THE PEACE CONFERENCE AT PARIS--1919
“Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this
world have the power and spirit of philosophy, and political
greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures which
pursue either at the expense of the other are compelled to stand
aside--cities will never rest from their evils, no--nor the human
race, as I believe.”--PLATO.
Four days before the official declaration of war on Germany by the
Government of the United States, President Wilson made a speech before
the American Congress which contained the following passage:[43] “We
shall fight ... for Democracy ... for the rights and liberties of small
nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free
peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the
world itself at last free.” A few months later the same spokesman of
a free people declared:[44] “They (men everywhere) insist ... that no
nation or people shall be robbed or punished because the irresponsible
rulers of a single country have themselves done deep and abominable
wrong.... The wrongs ... committed in this war ... cannot and _must_
not be righted by the commission of similar wrongs against Germany and
her allies.” Later still, when the victory of Democracy had become
certain, a forecast of the terms of peace was given by the same
authoritative voice:[45] “In four years of conflict the whole world has
been drawn in, and the common will of mankind has been substituted
for the particular purposes of individual States. The issues must now
be settled by no compromise or adjustment, but definitely and once for
all. There must be a full acceptance of the principle that the interest
of the weakest is as sacred as the interest of the strongest. That is
what we mean when we speak of a permanent peace.”
These and a number of similar utterances had produced a deep effect
throughout the world. The ruling classes in Europe professed to regard
them as merely propaganda, and not to be taken seriously, but they
could not escape the uneasy consciousness that their own methods in
the past were being arraigned before an unpleasantly public court of
justice. Moderate opinion in all countries was disposed to welcome
these bold statements of democratic principles as furnishing a
convenient bridge to a more advanced stage in political evolution,
views which would have been condemned as sentimental, and even
anarchic, in a humbler social reformer, on the lips of a President were
considered as a statesman’s recognition of the logic of hard facts. The
masses thought they were the “plain people,” for whom and to whom the
President had spoken, and in their hearts had risen a great hope.
When Mr. Wilson first arrived in Europe huge crowds acclaimed him, and,
making due allowance for the cynical, the curious and indifferent,
these crowds contained a far from insignificant proportion of ardent,
enthusiastic spirits, who welcomed him not as a President or a
politician, but as the bearer of a message, not as a Rabbi with a
doctrine made up of teachings in the synagogues, but as a latter-day
Messiah come to drive forth the money-changers and intriguers from
the temple of a righteous peace. Eager idealists believed that the
victory of democracy had set a period to the evils resulting from
autocratic forms of government, that with the termination of the war
the topmost block had been placed on a pyramid of errors, that a
real master-builder had appeared, who would lay the foundations of a
cleaner, better world. They saw in him the champion of decency and
morality, a doughty champion, strong in the backing of millions of free
people, who had seen liberty in danger, and had sent their men across
an ocean to fight for freedom in an older world in torment. They were
grateful and offered him their services, loyally and unreservedly,
asking but one thing--to be shown the way. History contains no parallel
to this movement. Savanarola and Rienzi had appealed to local, or at
most national feeling. Here was a man who stood for something universal
and inspiring, who was more than a heroic priest, more than the Tribune
of _a_ people, a man who, while enjoying personal security, could speak
and act for the welfare of _all_ peoples in the name of right. For
such causes, men in the past have suffered persecution and have been
faithful unto death.
No Peace Conference has ever undertaken a more stupendous task than
that which confronted the delegates of the Allied States in Paris in
January, 1919. Central Europe was seething with revolution and slowly
dying of starvation. Beyond lay Russia, unknown yet full of portents,
more terrible to many timorous souls than ever Germany had been. The
war had come to a sudden and unexpected end, and enemy territory had
not been invaded save at extremities which were not vital points. The
Central Empires and their Allies had collapsed from internal causes.
Germany and Austria could not, for the moment, oppose invasion, which
had lost all its terrors for distracted populations, who hoped that
French and British soldiers would, by their presence, maintain law
and order and ensure supplies of food. On the other hand, neither the
Serbs nor the Rumanians had had their territorial aspirations satisfied
during the progress of the war. Both races had followed the usual
Balkan custom by invading the territories they claimed during the
armistice; this method, when employed against Hungarians, involved the
use of force; it also embittered relations between themselves where,
as in the Banat, their claims clashed and overlapped. Further north,
the Czecho-Slovaks had proclaimed their independence, and Poland was
being resurrected; the frontiers of both these States were vague and
undefined, but their appetites were unlimited, and Teschen, with its
coalfields, was a pocket in dispute.
