THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES
Coming back from Germany to Great Britain one finds oneself in the
position of an explorer returned from a new world. For our Edwardian
England knows to-day as little of the real conditions in Central
Europe as Elizabethan England knew of Central Africa. And our Press
cartoonists and Propaganda caricaturists have filled the blank spaces
of our mental maps with fancy pictures of monsters whom they label
Boches and Bolsheviks, Huns and Spartacists, just as did the old
cartographers. Whereas these fancy pictures are no more like the real
wild beasts of Europe than the Unicorns and Behemoths of the old maps
were like the rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses of Africa; and anyway
are about as important an element in the problems of Central Europe
to-day as the hippopotamuses are in those of Central Africa.
The difficulty is that our natural intuitions of policy and our
natural instincts of humanity have been for five years persistently
perverted and distorted. We do not know that we are seeing everything
as in a glass darkly, and that we are being prevented from coming face
to face with real facts and forces. That is why in this summer of
1919, as in that summer of five years ago, appeals to our conscience
and common sense are useless. We are letting ourselves be hurried
hopelessly and helplessly into the worst of peaces, as we then let
ourselves be hurried into the worst of wars. But with this difference;
that five years ago the principal criminals were the Junkers and War
Lords of Germany; to-day they are the Jingoes and Peace Delegates of
the Entente. The Germans have paid, or are paying, the penalty of
trusting their War Lords; both those Germans who passively submitted
to that folly and those who actively protested against it. We, too,
shall all have to pay for putting our trust in our Princes of the
Peace. We are paying--many of my old corps have already paid with
their lives--for the mistakes of our diplomatists with the Russian
Revolution. We shall pay for their mistakes with the German Revolution
when we too come face to face with realities again.
For that is the main difference between the Germans and ourselves
to-day. They have been reduced to realities. The artificialities of
their shoddy Kaiser and their shallow Kultur have fallen in ruins
round them. The monstrous military machine they built up for their own
protection, and used for the oppression of Europe, is smashed. There
remains just the German burgher and the German worker, both
slow-witted simple souls. So slow and simple indeed, that they have
allowed a few hundred German bureaucrats to go on governing them;
thereby giving us a wrong impression of what they are thinking and
wanting. In reality the Germans to-day are like the Russians of two
years ago, a molten mass awaiting a new mould, ready to be inspired by
such new political ideas as may be instilled into them. In Germany now
a new idea will take root, flower and bear fruit in a few days. I have
watched the process myself with ideas imported from England. But
instead of throwing open the western frontier of Germany to free
commerce and communication we maintained our blockade and our boycott,
thereby forcing New Germany to turn to the East for its ideals and
institutions. And now comes this Treaty with a further development of
this same policy of blockade and boycott. Germany is for a generation
or so to be sentenced to loss of its sovereign rights, confiscation
of its whole estate and penal servitude. We have overlooked the
opportunity we had of making Germany a moral dependency, a natural
ally looking at the world from our political point of view, absorbing
our ideas and associating itself with our ideals; and we have abused
the opening given us by unlimited military power in order to attempt
the material exploitation of Germany. We might have made Germany a
racial and regional border province of Anglo-Saxondom, and a barrier
against the Asiatic irruption that is once again advancing against
Europe across the Russian plains. We have preferred to try and reduce
it to another Ireland--an Ireland of seventy millions with Russia at
its back. I am reminded of the remark of a German politician: "Give us
an open door and we shall be no worse than poor relations; build a
Chinese wall against us and you will make us into Tartars."
An adequate criticism of the Treaty that we are proposing to force on
Germany would be as long as the Treaty itself. There are two main
difficulties in such criticism; one is that, owing to the secret
preparation of the Treaty and the public indifference as to its
provisions, very few people in England have any idea even of what the
financial and economic clauses amount to. German protests are ignored,
of course, as mere "squealing." We have a general feeling that what
is bad for the Germans is good for the world; and, anyway, we don't
want to be bothered with Germany any more.
The other difficulty is the Treaty's formlessness and its want of
design. A careful comparison of the articles and their appendices
suggests that the essential policy of the whole is a compromise
between, or rather a cobbling together of, two contradictory points of
view, the French and the Anglo-Saxon; while in its externals it is an
attempt to camouflage European Imperialism with American Idealism.
In the Jehad we have just fought against Germany, the low material
object of the French was to extirpate; while that of the English was
rather to enslave. The high moral object of the French was to rescue
Alsace-Lorraine; the high moral object of the English was to protect
Belgium. Consequently, reading the Treaty is something like reading
the Koran. The mind cannot get the point of view or purpose. It loses
itself in dicta, as determinative in detail for the weal or woe of
mankind as they are disconnected in themselves and dissociated from
any general doctrine, or even from any especial dogma. One soon gives
up trying to grasp the Treaty. And one puts it aside with the
consoling thought that "the Koran or the Sword" is good enough for
those who, like the Huns, are not "people of the Law"; and that
everything depends on the "idjra," the "interpretative effort" of
future pundits.
There is something tragic about such petty killings and cruelties as
those ordained by the sinister reactionaries of the Eden Hotel in
Berlin. But there is something ludicrous about the miseries and
murders _en masse_ organised by the highly respectable reactionaries
of the Hotel Majestic. It is as though we:--
had resolved to extirpate the vipers
With twenty Balliol men and forty lady typers.
