impressing them with the necessity of making common cause in the one
+struggle worth their while waging--resistance to the forces that
+militate against human welfare and progress. The feeling was widespread
+that the way to effect this was by some form of internationalism, by the
+broadening, deepening, and quickening all that was implied by
+Europeanism, by co-ordinating the collective energies of all progressive
+peoples, and causing them to converge toward a common and worthy goal.
+For the working classes this conception in a restricted form had long
+possessed a commanding attraction. What they aimed at, however, was no
+more than the catholicity of labor. They fancied that after the passage
+of the tidal wave of destructiveness the ground was cleared of most of
+the obstacles which had encumbered it, and that the forward advance
+might begin forthwith.
+
+What they failed to take sufficiently into account was the _vis
+inertiae_, the survival of the old spirit among the ruling orders whose
+members continued to live and move in the atmosphere of use and wont,
+and the spirit of hate and bitterness infused into all the political
+classes, to dispel which was a herculean task. It was exclusively to the
+leaders of those classes that Mr. Wilson confided the realization of the
+abstract idea of a society of nations, which he may at first have
+pictured to himself as a vast family conscious of common interests, bent
+on moral and material self-betterment, and willing to eschew such
+partial advantages as might hinder or retard the general progress. But,
+judging by his attitude and his action, he had no real acquaintance
+with the materials out of which it must be fashioned, no notion of the
+difficulties to be met, and no staying power to encounter and surmount
+them. And his first move entailed the failure of the scheme.
+
+As a matter of fact, Mr. Wilson came to the Conference with a home-made
+charter for the Society of Nations, which, according to the evidence of
+Mr. Lansing, "was never pressed." The State Secretary added that "the
+present league Covenant is superior to the American plan." And as for
+the Fourteen Points, "They were not even discussed at the
+Conference."[349] Suspecting as much, I wrote at the time:[350] "The
+President has pinned himself down to no concrete scheme whatever. His
+method is electric, choosing what is helpful and beneficent in the
+projects of others, and endeavoring to obtain from the dissentients a
+renunciation of ideas belonging to the old national currents and
+adherence to the doctrines he deems salutary. It is, however, already
+clear that the highest ideal now attainable is not a league of nations
+as the masses understand it, which will abolish wars and likewise put an
+end to the costly preparations for them, but only a coalition of
+victorious nations, which may hope, by dint of economic inducements and
+deterrents, to draw the enemy peoples into its camp in the not too
+distant future. This result would fall very short of the expectations
+aroused by the far-resonant promises made at the outset; but even it
+will be unattainable without an international compact binding all the
+members of the coalition to make war simultaneously upon the nation or
+group of nations which ventures to break the peace. I am disposed to
+believe that nothing less than such an express covenant will be regarded
+by the continental Powers of the Entente as an adequate substitute for
+certain territorial readjustments which they otherwise consider
+essential to secure them from sudden attack.
+
+"Whether such a condition would prevent future wars is a question that
+only experience can answer. Personally, I am profoundly convinced, with
+Mr. Taft, that a genuine league of nations must have teeth in the guise
+of supernational, not international, forces. In these remarks I make
+abstraction from the larger question which wholly absorbs this--namely,
+whether the masses for whose behoof the lavish expenditure of time,
+energy, and ingenuity is undertaken, will accept a coalition of
+victorious governments against unregenerate peoples as a substitute for
+the Society of Nations as at first conceived."
+
+The supposed object of the League was the substitution of right for
+force, by debarring each individual state from employing violence
+against any of the others, and by the use of arbitration as a means of
+settling disputes. This entails the suppression of the right to declare
+war and to prepare for it, and, as a corollary, a system of deterrents
+to hinder, and of penalties to punish rebellion on the part of a
+community. That in those cases where the law is set at naught
+efficacious means should be available to enforce it will hardly be
+denied; but whether economic pressure would suffice in all cases is
+doubtful. To me it seems that without a supernational army, under the
+direct orders of the League, it might under conceivable circumstances
+become impossible to uphold the decisions of the tribunal, and that, on
+the other hand, the coexistence of such a military force with national
+armaments would condemn the undertaking to failure.
+
+An analysis of the Covenant lies beyond the limits of my task, but it
+may not be amiss to point out a few of its inherent defects. One of the
+principal organs of the League will be the Assembly and the Council. The
+former, a very numerous and mainly political body, will necessarily be
+out of touch with the peoples, their needs and their aspirations. It
+will meet at most three or four times a year. And its members alone will
+be invested with all the power, which they will be chary of delegating.
+On the other hand, the Council, consisting at first of nine members,
+will meet at least once a year. The members of both bodies will
+presumably be appointed by the governments,[351] who will certainly not
+renounce their sovereignty in a matter that concerns them so closely.
+Such a system may be wise and conducive to the highest aims, but it can
+hardly be termed democratic. The military Powers who command twelve
+million soldiers will possess a majority in the Council.[352] The
+Secretariat alone will be permanent, and will naturally be appointed by
+the Great Powers.
+
+Instead of abolishing war, the Conference described its abolition as
+beyond the power of man to compass. Disarmament, which was to have been
+one of its main achievements, is eliminated from the Covenant. As the
+war that was to have been the last will admittedly be followed by
+others, the delegates of the Great Powers worked conscientiously, as
+behooved patriotic statesmen, to obtain in advance all possible
+advantages for their respective countries by way of preparing for it.
+The new order, which in theory reposes upon right, justice, and moral
+fellowship, in reality depends upon powerful armies and navies. France
+must remain under arms, seeing that she has to keep watch on the Rhine.
+Britain and the United States are to go on building warships and
+aircraft, besides training their youth for the coming Armageddon. The
+article of the Covenant which lays it down that "the members of the
+League recognize that the maintenance of peace requires the reduction
+of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national
+safety,"[353] is, to use a Russian simile, written on water with a fork.
+Britain, France, and the United States are already agreed that they will
+combine to repel unprovoked aggression on the part of Germany. That
+evidently signifies that they will hold themselves in readiness to
+fight, and will therefore make due preparation. This arrangement is a
+substitute for a supernational army, as though prevention were not
+better than cure; that it will prove efficacious in the long run very
+few believe. One clear-visioned Frenchman writes: "The inefficacy of the
+organization aimed at by the Conference constrains France to live in
+continual and increasing insecurity, owing to the falling off of her
+population."[354] He adds: "It follows from this abortive expedient--if
+it is to remain definitive--that each member-state must protect itself,
+or come to terms with the more powerful ones, as in the past.
+Consequently we are in presence of the maintenance of militarism and the
+regime of armaments."[355] This writer goes farther and accuses Mr.
+Wilson of having played into the hands of Britain. "President Wilson,"
+he affirms, "has more or less sacrificed to the English government the
+society of nations and the question of armaments, that of the colonies
+and that of the freedom of the seas...."[356] This, however, is an
+over-statement. It was not for the sake of Britain that the American
+statesman gave up so much; it was for the sake of saving something of
+the Covenant. It was in the spirit of Sir Boyle Roche, whose attachment
+to the British Constitution was such that, to save a part of it, he was
+willing to sacrifice the whole.