Not only had the Peace Conference to endeavour to prevent excessive and
premature encroachment on enemy territory by Allied States, it had also
to compose serious differences between the Western Powers in regard
to the Adriatic coast, Syria, and Asia Minor arising out of secret
treaties.
These considerations, though embarrassing for the representatives of
Great Britain, France and Italy, did not affect President Wilson to
the same extent; in fact they rather strengthened his position and
confirmed the expectation that he would be the real arbiter of the
Conference. His speeches had, in the opinion of innumerable men and
women, indicated the only solution of the world-problem. The “Fourteen
Points” had outlined, without inconvenient precision, a settlement of
international questions; he was the head of a State untrammelled by
secret treaties, the only State not on the verge of bankruptcy, a State
which could furnish both moral and material aid. When M. Albert Thomas
said that the choice lay between Wilson and Lenine, he may have been
guilty of exaggeration, but he expressed a feeling which was general
and real. Whether that feeling was justified, the future alone will
show.
In the Declaration of September 27, 1918, President Wilson stated: “All
who sit at the Peace table must be ready to pay the price, and the
price is impartial justice, no matter whose interest is crossed.” Later
on in the same Declaration he added: “the indispensable instrumentality
is a ‘League of Nations,’ but it cannot be formed now.” Five conditions
of peace were set forth; of these, the third laid down that there could
be no alliances or covenants within the League of Nations, and the
Declaration concluded with an appeal to the Allies: “I hope that the
leaders of the Allied Governments will speak as plainly as I have tried
to speak, and say whether my statement of the issues is in any degree
mistaken.”
The inference, drawn by the ordinary man after perusing this
Declaration, was that its author expected the Conference to deal with
each and every question on its merits, that the “League of Nations”
would eventually be the instrument employed in reaching the final
settlement, and that, following on the establishment of the League, all
previous alliances would cease to exist and future alliances would be
precluded. The questioning form of the concluding sentence suggested
doubts as to the attitude of the Associated Powers, but the presence of
the President at the peace table served as presumptive evidence that
those doubts had been set at rest.
A “League of Nations” was, undoubtedly, the ideal instrument for
achieving a just settlement of the many and varied questions which
confronted the Peace Conference, but a “League,” or “Society of
Nations” as defined by Lord Robert Cecil,[46] could not be created
before the conclusion of a Preliminary Peace with Germany and her
Allies, with, as its corollary, the inclusion of, at least, Germany,
Austria, and Hungary within the League. In the words of Lord Robert
Cecil, such a Society would be incomplete, and proportionately
ineffective, unless every civilized State joined it.
The formation of a full-fledged League required time. Further, in the
frame of mind which prevailed in all the Allied and Associated States,
a real “Society of Nations,” implying “friendly association” with
the enemy peoples, as distinguished from their late “irresponsible
Governments,” was impossible. An alternative did, however, exist--an
alternative for which a precedent could be found and which needed moral
leadership rather than cumbrous machinery for its application. This
alternative would have consisted of three processes: the conclusion
of a Preliminary Peace with Germany and her Allies, combined with
suspension of blockade; the admission to the Peace Conference of
delegates representing the different parts of the German Empire,
Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey; collaboration with these
delegates in the settlement of territorial readjustments in accordance
with the principles enunciated in President Wilson’s speeches and
the “Fourteen Points.” The Congress of Vienna had set the precedent
by admitting to its councils Talleyrand, the representative of a
conquered State which had changed its form of government in the
hour of defeat. The conclusion of a “Preliminary Peace” presented
no difficulty. Germany had reached the lowest pitch of weakness;
her military and naval forces had ceased to exist, her population
was dependent on the Allies for supplies of food, she was torn by
internal dissensions, and the Socialist and Democratic parties had
gained the upper hand. Bavaria was showing separatist tendencies,
and her example might be followed by other German States. The same
conditions prevailed in the other enemy countries to an even more
marked degree. In short, the Allies could have counted on acceptance
of any preliminary peace terms which they might have chosen to impose.