On the morning of that Thursday in May, the German reading public took
up its morning paper with a sigh of relief that the long suspense was
ended--and dropped it again with a gasp of despair. But Germany wore
its rue with a difference. The opposition to the Treaty was of two
kinds. The original split of the Independent idealists with the
Majoritarian real-politikers had been over foreign policy--first in
the prosecution of the war, then in the preparation for peace. These
Independents condemned such crimes as the U-boat war and the military
murders of Miss Cavell and Captain Fryatt, uncompromisingly. Their
main reason for leaving the Coalition Socialist Government in
December was that they could not get their liberal policy carried in
respect either of Poland and the Baltic provinces, or as to a frank
recognition of responsibility for the war and full reparation to
France and Belgium.
Their main objection to the present Government had been that it
prejudiced the German political revolution and spiritual renascence in
the eyes of the Entente. And they now, as representing the main forces
of idealism in Germany, opposed the peace terms on international not
on national grounds--as a conspiracy against the peace and prosperity
of the European worker, not as a combination against the power and
progress of the German Empire. Consequently, as the main body of the
workers, that is, the driving power of the country, were of this party
and had moreover been forced out of practical politics by the reaction
party, when the terms were published there was no spontaneous
explosion of emotion in Germany. Crushing as they were, there was no
moral force to oppose against them; either national, as a century
before in revolutionary France, or international, as a year before in
revolutionary Russia.
The whole tone of private conversations and of Press _communiques_ on
Thursday and Friday showed that the Government with individual
exceptions, would sign the terms. And further the whole tradition of
the Majority-Socialist and of the Centrum rank and file suggested that
they would in this follow the lead of the Government and give it a
parliamentary majority. Indeed, such passive acquiescence reflected
accurately enough the prevalent point of view in a disorganised and
devitalised community.
Late on that Friday night, judging from an account given me of the
proceedings in the Cabinet and from general considerations, I
telegraphed that Germany would sign even such conditions as those
published.[H]
But where all is negative and minus, a very small positive and plus
factor can make itself predominant. The Democratic party represented
politically such nationalist idealism as was left. Theodor Wolff, in
the _Berliner Tageblatt_, started a campaign for non-signature, at
first only with the compromising support of the extreme Right. Within
a few hours the feeble Government and half-famished capital came
under pressure from two points--Paris and the provinces.
The German delegation to Paris had been made very representative in
order to strengthen the Government in eventually imposing unacceptable
terms on various interests; but the effect of their week's wait in
their wired pen at Fontainebleau seems to have been to give them all
an incipient attack of "barb wire fever." As the guiding brain of the
Cabinet, Landsberg had been substituted for David on the delegation
owing to personal and political reasons, and as influential Majority
Socialists were on it also, this was serious. Opposition to signature
appeared in the Cabinet; and the leading article in Sunday's
_Vorwaerts_ by Stampfer, the editor, who had gone to Paris hoping to
meet his French _confreres_ indicated that the Majority Socialists
were also dividing on the question of signature.
Accordingly the Democratic parliamentary party having declared
unanimously against signature, the Centrum and Majority Socialists
followed suit with large majorities--only five in the latter party
voting for signature. The Government Press then began to challenge the
Independents to make good their professed policy; with the intention
of forcing them to form a Government which would take the odium of
signing. The Independent leaders were approached on these lines.
The Independents found themselves in a difficulty. At first they were
inclined to accept, but realised in time that if they did so they
would be utterly prejudiced both politically and popularly. Moreover,
their Left wing and the Communists would not join any Government on a
Parliamentary basis; while the Majority Socialists would probably help
the Right in throwing them out again on a nationalist reaction as soon
as they had signed. They accordingly decided to declare for signature,
but to refuse to relieve the Government from the responsibility for
its own policy.
The parliamentary situation accordingly developed by Monday into the
usual deadlock. But in Germany the parliamentary situation represents,
even less than elsewhere, the realities of life. The meeting of the
Assembly on Monday, which was to be a national demonstration, was a
failure both in staging and in steam. Held in the University aula,
under the great fresco of Fichte rallying the German youth to its
resurrection after the peace of Tilsit, it only served to accentuate
the difference between the nationalist idealism that rebuilt Germany
in the last century and the internationalist idealism that may
rebuild it now. For, in this Assembly of more or less compromised and
wholly commonplace elderly politicians there was nothing vital or
novel. The set speeches had mostly been written by propaganda
officials and the very applause had been planned beforehand.
On the following day were open-air meetings, which gave a better index
of public opinion. Of the two I saw, the first was a big Majority
Socialist gathering, addressed by Fischer on the Koenigsplatz in a
speech curiously like Scheidemann's. Thence a crowd that, if small,
was select, one might say "super" select, demonstrated before the
Hotel Adlon, the centre of the foreign correspondents and Missions,
until dispersed by a rather dilatory detachment. But the foreign
correspondents of course responded to these efforts for their
entertainment and enlightenment with sensational "stories" of "Scenes
in Berlin."
The conclusion I came to was that those German working men who were
still under trade unionist and party leaders, would, with the middle
class, follow the Government lead in this, as in anything else.
The other meeting, in a remote workmen's quarter, was addressed by the
Independent Breitscheidt, whose every point was punctuated by
guttural growls from half-starved workmen and women. The recital of
Germany's renunciations and restrictions under the Treaty was listened
to in silence; but the conclusion that the old _regime_, if
victorious, would have done this and worse was received with an
emphatic "sehr richtig" (quite true). The interruptions from two
middle-class youths near me, to the effect that an Englishman or
Frenchman saying what Breitscheidt had said in London or Paris would
have to run for his life--true enough too--were badly received. "Fat
cheeks," screamed a haggard woman, pointing out that the young men
were chubby. "Frei-Corps puppies," shouted a workman, giving the
explanation of their being well fed. And it would have gone hard with
them if the Independent leaders had not intervened to get them clear.