+
+The arbitration of disputes is provided for by one of the articles of
+the Covenant;[357] but the parties may go to war three months later with
+a clear conscience and an appeal to right, justice, self-determination,
+and the usual abstract nouns.
+
+In a word, the directors of the Conference disciplined their political
+intelligence on lines of self-hypnotization, along which common sense
+finds it impossible to follow them. There were also among the delegates
+men who thought and spoke in terms of reason and logic, but their voices
+evoked no echo. One of them summed up his criticism somewhat as follows:
+
+"During the war our professions of democratic principles were far
+resonant and emphatic. We were fighting for the nations of the world,
+especially for those who could not successfully fight for themselves.
+All the peoples, great and small, were exhorted to make the most painful
+sacrifices to enable their respective governments to conquer the enemy.
+Victory unexpectedly smiled on us, and the peoples asked that those
+promises should be made good. Naturally, expectations ran high. What has
+happened? The governments now answer in effect: 'We will promote your
+interests, but without your co-operation or assent. We will make the
+necessary arrangements in secret behind closed doors. The machinery we
+are devising will be a state machinery, not a popular one. All that we
+ask of you is implicit trust. You complain of our action in the past.
+You have good cause. You say that the same men are about to determine
+your future. Again you are right. But when you affirm that we are sure
+to make the like mistakes, you are wrong, and we ask you to take our
+word for it. You complain that we are politicians who feel the weight of
+certain commitments and the fetters of obsolete traditions from which we
+cannot free ourselves; that we are mainly concerned to protect and
+further the interests of our respective countries, and that it is
+inconceivable we should devise an organization which looks above and
+beyond those interests. We ask you, are you willing, then, to abandon
+the heritage of our fathers to the foreigner?'
+
+"That the downtrodden peoples in Austria and Germany have been
+emancipated is a moral triumph. But why has the beneficent principle
+that is said to have inspired the deed been restricted in its
+application? Why has the experiment been tried only in the enemies'
+countries? Or are things quite in order everywhere else? Is there no
+injustice in other quarters of the globe? Are there no complaints? If
+there be, why are they ignored? Is it because all acts of oppression are
+to be perpetuated which do not take place in the enemy's land? What
+about Ireland and about a dozen other countries and peoples? Are they
+skeletons not to be touched?
+
+"By debarring the masses from participation in a grandiose scheme, the
+success of which depends upon their assent, the governments are
+indirectly but surely encouraging secret combined opposition, and in
+some cases Bolshevism. The masses resent being treated as children after
+having been appealed to as arbiters and rescuers. For four and a half
+years it was they who bore the brunt of the war, they who sacrificed
+their sons and their substance. In the future it is they to whom the
+states will look for the further sacrifices in blood and treasure which
+will be necessary in the struggles which they evidently anticipate.
+Well, some of them refuse these sacrifices in advance. They challenge
+the right of the governments to retain the power of making war and
+peace. That power they are working to get into their own hands and to
+wield in their own way, or at any rate to have a say in its exercise.
+And in order to secure it, some sections of the peoples are making
+common cause with the socialist revolutionaries, while others have gone
+the length of Bolshevism. And that is a serious danger. The agitation
+now going on among the people, therefore, starts with a grievance. The
+masses have many other grievances besides the one just sketched--the
+survivals of the feudal age, the privileges of class, the inequality of
+opportunity. And the kernel formed by these is the element of truth and
+equity which imparts force to all those underground movements, and
+enables them to subsist and extend. Error is never dangerous by itself;
+it is only when it has an admixture of truth that it becomes powerful
+for evil. And it seems a thousand pities that the governments, whose own
+interests are at stake, as well as those of the communities they govern,
+should go out of their way to provide an explosive element for
+Bolshevism and its less sinister variants."
+
+The League was treated as a living organism before it existed. All the
+problems which the Supreme Councilors found insoluble were reserved for
+its judgment. Arduous functions were allotted to it before it had organs
+to discharge them. Formidable tasks were imposed upon it before the
+means of achieving them were devised. It is an institution so elusive
+and elastic that the French regard it as capable of being used as a
+handy instrument for coercing the Teutons, who, in turn, look upon it as
+a means of recovering their place in the world; the Japanese hope it may
+become a bridge leading to racial equality, and the governments which
+devised it are bent on employing it as a lever for their own
+politico-economic aims, which they identify with the progress of the
+human race. How the peoples look upon it the future will show.
+
+On the Monroe Doctrine in connection with the League of Nations the less
+said the soonest mended. But one cannot well say less than this: that
+any real society of peoples such as Mr. Wilson first conceived and
+advocated is as incompatible with "regional understandings like the
+Monroe Doctrine" as are the maintenance of national armaments and the
+bartering of populations. It is immaterial whether one concludes that a
+Society of Nations is therefore impossible in the present conjuncture or
+that all those survivals of the old state system are obsolescent and
+should be abolished. The two are unquestionably irreconcilable.
+
+It would be a mistake to infer from the unanimity with which Mr.
+Wilson's Covenant was finally accepted that it expressed the delegates'
+genuine conceptions or sentiments. Mr. Bullitt, one of the expert
+advisers to the American Peace Delegation, testified before the Senate
+committee in Washington that State-Secretary Lansing remarked to him: "I
+consider the League of Nations at present as entirely useless. The Great
+Powers have simply gone ahead and arranged the world to suit themselves.
+England and France, in particular, have gotten out of the Treaty
+everything they wanted. The League of Nations can do nothing to alter
+any unjust clauses of the Treaty except by the unanimous consent of the
+League members. The Great Powers will never consent to changes in the
+interests of weaker peoples."[358]
+
+This opinion which Mr. Bullitt ascribed to Mr. Lansing was, to my
+knowledge, that of a large number of the representatives of the nations
+at the Conference. Among them all I have met very few who had a good
+word to say of the scheme, and of the few one had helped to formulate
+it, another had assisted him. And the unfavorable judgments of the
+remainder were delivered after the Covenant was signed.
+
+
+One of those leaders, in conversation with several other delegates and
+myself, exclaimed one day: "The League of Nations indeed! It is an
+absurdity. Who among thinking men believes in its reality?" "I do,"
+answered his neighbor; "but, like the devils, I believe and tremble. I
+hold that it is a corrosive poison which destroys much that is good and
+will further much that is bad." A statesman who was not a delegate
+demurred. "In my opinion," he said, "it is a response to a demand put
+forward by the peoples of the globe, and because of this origin
+something good will ultimately come of it. Unquestionably it is very
+defective, but in time it may be--nay, must be--changed for the better."
+The first speaker replied: "If you imagine that the League will help
+continental peoples, you are, I am convinced, mistaken. It took the
+United States three years to go to the help of Britain and France. How
+long do you suppose it will take her to mobilize and despatch troops to
+succor Poland, Rumania, or Czechoslovakia? I am acquainted with British
+colonial public opinion and sentiment--too often misunderstood by
+foreigners--and I can tell you that they are misconstrued by those who
+fancy that they would determine action of that kind. If England tells
+the colonies that she needs their help, they will come, because their
+people are flesh of her flesh and blood of her blood, and also because
+they depend for their defense upon her navy, and if she were to go under
+they would go under, too. But the continental nations have no such
+claims upon the British colonies, which would not be in a hurry to make
+sacrifices in order to satisfy their appetites or their passions."