They could have ensured their fulfilment, not only by the maintenance
of military forces on provisional and temporary frontiers, but also by
the threat of a reimposition of an effective blockade. In an atmosphere
free from the blighting influences of an armistice, dispassionate
treatment of a mass of ethnical questions would have been possible.
An appeal could have been made to the common sense and interests of
the enemy peoples, through their statesmen and publicists, which
would have disarmed reaction, and which would have made it possible
to utilize the more enlightened elements in the key-States of Central
Europe for the attainment of a durable peace. A Peace Conference so
composed would have been the embryo of a true “Society of Nations,” a
fitting instrument for the practical application of theories not new
nor ill-considered, whose development had been retarded in peaceful,
prosperous times, and which now were imperatively demanded by
multitudes of suffering people weighed down by sorrow and distress.
Mr. Wilson does not seem to have considered any alternative to the
immediate formulation of a covenant of the “League of Nations.” He
left the all-important question of peace in abeyance, and devoted his
energies to the preparation of a document which would serve as an
outward and visible sign of personal success. Perhaps he was dismayed
by the opposition, in reactionary Allied circles, to moral theories
considered by officials to be impracticable and even dangerous, however
useful they might once have been for purposes of propaganda. He may
have been paralysed amid unaccustomed surroundings where he was not
the supreme authority. At any rate, he neglected to use a weapon whose
potency he, of all rulers, should have known--the weapon of publicity,
which was, as ever, at his service and would have rallied to the causes
he espoused the support and approval of sincere reformers in every
class. He worked in secret and secured adhesion to a draft of the
covenant of the “League of Nations,” whose colourless and non-committal
character betrayed official handiwork.
The man who had arrived in Paris as the bearer of a message whose
echoes had filled the world with hope, left France the bearer of a
“scrap of paper.” He returned to find his authority lessened. Before,
he had stood alone; he came back to take his place as one of the “Big
Four.” It is given to few men to act as well as to affirm.
Mr. Lloyd George was unable to help the President; his election
speeches had been the reverse of a moral exposition of the issues, and
the Parliamentary majority they had helped to create allowed no lapses
into Liberalism. More than a year had passed since the Prime Minister
of Great Britain had stated that the British people were not fighting
“a war of aggression against the German people ... or to destroy
Austria-Hungary, or to deprive Turkey of its capital or of the rich and
renowned lands of Asia Minor and Thrace which are predominantly Turkish
in race.” Teschen had not been heard of then, and the demands of Italy
and M. Venizelos were either forgotten or ignored. Mr. Lloyd George’s
native sense and insight would have avoided many pitfalls; the Bullit
revelations did no more than bare justice to his acumen in regard to
Russia, but he was terrorized by a section of the British Press, which
held him relentlessly to vote-catching pledges, however reckless or
extravagant.
The Prime Minister of the French Republic was pre-occupied with
revenging past humiliations, with retrieving the fortunes of his
country and making it secure. He did lip-service to the “League of
Nations,” but talked of it with sardonic humour, and did it infinite
harm. A dominating personality and a prodigious intellect enriched
by wide experience were lost to the cause of human progress. No rare
occurrence, when the possessors of these gifts are old.
With the progress of the Conference, M. Clemenceau’s influence became
stronger. He had made fewer public speeches than his colleagues, and
perhaps that simplified his task. “Certain it is that words, as a
Tartar’s bow, do shoot back upon the understanding of the wisest, and
mightily entangle and pervert the judgment.”
While precious months were being devoted to framing the draft covenant
of the League of Nations, Commissions appointed by the Peace Conference
had been busy preparing reports on multifarious points of detail. These
reports were the work of experts, and could not fail to influence the
final decisions of the Supreme Council; as a matter of fact, they were
followed textually in some of the weightiest decisions reached. The
men who prepared them were in no sense statesmen, they were trammelled
by official routine and exposed to all manner of outside influences.
The whole tone of life in Paris was inimical to an objective attitude.
Clamours for vengeance distorted the natural desire of honest men
in France and Belgium for security against future aggression by a
resuscitated Germany. The big industrial interests wanted to stifle
German trade and at the same time exact a huge indemnity; they
exploited the expectation of the working classes that, as a result
of victory, Allied industry would be given a fair start in future
competition with the enemy States.