The speaker's conclusions that the peace must be signed at once, that
it must be signed by those responsible for it, and that thereafter
there would be an "Independent" Government, was received with a
diminuendo of assent. The poorer and less political German workman
wanted peace, but had no will to power.
There was indeed no fight left in Germany; though I doubt if anyone in
England realises how near the conditions imposed by Paris went to
provoking a desperate appeal to arms. When it became evident that no
mitigation of importance was to be got, every member of the Government
of any character, whether reactionary or radical, resigned; leaving
only men like Landsberg and Erzberger. While the revolutionary
opposition persisted in their refusal to take the responsibility of
signing. When it became obvious that this "Rump" was prepared to sign,
and that the Weimar Assembly would support it in doing so, a military
conspiracy was organised to prevent signature by a _coup d'etat_.
Weimar, the week before signature, filled with generals, and small
bodies of Frei-Corps threatened the complaisant Cabinet. But obviously
the coercion of Weimar into refusing signature was not enough, and
would only have resulted in a second revolution rather than a
reaction. The main operation was to have been a march south to Berlin
and Weimar, of the Army of the East in West Prussia. But, at the last
moment, these Frei-Corps refused to move. The better elements of them
had volunteered to defend the frontiers against Poles and Russians,
not to overthrow the National Assembly at the orders of reactionary
generals. The worse elements were ready to fight their own countrymen,
the revolutionaries, given a superiority of ten to one; but had no
stomach for a last ditch defence against the Entente with the odds
reversed. So Landsberg and Erzberger, the Jew and the Jesuit, by
extraordinary and characteristic exertions, secured signature by a
Cabinet of nonentities under the burly and worthy Trades Union boss,
Bauer.
I do not propose to criticise the different provisions of the Treaty
of Versailles or show in detail where they are unjust and why they are
unsound. But it may be of use to report the effect that certain of
these provisions have had in Germany and will have in Europe; and to
represent how the force on which this treaty depends for its
execution--the static force of an enormous Entente preponderance in
the Balance of Power, comes into collision with the forces at work in
Europe--the dynamic forces of the industrial revolution that are at
present more active in Germany than anywhere else.
First, then, as to its injustice and the effect this is having in
Germany. There are three main foci of public opinion in Germany as in
every country: Right, Centre and Left: Conservative, Liberal and
Radical: Upper Middle and Lower: Privilege, Property and Proletariat;
or, however else you may chose to denote the eternal political
triangle. The Treaty deals each of these two blows; one blow slashes
off its right hand and the other slaps it in the face. And it is the
insult and not the injury that will most affect the future of Europe.
Let us take the Conservative idealists first--the Prussian landowner,
the Berlin official, the Bavarian cleric, the officer, and the
student. The surrender of West Prussia and Danzig to Poland, and the
severance of East Prussia for its future inclusion in a Baltic
Federation, mean the loss of its right arm to this ruling class. An
idea of how it appears to them can be given, perhaps, by supposing
that we had lost the war, that Germany had set up Ireland and Scotland
as separate States, had annexed Wales to Ireland on racial grounds,
had included therein Shropshire and Cheshire with their ancient county
families, and had made a corridor across Wessex to Weymouth, cutting
off Somerset and Devon, while Cornwall went to a new State of
Brittany. I do not mean, of course, that this would be exactly
similar, but that the blow to the sensibilities of our patriots would
be as severe. Should we not have a halo cast about the Victorian, the
Elizabethan, the Alfredian and the Arthurian legends that would make
the lost provinces a Holy Land to be redeemed at any sacrifice?
Fortunately Germans are not like English in this and the territorial
settlement may last our time, though it will lead to unintended
results. The gloomy comment to me of a Polish conservative on the
Danzig settlement was that in two generations Poland would be
Jew-German. The even more gloomy view of a Russian radical was that,
unless Bolshevism made good, the whole middle belt of Baltic States,
with Poland, Lithuania, and the Ukraine, would fall under German
bourgeois influence. While, most pessimistic of all, a cosmopolitan
Jew considered that the result of breaking up Austria and barring off
Germany must be to Balkanise Central and Eastern Europe first, and to
Bolshevise it afterwards. All one can say, is, that where such
revolutionary forces are loosened as are now at large in Central
Europe, German nationalism offered us a stronger line to hold than
that of Lithuanian or Ukrainian or even Polish independence.
And we might have held both lines, but for that slap in the face. The
time I spent in Germany after the publication of the peace was made
painful, not by the Danzig or Saar questions, but by the menace of
penal proceedings against individual Germans. If our object was to
find something that would impress our hatred and contempt on the
Germans we succeeded. Only the most moderate of those with nationalist
opinions could speak of it at all: the majority, thereafter, closed
their doors to me as an English-man. If anything could have
rehabilitated the Kaiser, we should have done it by putting him at the
head of men, like submarine Commanders, who, in German eyes, had done
desperate deeds to break a barbarous blockade. Our prosecution in fact
outraged both the sense and sensibilities of all German gentlemen as
much as the crimes themselves had outraged ours. This may seem
fanciful, but it is a fact. If action is taken under these criminal
clauses we shall light such a candle to the memories of our dead as
will some day set Europe on fire again. Whether we could ever have
proceeded by international action to trace the responsibility for
military murders, such as those of Miss Cavell and Captain Fryatt,
without arousing a national sense of wrong in Germany, no longer
matters; we cannot do so now.