+
+The second speaker then said: "It is possible, but nowise certain, that
+the future League may help to settle these disputes which professional
+diplomatists would have arranged, and in the old way, but it will not
+affect those others which are the real causes of wars. If a nation
+believes it can further its vital interest by breaking the peace, the
+League cannot stop it. How could it? It lacks the means. There will be
+no army ready. It would have to create one. Even now, when such an army,
+powerful and victorious, is in the field, the League--for the Supreme
+Council is that and more--cannot get its orders obeyed. How then will
+its behest be treated when it has no troops at its beck and call? It is
+redrawing the map of central and eastern Europe, and is very satisfied
+with its work. But, as we know, the peoples of those countries look upon
+its map as a sheet of paper covered with lines and blotches of color to
+which no reality corresponds."
+
+The constitution of the League was termed by Mr. Wilson a Covenant, a
+word redolent of biblical and puritanical times, which accorded well
+with the motives that decided him to prefer Geneva to Brussels as the
+seat of the League, and to adopt other measures of a supposed political
+character. The first draft of this document was, as we saw, completed in
+the incredibly short space of some thirty hours, so as to enable the
+President to take it with him to Washington. As the Ententophil _Echo de
+Paris_ remarked, "By a fixed date the merchandise has to be consigned on
+board the _George Washington_."[359]
+
+
+The discussions that took place after the President's return from the
+United States were animated, interesting, and symptomatic. In April the
+commission had several sittings, at which various amendments and
+alterations were proposed, some of which would cut deep into
+international relations, while others were of slight moment and gave
+rise to amusing sallies. One day the proposal was mooted that each
+member-state should be free to secede on giving two years' notice. M.
+Larnaude, who viewed membership as something sacramentally inalienable,
+seemed shocked, as though the suggestion bordered on sacrilege, and
+wondered how any government should feel tempted to take such a step.
+Signor Orlando was of a different opinion. "However precious the
+privilege of membership may be," he said, "it would be a comfort always
+to know that you could divest yourself of it at will. I am shut up in my
+room all day working. I do not go into the open air any oftener than a
+prisoner might. But I console myself with the thought that I can go out
+whenever I take it into my head. And I am sure a similar reflection on
+membership of the League would be equally soothing. I am in favor of the
+motion."
+
+The center of interest during the drafting of the Covenant lay in the
+clause proclaiming the equality of religions, which Mr. Wilson was bent
+on having passed at all costs, if not in one form, then in another. This
+is one example of the occasional visibility of the religious thread
+which ran through a good deal of his personal work at the Conference.
+For it is a fact--not yet realized even by the delegates
+themselves--that distinctly religious motives inspired much that was
+done by the Conference on what seemed political or social grounds. The
+strategy adopted by the eminent American statesman to have his
+stipulation accepted proceeded in this case on the lines of a
+humanitarian resolve to put an end to sanguinary wars rather than on
+those which the average reformer, bent on cultural progress, would have
+traced. Actuality was imparted to this simple and yet thorny topic by a
+concrete proposal which the President made one day. What he is reported
+to have said is briefly this: "As the treatment of religious confessions
+has been in the past, and may again in the future be, a cause of
+sanguinary wars, it seems desirable that a clause should be introduced
+into the Covenant establishing absolute liberty for creeds and
+confessions." "On what, Mr. President," asked the first Polish delegate,
+"do you found your assertion that wars are still brought about by the
+differential treatment meted out to religions? Does contemporary
+history bear out this statement? And, if not, what likelihood is there
+that religious inequality will precipitate sanguinary conflicts in the
+future?" To this pointed question Mr. Wilson is said to have made the
+characteristic reply that he considered it expedient to assume this
+nexus between religious inequality and war as the safest way of bringing
+the matter forward. If he were to proceed on any other lines, he added,
+there would be truth and force in the objection which would doubtless be
+raised, that the Conference was intruding upon the domestic affairs of
+sovereign states. As that charge would damage the cause, it must be
+rebutted in advance. And for this purpose he deemed it prudent to
+approach the subject from the side he had chosen.
+
+This reply was listened to in silence and unfavorably commented upon
+later. The alleged relation between such religious inequality as has
+survived into the twentieth century and such wars as are waged nowadays
+is so obviously fictitious that one can hardly understand the line of
+reasoning that led to its assumption, or the effect which the fiction
+could be supposed to have on the minds of those legislators who might be
+opposed to the measure on the ground that it involved undue interference
+in the internal affairs of sovereign states. The motion was referred to
+a commission, which in due time presented a report. Mr. Wilson was
+absent when the report came up for discussion, his place being taken by
+Colonel House. The atmosphere was chilly, only a couple of the delegates
+being disposed to support the clause--Rumania's representative, M.
+Diamandi, was one, and another was Baron Makino, whose help Colonel
+House would gladly have dispensed with, so inacceptable was the
+condition it carried with it.
+
+Baron Makino said that he entirely agreed with Colonel House and the
+American delegates. The equality of religious confessions was not merely
+desirable, but necessary to the smooth working of a Society of Nations
+such as they were engaged in establishing. He held, however, that it
+should be extended to races, that extension being also a corollary of
+the principle underlying the new international ordering. He would
+therefore move the insertion of a clause proclaiming the equality of
+races and religions. At this Colonel House looked pensive. Nearly all
+the other opinions were hostile to Colonel House's motion.
+
+The reasons alleged by each of the dissenting lawgivers were
+interesting. Lord Robert Cecil surprised many of his colleagues by
+informing them that in England the Catholics, who are fairly treated as
+things are, could not possibly be set on a footing of perfect equality
+with their Protestant fellow-citizens, because the Constitution forbids
+it. Nor could the British people be asked to alter their Constitution.
+He gave as instances of the slight inequality at present enforced the
+circumstance that no Catholic can ascend the throne as monarch, nor sit
+on the woolsack as Lord Chancellor in the Upper House.
+
+M. Larnaude, speaking in the name of France, stated that his country had
+passed through a sequence of embarrassments caused by legislation on the
+relations between the Catholics and the state, and that the introduction
+of a clause enacting perfect equality might revive controversies which
+were happily losing their sharpness. He considered it, therefore,
+inadvisable to settle this delicate matter by inserting the proposed
+declaration in the Covenant. Belgium's first delegate, M. Hymans,
+pointed out that the objection taken by his government was of a
+different but equally cogent character. There was reason to apprehend
+that the Flemings might avail themselves of the equality clause to raise
+awkward issues and to sow seeds of dissension. On those grounds he
+would like to see the proposal waived. Signor Orlando half seriously,
+half jokingly, reminded his colleagues that none of their countries had,
+like his, a pope in their capital. The Italian government must,
+therefore, proceed in religious matters with the greatest
+circumspection, and could not lightly assent to any measure capable of
+being manipulated to the detriment of the public interest. Hence he was
+unable to give the motion his support. It was finally suggested that
+both proposals be withdrawn. To this Colonel House demurred, on the
+ground that President Wilson, who was unavoidably absent, attached very
+great weight to the declaration, to which he hoped the delegates would
+give their most favorable consideration. One of the members then rose
+and said, "In that case we had better postpone the voting until Mr.