In the absence of any higher guidance, either moral or informed,
statecraft was entirely lacking in the proceedings of the Conference,
yet the situation was such that, if adroitly handled, measures were
possible which would have contributed powerfully to the security of
France and Belgium, by attenuating and dissipating reactionary elements
in the German Empire. Advantage might have been taken of the distrust
inspired by Prussia in the other German States, to create autonomous
and neutral zones in the Palatinate and the territory formerly
comprised in the Hanseatic League, to assist Bavaria to shake off
Prussian hegemony, and become a component with German Austria of a new
Catholic State in South-Eastern Europe, where conflicting national aims
and unruly populations needed a counterweight.
No such measures were taken. The Conference was obsessed with details.
Every conceivable question was discussed before the one that was
most urgent--the conclusion of some form of peace which would let the
world resume its normal life. A state of affairs was protracted which
encouraged the greedy and unscrupulous, which checked any expression
of opinion by the “plain people” of President Wilson’s speeches, which
gave an opening to militarists, jingo journalists, and politicians,
whose ideas were those of German Junkers and who still believed in war.
Jungle law reasserted itself. In an allegoric sense, the Conference
was like a jungle through which a forest fire had passed, destroying
the scanty verdure it had once possessed, leaving bare, blackened
stumps too hard to burn. Some of the larger, fiercer beasts had been
expelled; a few remained, and they, too, had been changed. A solitary
eagle had descended from his distant eyrie and, like a parrot,
screeched incessantly. “Fiume, Fiume, Fiume”--a chuckle followed, it
said--“Fourteen Points” but this was an obvious aside. The performance
was disappointing; polished and well-turned phrases had been expected
from so great a bird. The lion’s majestic mien had altered somewhat,
his movements were uncertain; from time to time his eyes sought,
furtively, a pack of jackals, who should have hunted with him, but, of
late, they had grown insolent to their natural leader and reviled him
in a high-pitched, daily wail. An old and wounded tiger roamed about
the jungle; his strength, so far from being impaired, had become almost
leonine; sometimes the jackals joined his own obedient cubs, and then
he snarled contentedly while the lion roared with jealousy and rage.
The bear was absent; he had turned savage through much suffering, and
the wolves who prowled around the outskirts of the jungle prevented
him from entering; they howled with terror whenever he approached, and
wanted the lion and the tiger to help to kill this dangerous type of
bear. A yellow dragon moaned in the far distance, but was unheeded; he
was no more a peril and had little left for the other beasts to steal.
Jubilant and shrill, the crowing of a cock was heard above the babel of
the jungle, announcing, to all who cared to listen, the dawn of fifteen
years of liberty in the valley of the Saar.
The Peace Treaties promulgated by the Conference at Paris are
impregnated with the atmosphere in which they were drawn up--an
atmosphere charged with suspicion and hatred, fear and greed; not
one of them is in the spirit of the League of Nations. The Treaty
with Germany, in particular, discloses the predominance of French
influence in Allied councils. An old French nobleman once remarked,
“Les Bourgeois sont terribles lors qu’ils ont eu peur.” The conditions
imposed on a democratized and utterly defeated Germany are terrible
indeed, but curiously ineffective; they are a timid attempt to modify
vindictiveness by a half-hearted application of President Wilson’s
ethical principles; they satisfy no one; this is their one redeeming
feature, since it shows that they might have been even more vindictive
and still more futile for the achievement of their purpose, which
was, presumably, a lasting peace. Militarists and reactionaries could
not conceive a state of peace which did not repose on force and the
military occupation of large tracts of German territory. They were
twenty years behind the time. They did not realize that armies in
democratic countries consist of human beings who observe and think,
who cannot be treated as machines, and bidden to subordinate their
reasoning faculties to the designs of a few selfish and ambitious men.
Liberal thinkers, on the other hand, were shocked at Treaties which
inflamed the hearts of seventy million German-speaking people with
hatred and a desire for revenge, which cemented German unity, which
aroused a widespread irredentism and gave an incentive to industrious,
efficient populations to devote their time and efforts to preparations
for a future war and not to the arts of peace. Such men were neither
visionaries nor sentimentalists, they were practical men of affairs,
who foresaw that security could not be attained by visiting the sins of
outworn mediaeval Governments on the heads of their innocent victims
throughout Central Europe; that by the employment of such methods the
“League of Nations” was turned into a farce; that exasperation would
foster and provoke recalcitrance; that Germany would be a magnet to
every dissatisfied State; that other leagues and combinations might
be formed, on which it would be impossible to enforce a limitation
of their armaments. They pointed out that the imposition of fabulous
indemnities was two-edged, that payment of nine-tenths of the sums
suggested would have to be made in manufactured goods or raw materials,
a mode of payment which, in the end, might be more profitable to those
that paid than to the peoples who received.
