THE SETTLEMENT
President Wilson's success in securing approval for the League as the
basis of the Peace Treaty was his greatest triumph at Paris; and it was
accentuated by the acceptance of certain of the amendments that were
demanded in America, while those which the French and Japanese insisted
upon were discarded or postponed. In comparison with this success, he
doubtless regarded his concessions in the matter of reparations and the
special Franco-British-American alliance as mere details. His task,
however, was by no means completed, since Italian and Japanese claims
threatened to bring on crises of almost equal danger.
From the early days of the Conference there had been interested
speculation in the corridors of the Quai d'Orsay as to whether the
promises made to Italy by the Entente Powers in 1915, which were
incorporated in the secret Treaty of London, would be carried into effect
by the final peace settlement. That treaty had been conceived in the
spirit of old-time diplomacy and had assigned to Italy districts which
disinterested experts declared could not be hers except upon the principle
of the spoils to the strong. Much of the territories promised in the
Tyrol, along the Julian Alps, and on the Adriatic coast was inhabited
entirely by non-Italians, whose political and economic fortunes were bound
up with states other than Italy; justice and wisdom alike seemed to
dictate a refusal of Italian claims. The annexation of such districts by
Italy, the experts agreed, would contravene directly the right of
self-determination and might lead to serious difficulties in the future.
Would the President sanction the application of treaties consummated
without the knowledge of the United States and in defiance of the
principles upon which he had declared that peace must be made? The
application of the Treaty of London, furthermore, would be at the expense,
chiefly, of the Jugoslavs, that is, a small nation. The Allies, as well as
Wilson, had declared that the war had been waged and that the peace must
be drafted in defense of the rights of smaller nationalities. Justice for
the weak as for the strong was the basis of the new international order
which Wilson was striving to inaugurate.
Had the struggle been simply over the validity of the Treaty of London,
Wilson's position would have been difficult enough, for the Premiers of
France and Great Britain had declared that they could do nothing else but
honor the pledges given in 1915. But Italian opinion had been steadily
aroused by a chauvinist press campaign to demand not merely the
application of the Treaty of London but the annexation of Fiume, which
the treaty assigned to the Jugoslavs. To this demand both the British and
French were opposed, although they permitted Wilson to assume the burden
of denying Italian claims to Fiume. As time went on, Orlando and Sonnino
pressed for a decision, even threatening that unless their demands were
satisfied, Italy would have nothing to do with the German treaty.
Finally, on the 23d of April, the crisis came to a head. On that day the
President published a statement setting forth the American position,
which he felt had been entirely misrepresented by a propagandist press.
Emphasizing the fact that Italian claims were inconsistent with the
principles upon which all the Allies had agreed, as necessary to the
future tranquillity of the world, he appealed directly to the Italian
people to join with the United States in the application of those
principles, even at the sacrifice of what seemed their own interest.
The appeal was based upon sound facts. Its statements were approved
publicly by allied experts who knew the situation, and privately by
Clemenceau and Lloyd George. It had been discussed in the Council of Four
and by no means took Orlando by surprise. But it gave Orlando an
opportunity for carrying out his threat of retiring from the Conference.
Insisting that Wilson had appealed to the Italian people over his head and
that they must choose between him and the President, he set forth at once
for Rome, followed by the other Italian commissioners, although the
economic experts remained at Paris. Orlando was playing a difficult game.
He was hailed in Rome as the defender of the sacred rights of Italy, but
in Paris he lacked partners. Both the British and French agreed with
Wilson that Italy ought not to have Fiume. They secretly regretted the
promises of the London Treaty, although they were prepared to keep their
word, and they were by no means inclined to make further concessions in
order to bring Orlando and his colleagues back. After a few days of
hesitation, they decided to go on with the German treaty and to warn the
Italians that, if they persisted in absenting themselves from the
Conference, their withdrawal would be regarded as a breach of the Treaty
of London which stipulated a common peace with the enemy. They also
decided that Italy could not expect to share in German reparations if her
delegates were not present to sign the German treaty. Such arguments could
not fail to weigh heavily with the Italian delegates, even at the moment
when the Italian press and people were giving them enthusiastic
encouragement to persist in their uncompromising course. On the 5th of May
Orlando left Rome to resume his place in the Peace Conference.