Next, as to the effect of the Treaty on the Liberals, the moderates,
the men of property. If the ideals of the Conservatives and their
interests in land made them nationalist, the ideals of the Liberals
and their interests in industry tended to make them imperialist. And
the Treaty cuts off Germany from all imperial ideals and cripples it
in industry.
The growth of German industry in late years, comparable only to
industrial growth in North America, was due, as with us, to the
combination of coal with iron and of first-rate management with
foreign markets. The Treaty has deprived Germany, in the east, of the
Silesian coalfields with their dependent industries, and, in the west,
of the Lorraine and Saar ores; which, together, may be compared to the
loss of South Wales and Northumberland. It has also deprived Germany,
not only of its colonies, but also of its commercial establishments
abroad, so closing foreign markets to it except by way of foreign
intermediaries, bankers, brokers and shippers. There is nothing left
of German foreign commerce and little left of German industry but a
mutilated torso; for it has not only lost its right hand in Lorraine
but also its left in Silesia. Yet, what German men of business feel it
hardest to forgive is not the injury done by the Treaty but the
insult. That camouflaged receivership, the Reparation Commission,
prejudges Germany as a fraudulent bankrupt. If we had in the Treaty
fixed our claims as creditors and negotiated with Germany as to how
they could be paid, the German middle class would have taken a pride
in showing itself equal to the enormous emergency even as the French
did in the far less searching trial of 1870. But this foreign
Commission has been given such powers as have never yet been proposed
for foreign financial control, even of the most wholly bankrupt and
barbarous Sovereign State. Those powers will, of course, never be
exercised, and they would defeat the object of the financial
provisions of the Treaty if they were; but the unnecessary insult they
involve has cost us the co-operation of the German middle classes in
rebuilding the economic system of Europe.
And, now for the last mistake. The one desire of the lower classes of
Germany, whether industrial or agricultural, is for peace and plenty.
In condemning them to a continuance of war conditions for nine months
after their surrender and revolution we turned them from
internationalists, ready to welcome us as representatives of democracy
and as crusaders for an international ideal, into either nationalists
who looked on us as enemies seeking the destruction of all Germans, or
into internationalists who looked on us as enemies of the revolution
seeking their destruction as we were seeking that of the Russians. The
result has been that we have lost the co-operation of the German
working class in extending our system of parliamentary Government to
Central and Eastern Europe. And it requires no profound political
knowledge of continental conditions to recognise that, without such
co-operation, British political ideas and institutions and with them
British political influence will not penetrate Europe.
To this result two actions on our part especially contributed. The
first, our opposition to the union of German-Austria with Germany; the
second, our refusal to admit Germany to the League of Nations. These
were the two meaningless, almost motiveless insults that in my opinion
have done us more lasting harm in Europe than such mistakes in practical
policy as the maintenance of the blockade. The repudiation, presumably
at French dictation, of both the principle of nationality and that of
self-determination was bad enough. It was worse to try to buttress an
artificial barrier between two sections of the German race by assigning
German populations to neighbouring States--Germans of Bohemia to
Tchecho-Slovakia--Germans of Karinthia to Yugo-Slavia--Germans of the
Tyrol to Italy. This diplomatic device failed even in a far more
thorough form in Poland over a century ago. Just as the policy of
artificial separation failed in the case of Eastern Roumelia.
But, apart from such moral considerations which must in the long run
defeat our policy of segregating Austro-Germans, that policy might
have been seen to be impolitic even in its most material and immediate
aspects.
The idea of a union of Germany and Austria presented itself to our
minds as an aggrandisement of Germany. But if the union of Germany and
Austria would have been a concession to the force of German
nationality, yet it would have been no reinforcement of German
nationalism. Union with German-Austria would indeed have been the best
guarantee against Germany's relapse into Prussianism. For the marriage
of Prussia and Austria would not be due to affection nor to ambition
nor even to advantage, but to affinity. German-Austria might indeed
consider herself fortunate in having a relation bound by family ties
to take her for better or worse, for richer or poorer, with all her
dowry of decrepitude and debt. "Tu felix Austria nube" would have
acquired a new meaning.
The phrase, "union of Germany with Austria" might suggest a great
extension eastwards of German imperialism over Eastern Europe and Asia
Minor. But a glance at the map shows that, whereas previously Germany
enjoyed by alliance with Austria political control eastwards to the
Carpathians and Balkans and economic control to the AEgean and Black
Sea, now Germany is barricaded on the east at its national frontier by
strong national States; and by union with German-Austria would receive
an extension of its own national frontier not eastward but southward.
The effect of union with Austria would be to add to Germany not
another East Prussia or Silesia, but another Baden or Bavaria.
What would be the political consequence of this geographical extension
southward? We all know the blood differences between Southerner and
Northerner in German politics. The North with a Protestant and
Prussian mentality, a bureaucratic and burgher government, an
efficient and energetic morale, a land of big business and big
battalions; and the south a Catholic and conservative mentality, an
easy-going and eclectic morale, a land of fat farms and the fine arts.
And war and revolution have only changed without lessening these
differences. The new Austrian province in the south would have acted
as ballast to steady the rollings of the Ship of State, top-heavy with
its northern profiteers and proletariat. Nor would we be right if we
assumed from the short-lived Raete-Republik of Munich that Vienna would
bring an accession of strength to the Communists. It is the clerical
Centrum, Parliamentary Government and Federalism that would have
benefited from the Union.
And, not only as a community, but as individuals, Austrians would have
a useful political _role_ in the new German democracy. Some of us may
have noticed how the Bavarians and Rheinlaenders come to the front in
Germany as liberal speakers and writers. The Austrians would have
brought a like leaven into the lump of half-baked German civilisation.