+Wilson can attend." This suggestion was adopted. When the matter came up
+for discussion at a subsequent sitting, the Japanese substituted
+"nations" for "races."
+
+In the meantime the usual arts of parliamentary emergency were practised
+outside the Conference to induce the Japanese to withdraw their proposal
+altogether. They were told that to accept or refuse it would be to
+damage the cause of the future League without furthering their own. But
+the Marquis Saionji and Baron Makino refused to yield an inch of their
+ground. A conversation then took place between the Premier of Australia,
+on the one side, and Baron Makino and Viscount Chinda, on the other,
+with a view to their reaching a compromise. For Mr. Hughes was
+understood to be the leader of those who opposed any declaration of
+racial equality. The Japanese statesmen showed him their amendment, and
+asked him whether he could suggest a modification that would satisfy
+himself and them. The answer was in the negative. To the arguments of
+the Japanese delegates the Australian Premier is understood to have
+replied: "I am willing to admit the equality of the Japanese as a
+nation, and also of individuals man to man. But I do not admit the
+consequence that we should throw open our country to them. It is not
+that we hold them to be inferior to ourselves, but simply that we do not
+want them. Economically they are a perturbing factor, because they
+accept wages much below the minimum for which our people are willing to
+work. Neither do they blend well with our people. Hence we do not want
+them to marry our women. Those are my reasons. We mean no offense. Our
+restrictive legislation is not aimed specially at the Japanese. British
+subjects in India are affected by it in exactly the same way. It is
+impossible that we should formulate any modifications of your amendment,
+because there is no modification conceivable that would satisfy us
+both."
+
+The Japanese delegates were understood to say that they would maintain
+their motion, and that unless it passed they would not sign the
+document. Mr. Hughes retorted that if it should pass he would refuse to
+sign. Finally the Australian Premier asked Baron Makino whether he would
+be satisfied with the following qualifying proviso: "This affirmation of
+the principle of equality is not to be applied to immigration or
+nationalization." Baron Makino and Viscount Chinda both answered in the
+negative and withdrew.
+
+The final act[360] is described by eye-witnesses as follows. Congruously
+with the order of the day, President Wilson having moved that the city
+of Geneva be selected as the capital of the future League, obtained a
+majority, whereupon he announced that the motion had passed.
+
+Then came the burning question of the equality of nations.[361] The
+Polish delegate arose and opposed it on the formal ground that nothing
+ought to be inserted in the preamble which was not dealt with also in
+the body of the Covenant, as otherwise it would be no more than an
+isolated theory devoid of organic connection with the whole. The
+Japanese delegates delivered speeches of cogent argument and impressive
+debating power. Baron Makino made out a very strong case for the
+equality of nations. Viscount Chinda followed in a trenchant discourse,
+which was highly appreciated by his hearers, nearly all of whom
+recognized the justice of the Japanese claim. The Japanese delegates
+refused to be dazzled by the circumstances that Japan was to be
+represented on the Executive Council as one of the five Great Powers,
+and that the rejection of the proposed amendment could not therefore be
+construed as a diminution of her prestige. This consideration, they
+retorted, was wholly irrelevant to the question whether or no the
+nations were to be recognized as equal. They ended by refusing to
+withdraw their modified amendment and calling for a vote. The result was
+a majority for the amendment. Mr. Wilson thereupon announced that a
+majority was insufficient to justify its adoption, and that nothing less
+than absolute unanimity could be regarded as adequate. At this a
+delegate objected: "Mr. Wilson, you have just accepted a majority for
+your own motion respecting Geneva; on what grounds, may I ask, do you
+refuse to abide by a majority vote on the amendment of the Japanese
+delegation?" "The two cases are different," was the reply. "On the
+subject of the seat of the League unanimity is unattainable." This
+closed the official discussion.
+
+Some time later, it is asserted, the Rumanians, who had supported Mr.
+Wilson's motion on religious equality, were approached on the subject,
+and informed that it would be agreeable to the American delegates to
+have the original proposal brought up once more. Such a motion, it was
+added, would come with especial propriety from the Rumanians, who, in
+the person of M. Diamandi, had advocated it from the outset. But the
+Rumanian delegates hesitated, pleading the invincible opposition of the
+Japanese. They were assured, however, that the Japanese would no longer
+discountenance it. Thereupon they broached the matter to Lord Robert
+Cecil, but he, with his wonted caution, replied that it was a delicate
+subject to handle, especially after the experience they had already had.
+As for himself, he would rather leave the initiative to others. Could
+the Rumanian delegates not open their minds to Colonel House, who took
+the amendment so much to heart? They acted on this suggestion and called
+on Colonel House. He, too, however, declared that it was a momentous as
+well as a thorny topic, and for that reason had best be referred to the
+head of the American delegation. President Wilson, having originated the
+amendment, was the person most qualified to take direct action. It is
+further affirmed that they sounded the President as to the advisability
+of mooting the question anew, but that he declined to face another vote,
+and the matter was dropped for good--in that form.
+
+It was publicly asserted later on that the Japanese decided to abide by
+the rejection of their amendment and to sign the Covenant as the result
+of a bargain on the Shantung dispute. This report, however, was
+pulverized by the Japanese delegation, which pointed out that the
+introduction of the racial clause was decided upon before the delegates
+left Japan, and when no difficulties were anticipated respecting
+Japan's claim to have that province ceded to her by Germany, and that
+the discussion on the amendment terminated on April 11th, consequently
+before the Kiaochow issue came up for discussion. As a matter of fact,
+the Japanese publicly announced their intention to adhere to the League
+of Nations two days[362] before a decision was reached respecting their
+claims to Kiaochow.
+
+This adverse note on Mr. Wilson's pet scheme to have religious equality
+proclaimed as a means of hindering sanguinary wars brought to its climax
+the reaction of the Conference against what it regarded as a systematic
+endeavor to establish the overlordship of the Anglo-Saxon peoples in the
+world. The plea that wars may be provoked by such religious inequality
+as still survives was so unreal that it awakened a twofold suspicion in
+the minds of many of Mr. Wilson's colleagues. Most of them believed that
+a pretext was being sought to enable the leading Powers to intervene in
+the domestic concerns of all the other states, so as to keep them firmly
+in hand, and use them as means to their own ends. And these ends were
+looked upon as anything but disinterested. Unhappily this conviction was
+subsequently strengthened by certain of the measures decreed by the
+Supreme Council between April and the close of the Conference. The
+misgivings of other delegates turned upon a matter which at first sight
+may appear so far removed from any of the pressing issues of the
+twentieth century as to seem wholly imaginary. They feared that a
+religious--some would call it racial--bias lay at the root of Mr.
+Wilson's policy. It may seem amazing to some readers, but it is none the
+less a fact that a considerable number of delegates believed that the
+real influences behind the Anglo-Saxon peoples were Semitic.