In the meantime the Japanese had taken advantage of the embarrassment
caused by the Italian withdrawal, to put forward their special claims in
the Far East. During the early days of the Conference they had played a
cautious game, as we have seen, attending meetings but taking no decided
stand upon European matters. They had even refused to press to the limit
the amendment to the League Covenant which enunciated their favorite
principle of the equality of races. But now they insisted that on one
point, at least, Japanese claims must be listened to; their right of
inheritance to the German lease of Kiau-Chau and economic privileges in
the Shantung peninsula must receive recognition. This claim had long been
approved secretly by the British and French; it had even been accepted by
the Chinese at the time when Japan had forced the twenty-one demands upon
her. It was disapproved, however, by the American experts in Paris, and
Wilson argued strongly for more generous treatment of China. His
strategic position, one must admit, was not nearly so strong as in the
Fiume controversy. In the latter he was supported, at least covertly, by
France and England, whose treaty with Italy explicitly denied her claim
to Fiume. The Japanese threat of withdrawal from the Conference, if their
claims were not satisfied, carried more real danger with it than that of
the Italians; if the Japanese delegates actually departed making the
second of the big five to go, the risk of a complete débâcle was by no
means slight. Even assuming that justice demanded as strong a stand for
the Chinese as Wilson had taken for the Jugoslavs, the practical
importance of the Shantung question in Europe was of much less
significance. The eyes of every small nation of Europe were upon Fiume,
which was regarded as the touchstone of Allied professions of justice. If
the Allied leaders permitted Italy to take Fiume, the small nations would
scoff at all further professions of idealism; they would take no further
interest either in the Conference or its League. Whereas, on the other
hand, the small nationalities of Europe knew and cared little about the
justice of Chinese pleas.
Such considerations may have been in the mind of the President when he
decided to yield to Japan. The decision throws interesting light upon his
character; he is less the obstinate doctrinaire, more the practical
politician than has sometimes been supposed. The pure idealist would have
remained consistent in the crisis, refused to do an injustice in the Far
East as he had refused in the settlement of the Adriatic, and would have
taken the risk of breaking up the Conference and destroying all chance of
the League of Nations. Instead, Wilson yielded to practical considerations
of the moment. The best that he could secure was the promise of the
Japanese to retire from the peninsula, a promise the fulfillment of which
obviously depended upon the outcome of the struggle between liberal and
conservative forces in Japan, and which accordingly remained uncertain. He
was willing to do what he admitted was an injustice, in order to assure
what seemed to him the larger and the more certain justice that would
follow the establishment of the League of Nations.
The settlement of the Shantung problem removed the last great difficulty
in completing the treaty with Germany, and on the 7th of May the German
delegates appeared to receive it. Nearly eight weeks of uncertainty
followed, taken up with the study of German protests, the construction of
the treaty with Austria, and finally the last crisis that preceded the
signature. The terms were drastic and the German Government, in the
persons of Scheidemann, the Premier, and Brockdorff-Rantzau, Minister for
Foreign Affairs, seemed determined that, helpless as she was, Germany
should not accept them without radical modifications. Their protests
touched chiefly upon the economic clauses and reparations, the solution of
the Saar problem, the cession of so much German territory to Poland, and
the exclusion of Germany from the League of Nations. Ample opportunity was
given their delegates to formulate protests, which, although they rarely
introduced new facts or arguments that had not been discussed, were
carefully studied by Allied experts. Week after week passed. In certain
quarters among the Allies appeared a tendency to make decided concessions
in order to win the consent of the German delegates. No one wanted to
carry out an invasion of the defeated country, and there was no guarantee
that a military invasion would secure acquiescence. Germany's strength was
in sitting still, and she might thus indefinitely postpone the peace. Was
it not the wise course, one heard whispered in Paris, to sugar the
bitterness of the treaty and thus win Germany's immediate signature?
Early in June, Lloyd George, evidently under pressure from his Cabinet,
declared himself for a decided "softening" of the peace terms in order to
secure the acceptance of the enemy. What would Wilson do? He had been
anathematized at home and abroad as pro-German and desirous of saving
Germany from the consequences of her misdeeds; here was his chance. Would
he join with the British in tearing up this treaty, which after four
months of concentrated effort had just been completed, in order to secure
the soft peace that he was supposed to advocate? His attitude in this
contingency showed his ability to preserve an even balance. In the
meeting of the American delegation that was called to consider the
British proposal, he pronounced himself as strongly in favor of any
changes that would ensure more complete justice. If the British and
French would consent to a definite and moderate sum of reparations (a
consent which he knew was out of the question) he would gladly agree. But
he would not agree to any concessions to Germany that were not based upon
justice, but merely upon the desire to secure her signature. He was not
in favor of any softening which would mar the justice of the settlement
as drafted. "We did not come over," he said, "simply to get any sort of
peace treaty signed. We came over to do justice. I believe, even, that a
hard peace is a good thing for Germany herself, in order that she may
know what an unjust war means. We must not forget what our soldiers
fought for, even if it means that we may have to fight again." Wilson's
stand for the treaty as drafted proved decisive. Certain modifications in
details were made, but the hasty and unwise enthusiasm of Lloyd George
for scrapping entire sections was not approved. The Conference could
hardly have survived wholesale concessions to Germany: to prolong the
crisis would have been a disastrous confession of incompetence. For what
confidence could have been placed in statesmen who were so patently
unable to make and keep their minds?