The Austrian in all the elegancies of life is as superior to the
German as he is inferior to him in all life's efficiencies. Finally,
they would have served as interpreters and intermediaries between
Germans and other races. It is as difficult to dislike an Austrian as
to like a Prussian.
As to the material effect of the Union, we find that the total
population of the German Republic after union would have been no more
than was that of the German Empire before the war. At the beginning of
the war the latter was 68 millions. Up to January, 1919, the excess of
deaths over births was 700,000, the war casualties 1.8 millions.
Losses in Alsace-Lorraine, Posen and Schleswig will reduce this, at
least, to 61 millions and probably to below 60 millions.
German-Austria cannot bring in more than 9 millions and may bring in
as little as 6 millions. So that Germany would about have regained in
the south what it has lost in the east, north and west.
Now, as to money. The public debt of Austria, without Hungary, was
83.17 milliard kronen. This has still to be apportioned among the new
national States; but even on the most favourable basis for
German-Austria, that of population, it will mean a debt of about 30
milliard kronen with an annual charge of 1.5 milliards. This will mean
a much heavier charge per head than that in Germany. The note
circulation was 37.5 milliards, of which less than 10 per cent. is
secured in gold; and a restoration of the currency will therefore be a
costly business.
Economically, German-Austria is a poor country with a few prosperous
rural districts and an imperial capital. Its agriculture produces
between half and two-thirds per acre of the average German production.
Its live stock is so depleted as to be practically destroyed. Its few
factories and inferior railways are in worse condition even than the
German, which is saying much. It has no coal supplies and no port. As
to Vienna, it is difficult to say what will happen to it. It may have
a future as the land-port of Germany on the east, as Hamburg is on the
west, and as a commercial and financial centre for the new nations;
but for the next few years it will be in industrial and financial
liquidation, as the imperial banks and businesses reorganise and
redistribute themselves among the nations. Vienna's machine, motor and
railway works and the Alpine Montant Company with large iron ore
deposits, are the most important assets that go with German-Austria.
Of course, there are wealthy industrial districts and mineral deposits
in German-Bohemia and the Sudetic country, but the question of their
union with Germany is a different one. The Bohemian Republic is making
a strong bid to the industrial "interests" of these German districts,
which fear the competition of Saxony should they enter the German
union. It will be interesting to see whether this alliance between
plutocracy and diplomacy will avail to keep these German populations
permanently in the Tchech State. But with the exception of a few
dynastic, clerical and capitalistic interests, German-Austria is
to-day German, not Austrian.
You would have a better idea of the difference between German-Austria
and the old Austrian Empire if you had visited Dr. Hartmann, the
representative of German-Austria in the old Austrian Embassy in
Berlin. There, in a palladian palace that was once a centre of the
peculiar blend of courtly brilliance and corrupt brutality with which
the Austrian Empire kept itself going, you found a modest rather
melancholy don and a young secretary; looking like lost souls of a
national democracy buried in the sarcophagus of imperialist
diplomacy. But after a few minutes' talk you also found that these
mild-mannered men represented that force that broke to fragments the
Iron Crown of the House of Habsburg, and that will break its way to
Union over the paper barricade of the Hall of Mirrors.
There is, indeed, nothing to be said for the insistence of the Supreme
Council at Paris on delaying the union of Austro-Germany with Germany.
The forcible splitting off of East Prussia and the subjection of
millions of Germans to Polish, Tchecho-Slovak and Yugo-Slav
governments, though indefensible in principle, may be defended by
practical arguments--for instance that these German ports and lands
are geographically essential to the new States, while their German
population will be a valuable element in them. The assignment of the
Tyrol to Italy may have a diplomatic defence as a design to falsify
future relations between Germans and Italians, to the advantage of
France and England. The acquisition of German Lorraine and the Saar
valley by France may be explained by the policy of making France
industrially independent of Germany and of preventing any future
economic hegemony of Germany in Europe. An insistence on
Austro-Germany entering the German Republic might have been explained
as an attempt to save Germany from Bolshevism and Prussianism, and to
keep it quiet. But an insistence on Austro-Germany remaining
independent, with its corollary in the intrigues for a separate Rhine
Republic, seem to me as diplomatically ill-considered as they are
democratically ill-conceived. We intended a material injury to German
nationalists, but we have only inflicted a mortal insult on the German
nation.
The Treaty of Versailles has then no elements either of permanence or
of peace; because it runs counter both to facts and to forces both in
the region of national and in that of international relationships.
In the national region it stultifies its own objects most effectively.
Now nationalist idealism, though existing in Germany to-day only among
the conservative gentry and a small section of upper-class
progressives, is not a negligible quantity. For nationalism has
control of the whole Coalition Government, the whole Press, with the
exception of a few opposition Labour papers, and the whole of the
Frei-Corps and the armed police. Owing to our continuation of a state
of war after the armistice, the German Government has, by a logical
process it would take too long to trace, become purely nationalist,
instead of mainly socialist and internationalist. More than that, it
has come into collision with Socialism and the German Revolution in
its efforts to maintain a _regime_ such as we would recognise. The
nationalist forces, that it relies on to maintain parliamentary party
government and the supremacy of the propertied class to the exclusion
both of Council Government and of a possible supremacy of the
proletariat, were, in the first place, the more liberal bureaucracy
and the officers, and in the second place the "Frei-Corps." But as
pointed out already the Treaty we imposed on Germany forced out of the
Government all the better elements of the bureaucratic and bourgeois
classes. While the "Frei-Corps" with which the Government now holds
all the principal towns under military rule have as moral ideals
patriotism, privilege and property, and as material inducements high
pay and quadruple rations. They embody not only the survivors of the
officer caste, but also the young burghers and students, hitherto the
Young Guard of revolution. Their formation was due partly to our
delusion that a professional army is necessarily democratic because we
have one, and that a short service militia is necessarily militarist
because Germany used that method for its recovery a century ago; and
partly to a reaction against the revolution in Germany itself. By now
they have become the foundation of the present parliamentary _regime_.