+
+They confronted the President's proposal on the subject of religious
+inequality, and, in particular, the odd motive alleged for it, with the
+measures for the protection of minorities which he subsequently imposed
+on the lesser states, and which had for their keynote to satisfy the
+Jewish elements in eastern Europe. And they concluded that the sequence
+of expedients framed and enforced in this direction were inspired by the
+Jews, assembled in Paris for the purpose of realizing their carefully
+thought-out program, which they succeeded in having substantially
+executed. However right or wrong these delegates may have been, it would
+be a dangerous mistake to ignore their views, seeing that they have
+since become one of the permanent elements of the situation. The formula
+into which this policy was thrown by the members of the Conference,
+whose countries it affected, and who regarded it as fatal to the peace
+of eastern Europe, was this: "Henceforth the world will be governed by
+the Anglo-Saxon peoples, who, in turn, are swayed by their Jewish
+elements."
+
+It is difficult to convey an adequate notion of the warmth of
+feeling--one might almost call it the heat of passion--which this
+supposed discovery generated. The applications of the theory to many of
+the puzzles of the past were countless and ingenious. The illustrations
+of the manner in which the policy was pursued, and the cajolery and
+threats which were said to have been employed in order to insure its
+success, covered the whole history of the Conference, and presented it
+through a new and possibly distorted medium. The morbid suspicions
+current may have been the natural vein of men who had passed a great
+part of their lives in petty racial struggles; but according to common
+account, it was abundantly nurtured at the Conference by the lack of
+reserve and moderation displayed by some of the promoters of the
+minority clauses who were deficient in the sense of measure. What the
+Eastern delegates said was briefly this: "The tide in our countries was
+flowing rapidly in favor of the Jews. All the east European governments
+which had theretofore wronged them were uttering their _mea culpa_, and
+had solemnly promised to turn over a new leaf. Nay, they had already
+turned it. We, for example, altered our legislation in order to meet by
+anticipation the legitimate wishes of the Conference and the pressing
+demands of the Jews. We did quite enough to obviate decrees which might
+impair our sovereignty or lessen our prestige. Poland and Rumania issued
+laws establishing absolute equality between the Jews and their own
+nationals. All discrimination had ceased. Immigrant Hebrews from Russia
+received the full rights of citizenship and became entitled to fill any
+office in the state. In a word, all the old disabilities were abolished
+and the fervent prayer of east European governments was that the Jewish
+members of their respective communities should be gradually assimilated
+to the natives and become patriotic citizens like them. It was a new
+ideal. It accorded to the Jews everything they had asked for. It would
+enable them to show themselves as the French, Italian, and Belgian Jews
+had shown themselves, efficient citizens of their adopted countries.
+
+"But in the flush of their triumph, the Jews, or rather their spokesmen
+at the Conference, were not satisfied with equality. What they demanded
+was inequality to the detriment of the races whose hospitality they were
+enjoying and to their own supposed advantage. They were to have the same
+rights as the Rumanians, the Poles, and the other peoples among whom
+they lived, but they were also to have a good deal more. Their religious
+autonomy was placed under the protection of an alien body, the League,
+which is but another name for the Powers which have reserved to
+themselves the governance of the world. The method is to oblige each of
+the lesser states to bestow on each minority the same rights as the
+majority enjoys, and also certain privileges over and above. The
+instrument imposing this obligation is a formal treaty with the Great
+Powers which the Poles, Rumanians, and other small states were summoned
+to sign. It contains twenty-one articles. The first part of the document
+deals with minorities generally, the latter with the Jewish elements.
+The second clause of the Polish treaty enacts that every individual who
+habitually resided in Poland on August 1, 1914, becomes a citizen
+forthwith. This is simple. Is it also satisfactory? Many Frenchmen and
+Poles doubt it, as we do ourselves. On August 1st numerous German and
+Austrian agents and spies, many of them Hebrews, resided habitually in
+Poland. Moreover, the foreign Jewish elements there, which have
+immigrated from Russia, having lost--like everybody else before the
+war--the expectation of seeing Polish independence ever restored, had
+definitely thrown in their lot with the enemies of Poland. Now to put
+into the hands of such enemies constitutional weapons is already a
+sacrifice and a risk. The Jews in Vilna recently voted solidly against
+the incorporation of that city in Poland.[363] Are they to be treated as
+loyal Polish citizens? We have conceded the point unreservedly. But to
+give them autonomy over and above, to create a state within the state,
+and enable its subjects to call in foreign Powers at every hand's turn,
+against the lawfully constituted authorities--that is an expedient which
+does not commend itself to the newly emancipated peoples."
+
+The Rumanian Premier Bratiano, whose conspicuous services to the Allied
+cause entitled him to a respectful hearing, delivered a powerful
+speech[364] before the delegates assembled in plenary session on this
+question of protecting ethnic and religious minorities. He covered
+ground unsurveyed by the framers of the special treaties, and his
+sincere tone lent weight to his arguments. Starting from the postulate
+that the strength of latter-day states depends upon the widest
+participation of all the elements of the population in the government of
+the country, he admitted the peremptory necessity of abolishing
+invidious distinctions between the various elements of the population
+there, ethnic or religious. So far, he was at one with the spokesmen of
+the Great Powers. Rumania, however, had already accomplished this by the
+decree enabling her Jews to acquire full citizenship by expressing the
+mere desire according to a simple formula. This act confers the full
+rights of Rumanian citizens upon eight hundred thousand Jews. The Jewish
+press of Bucharest had already given utterance to its entire
+satisfaction. If, however, the Jews are now to be placed in a special
+category, differentiated and kept apart from their fellow-citizens by
+having autonomous institutions, by the maintenance of the German-Yiddish
+dialect, which keeps alive the Teuton anti-Rumanian spirit, and by being
+authorized to regard the Rumanian state as an inferior tribunal, from
+which an appeal always lies to a foreign body--the government of the
+Great Powers--this would be the most invidious of all distinctions, and
+calculated to render the assimilation of the German-Yiddish-speaking
+Jews to their Rumanian fellow-citizens a sheer impossibility. The
+majority and the minority would then be systematically and definitely
+estranged from each other; and, seeing this, the elemental instincts of
+the masses might suddenly assume untoward forms, which the treaty, if
+ratified, would be unavailing to prevent. But, however baneful for the
+population, foreign protection is incomparably worse for the state,
+because it tends to destroy the cement that holds the government and
+people together, and ultimately to bring about disintegration. A classic
+example of this process of disruption is Russia's well-meant protection
+of the persecuted Christians in Turkey. In this case the motive was
+admirable, the necessity imperative, but the result was the
+dismemberment of Turkey and other changes, some of which one would like
+to forget.
+
+
+The delegation of Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, and Poland upheld M.