Still the German Government held firm and refused to sign. Foch inspected
the Allied troops on the Rhine and Pershing renounced his trip to
England, in order to be ready for the invasion that had been ordered if
the time limit elapsed without signature. Only at the last moment did the
courage of the Germans fail. A change of ministry brought into power men
who were willing to accept the inevitable humiliation. On the 20th of
June, the guns and sirens of Paris announced Germany's acceptance of the
peace terms and their promise to sign, and, surprising fact, a vast crowd
gathered on the Place de la Concorde to cheer Wilson; despite his loss of
popularity and the antagonism which he had aroused by his opposition to
national aspirations of one sort or another, he was still the man whose
name stood as symbol for peace.
Eight days later in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, where forty-eight
years before had been born the German Empire, the delegates of the Allied
states gathered to celebrate the obsequies of that Empire. It was no
peace of reconciliation, this treaty between the new German Republic and
the victorious Allies. The hatred and distrust inspired by five years of
war were not so soon to be liquidated. As the German delegates, awkward
and rather defiant in their long black frock coats, marched to the table
to affix their signatures, they were obviously, in the eyes of the Allied
delegates and the hundreds of spectators, always "the enemy." The place
of the Chinese at the treaty table was empty; for them it was no peace of
justice that gave Shantung to the Japanese, and they would not sign. The
South African delegate, General Smuts, could not sign without explaining
the balance of considerations which led him to sanction an international
document containing so many flaws.
It was not, indeed, the complete peace of justice which Wilson had
promised and which, at times, he has since implied he believed it to be.
Belgians complained that they had not been given the left bank of the
Scheldt; Frenchmen were incensed because their frontier had not been
protected; Italians were embittered by the refusal to approve their
claims on the Adriatic; radical leaders, the world over, were frank in
their expression of disappointment at the failure to inaugurate a new
social order. The acquiescence in Japanese demands for Kiau-Chau was
clearly dictated by expediency rather than by justice. Austria, reduced
in size and bereft of material resources, was cut off from the sea and
refused the possibility of joining with Germany. The nationalistic
ambitions of the Rumanians, of the Jugoslavs, of the Czechoslovaks, and
of the Poles were aroused to such an extent that conflicts could hardly
be avoided. Hungary, deprived of the rim of subject nationalities, looked
forward to the first opportunity of reclaiming her sovereignty over them.
The Ruthenians complained of Polish domination. Further to the east lay
the great unsettled problem of Russia.
But the most obvious flaws in the treaty are to be found in the economic
clauses. It was a mistake to compel Germany to sign a blank check in the
matter of reparations. Germany and the world needed to know the exact
amount that was to be paid, in order that international commerce might be
set upon a stable basis. The extent of control granted to the Allies over
German economic life was unwise and unfair.
Complete justice certainly was not achieved by President Wilson at Paris,
and it may be questioned whether all the decisions can be regarded even
as expedient. The spirit of the Fourteen Points, as commonly interpreted,
had not governed the minds of those who sat at the council table. The
methods adopted by the Council of Ten and the Council of Four were by no
means those to which the world looked forward when it hailed the ideal
expressed in the phrase, "Open covenants openly arrived at." The "freedom
of the seas," if it meant the disappearance of the peculiar position held
by Great Britain on the seas, was never seriously debated, and Wilson
himself, in an interview given to the London _Times_, sanctioned
"Britain's peculiar position as an island empire." Adequate guarantees
for the reduction of armaments were certainly not taken at Paris; all
that was definitely stipulated was the disarmament of the enemy, a step
by no means in consonance with the President's earlier policy which aimed
at universal disarmament. An "absolutely impartial adjustment of all
colonial claims" was hardly carried out by granting the German colonies
to the great powers, even as mandatories of the League of Nations.
Nevertheless the future historian will probably hold that the Peace
Conference, with all its selfish interests and mistakes, carried into
effect an amazingly large part of President Wilson's programme, when all
the difficulties of his position are duly weighed. The territorial
settlements, on the whole, translated into fact the demands laid down by
the more special of Wilson's Fourteen Points. France, Belgium, and the
other invaded countries were, of course, evacuated and their restoration
promised; Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France and the wrong of 1871
thus righted; an independent Poland was recognized and given the assured
access to the sea that Wilson had insisted upon; the subject nationalities
of Austria-Hungary received not merely autonomy but independence. Even as
regards the larger principles enunciated in the Fourteen Points, it may at
least be argued that President Wilson secured more than he lost. Open
diplomacy in the sense of conducting international negotiations in an open
forum was not the method of the Peace Conference; and it may not be
possible or even desirable. The article in the Covenant, however, which
insists upon the public registration of all treaties before their validity
is recognized, goes far towards a fulfillment of the President's pledge of
open covenants, particularly if his original meaning is liberally
interpreted. Similarly the Covenant makes provision for the reduction of
armaments. If the treaty did not go far in assuring the "removal of
economic barriers," at all events the Conference did much to provide for
an international control of traffic which would ensure to all European
countries, so far as possible, equal facilities for forwarding their
goods.