But the Treaty requires their reduction from over 400,000 to a quarter
of that number, while it utterly discredits the nationalist Government
by imposing on it humiliations such as no modern nation has ever yet
undergone. Therefore, while our policy requires the maintenance of the
present German parliamentarians and their police as the only possible
native agents for the realisation of our economic exploitation of
Germany, our procedure renders their retention of power materially and
morally impossible. As I myself think that the economic policy is as
shortsighted as it is wrongheaded, I do not regret that the
territorial and military provisions will, unless materially modified,
prevent any possibility of realising any part of it. That they will
shortly revive racial and religious frontier wars in which we shall
probably be involved is a minor matter. Better we should lose more men
and millions in expeditions to subject frontier provinces to their
racial and religious enemies, than try to subjugate all Germany to our
imperial system as we apparently aspire to do in the economic and
financial clauses.
In the international region also the Treaty has similarly stultified
itself. It depends for its execution on the acceptance by Germany not
only of its provisions but of the principles on which it is based.
These principles assume that Germany will conform Constitutionally to
the European system that we are setting up. That is that Germany will
have a parliamentary government in which the upper and middle classes
will preponderate. This Germany was quite prepared to do, and regarded
its revolution chiefly as the qualification for admission to the
Allied system on an equal footing. Parliamentary Government meant to
Germany last winter not so much liberty as equality and
fraternity--equality in the world's markets and fraternity in a League
of Nations. In other words, peace and food. When Germany found that it
was to be excluded from the League and outlawed, parliamentary
government _a l'anglaise_ was left without a leg to stand on. It lost
its right leg because nationalists reverted to militarism and its left
leg because internationalists turned towards Sovietism. It can fairly
be said that the Weimar Assembly and the National Government that
signed the Treaty of Peace represented no German force but merely
German weakness. If the Treaty is ever to be enforced it can only be
so through the Reichstag, and what it stands for, and yet the Treaty
has gone out of its way to weaken the Reichstag.
In respect of such criticisms I am continually being told by my
quondam diplomatic colleagues that they quite agree, but that they
could get nothing better; and, given the conditions under which they
worked at Paris, they think that things might have been much worse.
And this seems to be the line also of the American delegation, with
the exception of some bolder younger spirits who broke off into open
opposition. Of course, given these conditions, they could do no
better. But that's just what they ought to have provided against.
Every diplomatist knows, or ought to know, that the result of his
negotiations will depend on two things; his success in interpreting to
and impressing on his foreign surroundings the forces he represents
whether they be ironclads or ideals; and his success in selecting such
surroundings as will be most effectively impressed. It is mainly
because they have not learnt the second part of this lesson that
American diplomatists fail. It was a great discovery when we found
after years of negotiation at Washington in which either nobody got
any forrarder at all or we got altogether the worst of it, that it was
only necessary to transfer the venue to The Hague or Paris or London,
and American diplomacy collapsed. I am not going into detail,
interesting though it might be. But I used to explain it to myself by
analysing American diplomacy as an attitude of business instincts and
moral ideals which felt itself absurd in the cold, courtly, and
cynical atmosphere of diplomacy; so, instead of imposing its own rules
and standards, it either became helpless or tried hurriedly to adapt
and adjust itself. We have only to read the memoirs of American
Ambassadors to see that it takes a Benjamin Franklin to realise that
broadcloth and beaver are more effective at Court than gold lace and a
feathered hat. For it is this and nothing more that explains how an
American failed in the greatest political opportunity offered to
mortal man in modern times. And if President Wilson, with all the
trumps in his hands, could win so few tricks and left the table
politically bankrupt, it may seem perhaps absurd to have expected
anything from our liberal representatives, tied and bound abroad by
the chains of their secret treaties, tethered and burdened at home by
their dependence on a conservative clique and on an imperialist
newspaper proprietor.
Yet, those of our rulers who wanted a real peace treaty not a mere
truce for dividing the spoils, ought to have known, what the Americans
did not, that no peace could be got through a diplomatic conference
at Paris. They should, in the first place, have secured a real
representation of the popular forces of the British Empire, and in the
second place, a forum where those forces could take effect. Public
opinion had already provided the foundation of such a forum in the
demand for a League of Nations. The proper procedure, obviously, was
to stop hostilities, subject to guarantees, and to set up a League of
Nations that should make peace. It would have taken little longer to
get together than did the diplomatic delegations, and would certainly
have taken no longer in reaching a result. Both its constitution and
its conclusions would probably have been resisted to the verge of
rupture by the French and Italian Governments; but would, with the
moral sanction of the League and with the urgent pressure of the
military situation, have been easily enforced by the British and
Americans. MM. Clemenceau and Tardieu could override Messrs. Lloyd
George and Philip Kerr easily enough, for, after all, the former do
stand for forces, the latter are merely phenomena. They could even
override Messrs. Wilson and Lansing, for though these did represent
real forces, they could not reproduce them in Paris. But mixed French
and Italian delegations of all parties would have offered points of
contact to British and American Liberals and even to German and
Russian Socialists. The cleavages between the various national
interests would have been bridged and an internationalist cement
introduced to counteract the imperialist cleavages. Of course, such a
body would not have elaborated the details of peace in a plenary
debate. It would have proceeded as national Constituent Assemblies
always have done after civil war. It would have debated and approved
general principles for its own permanent constitution and the
resettlement of Europe, and referred them for elaboration to
committees controlling the diplomatic experts.