+Bratiano's contentions in brief, pithy speeches. President Wilson's
+lengthy rejoinder, delivered with more than ordinary sweetness,
+deprecated M. Bratiano's comparison of the Allies' proposed intervention
+with Russia's protection of the Christians of Turkey, and represented
+the measure as emanating from the purest kindness. He said that the
+Great Powers were now bestowing national existence or extensive
+territories upon the interested states, actually guaranteeing their
+frontiers, and therefore making themselves responsible for permanent
+tranquillity there. But the treatment of the minorities, he added,
+unless fair and considerate, might produce the gravest troubles and even
+precipitate wars. Therefore it behooved the Powers in the interests of
+all Europe, as of each of its individual members, to secure harmonious
+relations, and, at any rate, to remove all manifest obstacles to their
+establishment. "We guarantee your frontiers and your territories. That
+means that we will send over arms, ships, and men, in case of necessity.
+Therefore we possess the right and recognize the duty to hinder the
+survival of a set of deplorable conditions which would render this
+intervention unavoidable."
+
+To this line of reasoning M. Bratiano made answer that all the helpful
+maxims of good government are of universal application, and, therefore,
+if this protection of minorities were, indeed, indispensable or
+desirable, it should not be restricted to the countries of eastern
+Europe, but should be extended to all without exception. For it is
+inadmissible that two categories of states should be artificially
+created, one endowed with full sovereignty and the other with
+half-sovereignty. Such an arrangement would destroy the equality which
+should lie at the base of a genuine League of Nations.
+
+But the Powers had made up their minds, and the special treaties were
+imposed on the unwilling governments. Thereupon the Rumanian Premier
+withdrew from the Conference, and neither his Cabinet nor that of the
+Jugoslavs signed the treaty with Austria at St.-Germain.
+
+What happened after that is a matter of history.
+
+Few politicians are conscious of the magnitude of the issue concealed by
+the involved diplomatic phraseology of the obnoxious treaties, or of the
+dangers to which their enactment will expose the minorities which they
+were framed to protect, the countries whose hospitality those minorities
+enjoy, and possibly other lands, which for the time being are seemingly
+immune from all such perilous race problems. The calculable, to say
+nothing of the unascertained, elements of the question might well cause
+responsible statesmen to be satisfied with the feasible. The Jewish
+elements in Europe, for centuries abominably oppressed, were justified
+in utilizing to the fullest the opportunity presented by the
+resettlement of the world in order to secure equality of treatment. And
+it must be admitted that their organization is marvelous. For years I
+championed their cause in Russia, and paid the penalty under the
+governments of Alexander II and III.[365] The sympathy of every
+unbiased man, to whatever race or religion he may belong, will naturally
+go out to a race or a nation which is trodden underfoot, as were the
+ill-starred Jews of Russia ever since the partition of Poland. But
+equality one would have thought sufficient to meet the grievance. Full
+equality without reservation. That was the view taken by numerous Jews
+in Poland and Rumania, several of whom called on me in Paris and urged
+me to give public utterance to their hopes that the Conference would
+rest satisfied with equality and to their fear of the consequences of an
+attempt to establish a privileged status. Why this position should exist
+only in eastern Europe and not elsewhere, why it should not be extended
+to other races with larger minorities in other countries, are questions
+to which a satisfactory response could be given only by farther-reaching
+and fateful changes in the legislation of the world.
+
+One of the statesmen of eastern Europe made a forcible appeal to have
+the minority clauses withdrawn. He took the ground that the principal
+aim pursued in conferring full rights on the Jews who dwell among us is
+to remove the obstacles that prevent them from becoming true and loyal
+citizens of the state, as their kindred are in France, Italy, Britain,
+and elsewhere. "If it is reasonable," he said, "that they should demand
+all the rights possessed by their Rumanian and Polish fellow-subjects,
+it is equally fair that they should take over and fulfil the correlate
+duties, as does the remainder of the population. For the gradual
+assimilation of all the ethnic elements of the community is our ideal,
+as it is the ideal of the French, English, Italian, and other states.
+
+"Isolation and particularism are the negative of that ideal, and operate
+like a piece of iron or wood in the human body which produces ulceration
+and gangrene. All our institutions should therefore be calculated to
+encourage assimilation. If we adopt the opposite policy, we inevitably
+alienate the privileged from the unprivileged sections of the community,
+generate enmity between them, cause endless worries to the
+administration and paralyze in advance our best-intentioned endeavors to
+fuse the various ethnic ingredients of the nation into a homogeneous
+whole.
+
+"This argument applies as fully to the other national fragments in our
+midst as to the Jews. It is manifest, therefore, that the one certain
+result of the minority clause will be to impose domestic enemies on each
+of the states that submits to it, and that it can commend itself only to
+those who approve the maxim, _Divide et impera_.
+
+"It also entails the noteworthy diminution of the sovereignty of the
+state. We are to be liable to be haled before a foreign tribunal
+whenever one of our minorities formulates a complaint against us.[366]
+How easily, nay, how wickedly such complaints were filed of late may be
+inferred from the heartrending accounts of pogroms in Poland, which have
+since been shown by the Allies' own confidential envoys to be utterly
+fictitious. Again, with whom are we to make the obnoxious stipulations?
+With the League of Nations? No. We are to bind ourselves toward the
+Great Powers, who themselves have their minorities which complain in
+vain of being continually coerced. Ireland, Egypt, and the negroes are
+three striking examples. None of their delegates were admitted to the
+Conference. If the principle which those Great Powers seek to enforce be
+worth anything, it should be applied indiscriminately to all minorities,
+not restricted to those of the smaller states, who already have
+difficulties enough to contend against."
+
+The trend of continental opinion was decidedly opposed to this policy of
+continuous control and periodic intervention. It would be unfruitful to
+quote the sharp criticisms of the status of the negroes in the United
+States.[367] But it will not be amiss to cite the views of two moderate
+French publicists who have ever been among the most fervent advocates of
+the Allied cause. Their comments deal with one of the articles[368] of
+the special Minority Treaty which Poland has had to sign. It runs thus:
+"Jews shall not be compelled to perform any act which constitutes a
+violation of their Sabbath, nor shall they be placed under any
+disability by reason of their refusal to attend courts of law or to
+perform any legal business on their Sabbath. This provision, however,
+shall not exempt Jews from such obligations as shall be imposed upon all
+other Polish citizens for the necessary purposes of military service,
+national defense, or the preservation of public order.
+
+"Poland declares her intention to refrain from ordering or permitting
+elections, whether general or local, to be held on a Saturday, nor will
+registration for electoral or other purposes be compelled to be
+performed on a Saturday."
+
+M. Gauvain writes: "One may put the question, why respect for the
+Sabbath is so peremptorily imposed when Sunday is ignored among several
+of the Allied Powers. In France Christians are not dispensed from
+appearing on Sundays before the assize courts. Besides, Poland is
+further obliged not to order or authorize elections on a Saturday. What
+precautions these are in favor of the Jewish religion as compared with
+the legislation of many Allied states which have no such ordinances in
+favor of Catholicism! Is the same procedure to be adopted toward the
+Moslems? Shall we behold the famous Mussulmans of India, so opportunely
+drawn from the shade by Mr. Montagu, demanding the insertion of clauses
+to protect Islam? Will the Zionists impose their dogmas in Palestine? Is
+the life of a nation to be suspended two, three, or four days a week in
+order that religious laws may be observed? Catholicism has adapted
+itself in practice to laic legislation and to the exigencies of modern
+life. It may well seem that Judaism in Poland could do likewise. In
+Rumania, the Jews met with no obstacle to the exercise of their
+religion. Indeed, they had contrived in the localities to the north of
+Moldavia, where they formed a majority, to impose their own customs on
+the rest of the population. Jewish guardians of toll-bridges are known
+to have barred the passage of these bridges on Saturdays, because, on
+the one hand, their religion forbade them to accept money on that day,
+and, on the other hand, they could allow no one to pass without paying.