Apart from the Fourteen Points Wilson had emphasized two other principles
as necessary to a just and permanent peace. The first of these was that
the enemy should be treated with a fairness equal to that accorded to the
Allies; the second was the principle that peoples should have the right
to choose the government by which they were to be ruled--the principle of
self-determination. Neither of these principles received full recognition
in the peace settlement. Yet their spirit was infused more completely
throughout the settlement than would have been the case had not Wilson
been at Paris, and to that extent the just and lasting qualities of the
peace were enhanced. In the matter of German reparations the question of
justice was not the point at issue; the damage committed by Germany
surpassed in value anything that the Allies could exact from her. As to
frontiers, the unbiased student will probably admit that full justice was
done Germany when the aspirations of France for annexation of the Saar
district and the provinces on the left bank of the Rhine were
disappointed; it was the barest justice to France, on the other hand,
that she should receive the coal mines of the former district and that
the latter should be demilitarized. In the question of Danzig, and the
Polish corridor to the sea, it was only fair to Poland that she receive
the adequate outlet which was necessary to her economic life and which
had been promised her, even if it meant the annexation of large German
populations, many of which had been artificially brought in as colonists
by the Berlin Government; and in setting up a free city of Danzig, the
Conference broke with the practices of old style diplomacy and paid a
tribute to the rights of peoples as against expediency. The same may be
said of the decision to provide for plebiscites in East Prussia and in
upper Silesia. On the other hand, the refusal to permit the incorporation
of the new, lesser Austria within Germany was at once unjust and
unwise--a concession to the most shortsighted of old-style diplomatic
principles.
In the reorganization of the former Hapsburg territories, Wilsonian
principles were always in the minds of the delegates, although in a few
cases they were honored more in the breach than in the observance. Wilson
himself surrendered to Italy extensive territories in the Tyrol south of
the Brenner which, if he had followed his own professions, would have been
left to Austria. A large Jugoslav population on the Julian Alps and in
Istria was placed under Italian rule. The new Czechoslovak state includes
millions of Germans and Magyars. The boundaries of Rumania were extended
to include many non-Rumanian peoples. Bulgars were sacrificed to Greeks
and to Serbs. In the settlement of each problem the balance always
inclined a little in favor of the victors. But the injustices committed
were far less extensive than might have been expected, and in most cases
where populations were included under alien rule, the decision was based
less on political considerations than on the practical factors of terrain,
rivers, and railroads which must always be taken into consideration in the
drawing of a frontier. Wherever the issue was clean-cut, as for example
between the selfish nationalism of the Italians in their Adriatic demands
and the claim to mere economic life of the Jugoslavs, the old rule which
granted the spoils to the stronger power was vigorously protested.
Whatever the mistakes of the Conference, Wilson secured that which he
regarded as the point of prime importance, the League of Nations. This, he
believed, would remedy the flaws and eradicate the vices of the treaties.
No settlement, however perfect at the moment, could possibly remain
permanent, in view of the constantly changing conditions. What was
necessary was an elasticity that would permit change as change became
necessary. If the disposition of the Saar basin, for example, proved to be
so unwise or unjust as to cause danger of violence, the League would take
cognizance of the peril and provide a remedy. If the boundaries of eastern
Germany gave undue advantage to the Poles, the League would find ways and
means of rectifying the frontier peacefully. If Hungary or Czechoslovakia
found themselves cut off from sea-ports, the League could hear and act
upon their demands for freedom of transit or unrestricted access to fair
markets. That the League was necessary for such and other purposes was
recognized by many notable economic experts and statesmen besides the
President. Herbert Hoover insisted upon the necessity of a League if the
food problems of central Europe were to be met, and Venizelos remarked
that "without a League of Nations, Europe would face the future with
despair in its heart." Because he had the covenant of such an association
incorporated in the German treaty, Wilson accepted all the mistakes and
injustices of the treaty as minor details and could say of it, doubtless
in all sincerity, "It's a good job." Conscious of victory in the matter
which he had held closest to his heart, the President embarked upon the
_George Washington_ on the 29th of June, the day after the signing of the
treaty, and set forth for home. All that was now needed was the
ratification of the treaty by the Senate.