It will be objected that such a new and untried institution could
never have succeeded where the fine flower of diplomacy failed, or
would have been merely a stalking horse for diplomatic intrigue and
imperialistic interests. But an institution is strong in proportion to
the public powers it has acquired and the public acquiescence in them:
not in proportion to its degree of constitutional development, or the
perfection of its machinery. A British parish council, with its
carefully defined powers, can do little and does nothing. A German
revolutionary communal council could do anything and does a good deal.
The League of Nations would have given the Americans a means of
expressing their moral and neutral policies and of exercising the
pressure that President Wilson would not or could not apply. Even if
the League had not succeeded in imposing respect for his "fourteen
points" on the diplomats, and it might have done so, it would at least
have regulated procedure. We should not have had vital decisions
reached in a few minutes' talk one afternoon, and reversed for some
unknown reason the next, without reference to expert conclusions or
regard for principle and precedent. Also this procedure would have
made it possible to deal with our main obstacles to a permanent peace,
the secret treaties. We could not escape from these national
diplomatic obligations in a diplomatic conference of national
delegates. But we could have got a dispensation from them had they
been referred to a supreme international and super-diplomatic
authority. No doubt this procedure would have affected such questions
as the international status of Germany and Ireland or India. Germany
would have been admitted to the League in time to take part in
arranging its own penalties and we should thereby have got the best
guarantee possible for the permanence of the peace in respect to
Germany. The Peace Treaty would thus have become a compact instead of
a Coercion Act. As to Ireland, it is outside my scope: but as our
national authority avowedly finds reconciliation of the two Irish
factions insoluble, there would seem to be no great harm in trying
what an international authority could do.
On such lines as this, a League of Nations might have been
established. As things are the League is, of course, no more than an
alliance to enforce the imperialist and nationalist decisions of Paris
on conquered races, and to combat revolution. It is a combination of a
Balkan League and a Holy Alliance. The effect of this prostitution of
a public ideal to the profiteering of the Paris conclave has made the
peace as disastrous morally to Europe as was the war materially. The
Treaties have, for a time, Bolshevised Eastern Europe, Balkanised
Central Europe and Bottomleyised Western Europe.
But here we are concerned with the effect on Germany. And if it be
objected that it does not matter what Germany thinks of it, I reply
that the test of the League's utility will be the confidence that it
can inspire in the former enemy States. Unless Germans, Bulgars, and
even Bolsheviks, see in it something more than a League against
themselves, they will not accept its authority and we are back on a
basis of a balance of power.
Our relations with Germany in this respect are especially important.
We went into the war for international ideals--the defence of France
and the abolition of militarism; and, having fought it to a
conclusion, we allowed our rulers to substitute for that
internationalism the worst form of imperialism. Germany went into the
war for imperialist ideals, or, at best, for nationalist ideals; but
after defeat replaced those ideals by an internationalism involving
the acceptance of international control by a League of Nations. That
internationalist point of view is still held by the German people,
though no one would think it from the character of their present
Government, and the tone of their Press.
The internationalist point of view of the German people has so far
failed to find expression for two reasons: one was the pressure of
Allied imperialism, the other the partial failure of the German
Revolution through the innate political incapacity of the people. The
armistice, while nominally suspending hostilities, really continued the
war on national lines. This treaty, while nominally restoring peace,
really continues the war on imperial lines. Under these conditions
German internationalism could scarcely survive except among the working
class, where it was too deeply rooted in the realities of life for any
poison gas from Paris to kill it. But, except among the workmen and
their idealist leaders, the Independent Socialists, the feeling that the
world in general, and Germany in particular, was at the mercy of the
imperialist and nationalist elements among the victors caused the
abandonment of the new protestantism--internationalism, and reversion to
the old orthodoxy--nationalism. This recantation was indeed in response
to intimations from Paris that Germany was expected to renounce the
devil Bolshevism and all its works. That the realisation of the German
Revolution, whether it is the work of a devil or no, is the one and only
protection for Germany against Bolshevism is, of course, beyond the
political penetration of Paris.
The principal force of public opinion created by the sacrifices of the
war expressed itself in the movement for a League of Nations to
guarantee peace. In Germany this movement was especially strong. For
Germany was left without other protection than that which it could get
from such internationalism. Any suggestion that could strengthen the
League or Germany's claim to participate in it was eagerly grasped.
A private suggestion that the German Constitution should contain a
formal recognition of the League and be the first national
constitution to do so, was at once adopted by the very cautious and
conservative Committee. Another from a similar source that the German
proposals for the League should correct the democratic deficiencies of
the Paris project was also adopted. The German scheme for a League
was, indeed, in every respect better than that of the Allies.[I] But
the Paris project and the provisions of the Treaty hopelessly
prejudiced the whole idea of the League with German progressives.
After their publication the clause recognising the precepts of the
League and the provisions of Treaties as the supreme law of the land
disappeared[J] from Art. 4 of the Constitution. The League of Paris
and the Treaty of Versailles are now to be obeyed as "force
majeure"--they are not recognised as German law. And whereas the
League could have secured from Germany a willing acceptance of
obligations that would not only have guaranteed the peace of Europe so
far as the German race was concerned, but would also have made good to
some extent the ruin of the last war, now it is looked upon throughout
Germany as mere cynical camouflage. The German, whether nationalist or
internationalist, listens to American or English preachments about the
League with despair and disgust.