+The Big Four might have given their attention to matters more useful or
+more pressing than enforcing respect for the Sabbath.
+
+"It is comprehensible that M. Bratiano should have refused to accept in
+advance the conditions which the Four or the Five may dictate in favor
+of ethnic and religious minorities. Rumania before the war was a free
+country governed congruously with the most modern principles. The
+restrictions which she had enacted respecting foreigners in general, and
+which were on the point of being repealed, did not exceed those which
+the United States and the Dominion of Australia still apply with
+remarkable tenacity. Why should the Cabinets of London and Washington
+take so much to heart the lot of ethnic and religious minorities in
+certain European countries while they themselves refuse to admit in the
+Covenant of the Society of Nations the principle of the equality of
+races? Their conduct is awakening among the states 'whose interests are
+limited' the belief that they are the victims of an arbitrary policy.
+And that is not without danger."[369]
+
+Another eminent Frenchman, M. Denis Cochin, who until quite recently was
+a Cabinet Minister, wrote: "The Conference, by imposing laws in favor of
+minorities, has uselessly and unjustly offended our allies. These laws
+oblige them to respect the usages of the Jews, to maintain schools for
+them.... I have spent a large part of my career in demanding for French
+Catholics exactly that which the Conference imposes elsewhere. The
+Catholics pay taxes in money and taxes in blood. And yet there is no
+budget for those schools in which their religion is taught; no liberty
+for those schoolmasters who wear the ecclesiastical habit. I have seen a
+doctor in letters, fellow of the university, driven from his class
+because he was a Marist brother and did not choose to repudiate the
+vocation of his youth. He died of grief. I have seen young priests,
+after the long, laborious preparation necessary before they could take
+part in the competition for a university fellowship, thrust aside at the
+last moment and debarred from the competition because they wore the garb
+of priests. Yet a year later they were soldiers. I have seen Father
+Schell presented unanimously by the Institute and the Professional Corps
+as worthy to receive a chair at the College de France, and refused by
+the Minister. Yet I hereby affirm that if foreigners, even though they
+were allies, even friends, were to meddle with imposing on us the
+abrogation of these iniquitous laws, my protest would be uplifted
+against them, together with that of M. Combes.[370] I would exclaim,
+like Sganarelle's wife, 'And what if I wish to be beaten?' I hold
+tyranny in horror, but I hold foreign intervention in greater horror
+still. Let us combat bad laws with all our strength, but among
+ourselves."[371]
+
+The minority treaties tend to transform each of the states on which it
+is imposed into a miniature Balkans, to keep Europe in continuous
+turmoil and hinder the growth of the new and creative ideas from which
+alone one could expect that union of collective energy with individual
+freedom which is essential to peace and progress. Modern history affords
+no more striking example of the force of abstract bias over the
+teachings of experience than this amateur legislation which is
+scattering seeds of mischief and conflict throughout Europe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Casting a final glance at the results of the Conference, it would be
+ungracious not to welcome as a precious boon the destruction of Prussian
+militarism, a consummation which we owe to the heroism of the armies
+rather than to the sagacity of the lawgivers in Paris. The restoration
+of a Polish state and the creation or extension of the other free
+communities at the expense of the Central Empires are also most welcome
+changes, which, however, ought never to have been marred by the
+disruptive wedge of the minority legislation. Again, although the League
+is a mill whose sails uselessly revolve, because it has no corn to
+grind, the mere fact that the necessity of internationalism was solemnly
+proclaimed as the central idea of the new ordering, and that an effort,
+however feeble, was put forth to realize it in the shape of a covenant
+of social and moral fellowship, marks an advance from which there can be
+no retrogression.
+
+Actuality was thereby imparted to the idea, which is destined to remain
+in the forefront of contemporary politics until the peoples themselves
+embody it in viable institutions. What the delegates failed to realize
+is the truth that a program of a league is not a league.
+
+On the debit side much might be added to what has already been said. The
+important fact to bear in mind--which in itself calls for neither praise
+nor blame--is that the world-parliament was at bottom an Anglo-Saxon
+assembly whose language, political conceptions, self-esteem, and
+disregard of everything foreign were essentially English. When speaking,
+the faces of the principal delegates were turned toward the future, and
+when acting they looked toward the past. As a thoroughly English press
+organ, when alluding to the League of Nations, puts it: "We have done
+homage to that entrancing ideal by spatchcocking the Convention into the
+Treaty. There it remains as a finger-post to point the way to a new
+heaven on earth. But we observe that the Treaty itself is a good old
+eighteenth-century piece, drawing its inspiration from mundane and
+practical considerations, and paying a good deal more than lip service
+to the principle of the balance of power."[372]
+
+That is a fair estimate of the work achieved by the delegates. But they
+sinned in their way of doing it. If they had deliberately and
+professedly aimed at these results, and had led the world to look for
+none other, most of the criticisms to which they have rendered
+themselves open would be pointless. But they raised hopes which they
+refused to realize, they weakened if they did not destroy faith in
+public treaties, they intensified distrust and race hatred throughout
+the world, they poured strong dissolvents upon every state on the
+European Continent, and they stirred up fierce passions in Russia, and
+then left that ill-starred nation a prey to unprecedented anarchy. In a
+word, they gathered up all the widely scattered explosives of
+imperialism, nationalism, and internationalism, and, having added to
+their destructiveness, passed them on to the peoples of the world as
+represented by the League of Nations. Some of them deplored the mess in
+which they were leaving the nations, without, however, admitting the
+causal nexus between it and their own achievements.
+
+General Smuts, before quitting Paris for South Africa, frankly admitted
+that the Peace Treaty will not give us the real peace which the peoples
+hoped for, and that peace-making would not begin until after the signing
+of the Treaty. The _Echo de Paris_ wrote: "As for us, we never believed
+in the Society of Nations."[373] And again: "The Society of Nations is
+now but a bladder, and nobody would venture to describe it as a
+lantern."[374] The Bolshevist dictator Lenin termed it "an organization
+to loot the world."[375]
+
+The Allies themselves are at sixes and sevens. The French are suspicious
+of the British. A large section of the American people is profoundly
+dissatisfied with the part played by the English and the French at the
+Conference; Italy is stung to the quick by the treatment she received
+from France, Britain, and the United States; Rumania loathes the very
+names of those for whom she staked her all and sacrificed so much; in
+Poland and Belgium the English have lost the consideration which they
+enjoyed before the Conference; the Greeks are wroth with the American
+delegates; the majority of Russians literally execrate their ex-Allies
+and turn to the Germans and the Japanese.