Inaugurated in an idealism which may have been exaggerated but was none
the less sincere, the Peace Conference has blighted the hope and faith
of “plain people” everywhere, and has consecrated cant. Respectability
has been enthroned amid circumstances of wealth and power; in its smug
and unctuous presence morality has found no place. The foundations of a
clearer, better world have not been laid; the apex has been placed on
a pyramid of errors, on which nothing can be built.
* * * * *
Versailles was chosen as the setting for a historic ceremony--the
signature of the Peace Treaty with what was still the German Empire,
though the imperial throne was vacant and a workman presided at
the councils of an Imperial Government. The choice was not without
significance. Democracy had triumphed, and, in the hour of victory, had
followed the example of autocratic rulers when making peace with other
autocrats. It was therefore only fitting that this Peace Treaty, whose
terms are inspired by the spirit of the past, should be signed in a
palace of the Kings of France.
A palace on an artificial eminence, where once had been flat marshes
and wild forest land, built by a monarch to whom nothing was
impossible, and for the indulgence of whose whims no cost was deemed
excessive, either in money or in human lives. Viewed from the west on
misty autumn evenings, it seems an unearthly fabric; the exquisite
harmony of its line crowns and completes the surrounding landscape,
floating, as by enchantment, above the tree tops, as light in texture
as the clouds. A palace such as children dream of, when fairy stories
haunt their minds, peopling the world with princes young and valiant,
princesses beautiful and wayward, whose parents are virtuous Kings and
Queens and live in palaces like Versailles.
Below the terraces, a broad alley stretches westward and meets the
horizon at two poplars. Beyond these isolated trees an empty sky is
seen. The poplars stand like sentinels guarding the confines of a vast
enclosure, where art and nature have conspired to shut out the ugly
things in life. A French Abbé, whose cultured piety ensures him a
welcome in this world and admission to the next, said that the royalty
of France had passed between and beyond those poplars--into nothingness.
Amid a galaxy of statues of monarchs, statesmen, warriors, goddesses
and nymphs, only one piece of sculpture serves as a reminder that a
suffering world exists--the face of a woman of the people, graven in
bass-relief upon the central front. An old and tragic face, seamed with
deep wrinkles, sullen, inscrutable, one can imagine it hunched between
shoulders bowed by toil and shrunk by joyless motherhood. The eyes of
stone, to which a sculptor’s art has given life, are hard and menacing,
hopeless but not resigned; beneath their steadfast gaze has passed all
that was splendid in a bygone age, the greatest autocrats on earth and
women of quite a different sort.
“Sceptre and crown have tumbled down
And in the level dust been laid
With the poor yokel’s scythe and spade.”[47]
There were many faces in France and other countries which wore this
same expression, even after the triumph of Democracy over the autocrats
of Central Europe. They were not to be seen, however, on the terraces
of the palace when the Treaty of Peace with Germany was signed in the
“Hall of Mirrors,” where men in black were met together on yet another
“Field of Blackbirds,” where, after months of bickering, the larger
birds were expounding to their weaker brethren the latest infamies of
Jungle Law. The well-dressed men and women who thronged those terraces
were something between the proud aristocrats who created the legend of
Versailles and the masses of the underworld who have survived them, and
yet they seemed further from the two extremes than the extremes were
from each other; they were not of the stuff of leaders and were too
prosperous to be led; their manner was almost timid to the soldiers on
duty at this ceremony, who, though men of the people, were disdainful
to civilians after four years of war. One felt that this was a class
which might, at no distant date, attempt to imitate some Roman Emperors
and pay Pretorian Guards. A catastrophic war had contained no lesson
for these people; for them, its culmination at Versailles was far more
a social than a political event; they took no interest in politics,
they wanted security for property and a Government of strong men who
would keep the masses well in hand. They were not real democrats,
and they cheered both long and loud, when the men, who between them
had betrayed Democracy, emerged from the stately palace to see the
fountains play.