Here is one such opinion from my note book: "I can endure with
patience Germany being robbed of everything that is easily rob-able
and even its being reduced to economic servitude. But what I cannot
stand is the confidence trick of Wilson's 'points' and the camouflage
of the League of Nations. Bismarck in respect of his Emperor and
Bethmann-Hollweg in respect of Belgium both committed a breach of
trust, but they did it under necessity of war. Wilson in his Fourteen
Points and Lord Robert Cecil in the League have done the same in the
name of peace."
Already the internationalism of Germany and Central Europe is under
the pressure of Paris, taking a form almost impossible to reconcile
with the form of this League of Nations. Until the appearance of the
Paris project for the League and the peace conditions, Germany,
whether national or international, was wholeheartedly a supporter of
it. But now it is not too much to say that the League is moribund, not
only in Germany, but in continental Europe generally, as an ideal. Its
place is rapidly being taken by the ideal of an International Council
on a basis of social and industrial representation, instead of that of
a League on a basis of national or territorial representation. Just as
the leaders of the German workmen and the younger Democrats caught at
the theories of Guild Socialism, so now they are turning eagerly to a
new idea, also introduced from England, of an international Soviet
system--an organisation that will be really international because,
instead of being based as is the Wilsonian League on the nationalism
of States, it will be based on the internationalism of trades. That
will have as its sanction an international strike instead of a
national boycott, and as its authority a Central Council of delegates
instead of a Conference of diplomats. This development would have come
in due course anyway, but a successful Wilsonian League might have
delayed it even as the prestige of the House of Commons is delaying
Council government, and as the prestige of the Crown delayed
Parliamentary government itself.
To us Liberals and Labour folk here in England--relieved at getting a
League in any form and ready as we English always are to make the best
of what we've got, however bad--this international Council movement
may seem to be a waste of strength. For it would seem likely to
require the full force of all progressive continental movements to get
the League of Nations put on a democratic basis. But the attitude of
America makes it doubtful whether the League can be so developed as to
do more good than harm. And in any case the movement for an
International Council will proceed concurrently and will help rather
than harm the movement for an International Parliament. Nor will it
encounter the same difficulties. The international organisation of
labour provides a better medium in which to establish an international
institution than does the present international organisation of
governments--the Foreign Offices and Foreign Missions. Moreover, it
should prove as easy to extend a Soviet System or Council Commonwealth
into the international relationship as it is difficult and dangerous
to extend the principle of State Sovereignty and Parliamentary
supremacy there. The Council Commonwealth, with its essentially
international basis, with its democracy of superimposed councils in
constant contact with each other and with the international strike for
sanction, is as sound and safe a foundation for such a superstructure
as the Parliamentary State, with its long-term parliaments, its large
constituencies, its all-dominating national sentiment and its national
blockade or boycott, is unsound. Anyway, the International Industrial
Congress and Executive Council are bound to come, either in
substitution for or supplementary to the League of Nations, just as
the National Council Congress and Central Council are bound to come
either in substitution for or supplementary to the parliamentary
systems. The only question is whether they will come as supplementary
to or in substitution for the League.
As to the sop thrown to the workmen of the world in Section 8 of the
Treaty, with its international labour organisation, the German
workmen, at least, have no use for it. The revolutionaries with their
Independent leaders would not probably co-operate at all in the
proceedings at Washington now beginning. The Trades Unionists and
Social-Democrats have done so, but under no illusions as to results. A
criticism of their organ, _Vorwaerts_, points out that this section is
inspired by as profound a distrust of the Proletariat as the rest of
the Treaty shows of Prussia; and that the provisions as to submission
of agenda some months before, as to veto by the Governments except
when there is a two-thirds majority, while the workmen's
representation is no more than a fourth, and as to enforcing
decisions, deprive the whole section of most of its value. The
_Vorwaerts_, representing the general point of view now dominant in
Germany and the point of view which but for other influences would
have given the most sympathetic supporters to such procedure as that
proposed, now damns it as humbug.
But whatever the form of the eventual international institution may
be, one fact must be faced. We have not yet made peace with Germany.
If the Paris treaties with Germany, Austria and Bulgaria have appeased
the angry passions excited by war and finally discredited secret
diplomacy, they will have fulfilled a function and cleared the road
for peace. The armistice demands were the first stage to peace--these
diplomatic damnifications the second. What will be the third and last?
FOOTNOTES:
[H] This telegram had, I believe, a curious backlash, rather
illustrative of the times in Germany. A countess with political
ambitions, who had set up an Independent salon, had had that Friday her
usual "evening," at which I had looked in for a few minutes. On Monday
she was arrested and banished to a provincial townlet for supplying
false information to a foreign correspondent. Needless to say, one did
not need a countess to tell one that Germany would sign in its collapsed
condition.
[I] In the German project all signatories of the Hague Convention as
well as the new States arisen since the war were admitted. Instead of
all authority being assigned to an Executive Council of nine in which
the victorious Great Powers reserved themselves a majority of five, the
remaining four being elected by smaller States, the German project had
the Executive Council elected by a Congress of States, corresponding to
the Assembly of Delegates in the Paris project. It also provided a World
Parliament of parliamentary delegations. The German project is also more
drastic in its provisions for mediation, arbitration, and protection of
minorities. It approaches the functions of the League for international
social legislation in a much more liberal and constructive spirit.
[J] This article of the Constitution had been amended by the addition of
the words in italics: "The generally accepted principles of
international law _the pronouncements of the League of Nations and the
provisions of Treaties_ have binding force as German Constitutional
Law." It has now been amended back by their omission.