+
+"The resettlement of central Europe," writes an American journal,[376]
+"is not being made for the tranquillity of the liberated principles,
+but for the purposes of the Great Powers, among whom France is the
+active, and America and Britain the passive, partners. In Germany its
+purpose is the permanent elimination of the German nation as a factor in
+European politics.... We cannot save Europe by playing the sinister game
+now being played. There is no peace, no order, no security in it....
+What it can do is to aggravate the mischief and intensify the schisms."
+
+A distinguished American, who is a consistent friend of England,[377] in
+a review article affirmed that the proposed League of Nations is slowly
+undermining the Anglo-American Entente. "There is in America a growing
+sense of irritation that she should be forever entangled in the
+spider-web of European politics." ... And if the Senate in the supposed
+interests of peace should ratify the League, he adds, "In my judgment no
+greater harm could result to Anglo-American unity than such reluctant
+consent."[378]
+
+Some of Mr. Wilson's fellow-countrymen who gave him their whole-hearted
+support when he undertook to establish a regime of right and justice sum
+up the result of his labors in Paris as follows:[379]
+
+"His solemn warning against special alliances emerged as a special
+alliance with Britain and France. His repeated condemnations of secret
+treaties emerges as a recognition that 'they could not honorably be
+brushed aside,' even though they conflicted with equally binding public
+engagements entered into after they had been written. Openly arrived at
+covenants were not openly arrived at. The removal, so far as possible,
+of all economic barriers was applied to German barriers, and
+accompanied by the blockade of a people with whom we have never been at
+war. The adequate guaranties to be given and taken as respects armaments
+were taken from Germany and given to no one. The 'unhampered and
+unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own
+political development' promised to Russia, and defined as the 'acid
+test,' has been worked out by Mr. Wilson and others to a point where so
+cautious a man as Mr. Asquith says he regards it with 'bewilderment and
+apprehension.' The righting of the wrong done in 1871 emerges as a
+concealed annexation of the boundary of 1814. The 'clearly recognizable
+lines of nationality' which Italy was to obtain has been wheedled into
+annexations which have moved Viscount Bryce to denounce them. 'The
+freest opportunity of autonomous development' promised the peoples of
+Austria-Hungary failed to define the Austrians as peoples...."
+
+Whatever the tests one applies to the work of the Conference--ethical,
+social, or political--they reveal it as a factor eminently calculated to
+sap high interests, to weaken the moral nerve of the present generation,
+to fan the flames of national and racial hatred, to dig an abyss between
+the classes and the masses, and to throw open the sluice-gates to the
+inrush of the waves of anarchist internationalities. Truth, justice,
+equity, and liberty have been twisted and pressed into the service of
+economico-political boards. In the United States the people who prided
+themselves on their aloofness are already fighting over European
+interests. In Europe every nation's hand is raised against its
+neighbors, and every people's hand against its ruling class. Every
+government is making its policy subservient to the needs of the future
+war which is universally looked upon as an unavoidable outcome of the
+Versailles peace. Imperialism and militarism are striking roots in soil
+where they were hitherto unknown. In a word, Prussianism, instead of
+being destroyed, has been openly adopted by its ostensible enemies, and
+the huge sacrifices offered up by the heroic armies of the foremost
+nations are being misused to give one half of the world just cause to
+rise up against the other half.
+
+THE END
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[339] A contemporary of Goethe. His works were republished by Herzog in
+the year 1907.
+
+[340] _The Daily Telegraph_, January 28, 1919.
+
+[341] _The Daily Telegraph_, January 31, 1919.
+
+[342] _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), February 13, 1919.
+
+[343] State-Secretary Hay addressed a note to the Powers in September,
+1899, setting forth America's attitude toward China. It is known as the
+doctrine of the "open door." In a subsequent note (July 3, 1900) he
+enlarged its scope and promulgated the integrity of China. But Russia
+ignored it and flew her flag over the Chinese customs in Newchwang. It
+was Japan who, on that occasion, asserted and enforced the doctrine
+without outside help.
+
+[344] General March intimated, when testifying before the House Military
+Committee, that President Wilson approved of universal training,
+indorsing the War Department's army program.--_New York Herald_ (Paris
+edition).
+
+[345] _Bulletin des Droits de l'Homme_, No. 10, May 15, 1919.
+
+[346] _Journal Officiel_, November 21, 1917.
+
+[347] _Le Populaire_, February 10, 1919.
+
+[348] _La Stampa_, June 11, 1919. Cf. _L'Humanite,_ June 13, 1919.
+
+[349] Cf. _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 27, 1919.
+
+[350] In _The Daily Telegraph_, February 8, 1919.
+
+[351] The Covenant leaves the mode of recruiting them undetermined.
+
+[352] Article IV.
+
+[353] Article VIII.
+
+[354] M. d'Estournelles de Constant, _Bulletin des Droits de l'Homme_,
+May 15, 1919, p. 450.
+
+[355] _Ibid._
+
+[356] _Ibid._, p. 457.
+
+[357] Article XII.
+
+[358] Cf. _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), September 14, 1919.
+
+[359] _L'Echo de Paris_, February 17, 1919.
+
+[360] On April 11, 1919.
+
+[361] The wording of the final Japanese amendment was: "By the
+endorsement of the principle of equality of nations and just treatment
+of their nationals."
+
+[362] On April 28, 1919.
+
+[363] The Jewish coalition in Vilna inscribed on its program the union
+of Vilna with Russia.... There was an overwhelming majority in favor of
+its retention by Poland.--_Le Temps_, September 14, 1919. The election
+took place on September 7th.
+
+[364] On Saturday, May 31, 1919.
+
+[365] I published several series of articles in _The Daily Telegraph_,
+_The Fortnightly Review_, and other English as well as American
+periodicals, and a long chapter in my book entitled _Russian
+Characteristics_.
+
+[366] "Poland agrees that any member of the Council of the League of
+Nations shall have the right to bring to the attention of the Council
+any infraction, or _any danger of infraction_, of any of these
+obligations, and that the Council may thereupon take such action and
+give such direction as it may deem proper and effective in the
+circumstances."--Article XII of the Special Treaty with Poland.
+
+[367] Cf. _La Gazette de Lausanne_, April 24, 1919.
+
+[368] Article XI of the Special Treaty, _L'Etoile Belge_, August 17,
+1919.
+
+[369] _Le Journal des Debats_, July 7, 1919.
+
+[370] M. Emile Combes was the author of the laws which banished
+religious congregations from France.
+
+[371] _Le Figaro_, August 21, 1919. _L'Echo de Paris_, August 22, 1919.
+
+[372] _The Morning Post_, July 21, 1919.
+
+[373] _L'Echo de Paris_, April 29, 1919.
+
+[374] _Ibid._, April 14, 1919.
+
+[375] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), September 17, 1919.
+
+[376] _The New Republic_, August 6, 1919.
+
+[377] Mr. James B. Beck.
+
+[378] _The North American Review_, June, 1919.
+
+[379] Cf. _The New Republic_, August 6, 1919, pp. 5, 6.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Inside Story Of The Peace
+Conference, by Emile Joseph Dillon
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