all such instruments in the past: they do not pretend to be final. The
treaty of Vienna lasted, in many respects, for a hundred years, and
parts of it are still in force, unchanged by the war or the Conference.
For all this the Congress of Vienna deserves its full measure of
credit, but it must be remembered that it provided no method of change
or adjustment. Only a new war could undo its provisions, and more
than one such war proved necessary. At Paris it was recognized from
the start that much of the treaty must be temporary and provisional.
No one could determine in advance how peoples would vote, or just
how much of an indemnity Germany could pay, or whether she would
endeavor to execute or to avoid the obligations she there assumed, or
what would happen in Austria or in Turkey. Some means of amendment,
adjustment, correction, and supplementing was required, and this was
found primarily in the League of Nations. In the League the treaties
possess the possibility of their own betterment, the starting-point
of a new development. Hence, unlike all previous treaties, those of
1919 are dynamic and not static: they are constructive and not merely
restorative; they look to the future more than to the past.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The published records of the Paris Conference are limited to the
official reports of the plenary sessions and the official text of the
treaties, in French and English, with authoritative maps, subject
to correction after the frontiers have been fixed on the spot. The
proceedings of the Council of Ten and the Council of Five were kept by
a regular secretariat, those of the Council of Four less officially
and systematically; these minutes were manifolded but not printed. The
minutes of the various commissions, while printed, have not been made
public.
The German and Austrian treaties and related documents are printed
as supplements to the _American Journal of International Law_ since
July 1919. The German treaty is also printed as a Senate Document
and as a publication of the American Association for International
Conciliation. The entire series of treaties is best available in
the British _Parliamentary Papers_, Treaty Series, 1919 and 1920. A
bibliographical list of all these treaties by Denys P. Myers is to be
published by the World Peace Foundation, _League of Nations Series_,
iii, no. 1. _Documents and Statements relating to Peace Proposals and
War Aims_, December 1916 to November 1918, have been edited by G.
Lowes Dickinson (London and New York, 1919).
There is as yet no memoir literature by members of the Conference.
Some confidential papers are printed in the _Hearings before
the Committee on Foreign Relations_ of the United States Senate
(Washington, 1919), but these do not concern territorial problems.
Some things touching France will be found in the report of the
Barthou committee to the Chamber of Deputies, supplemented by the
articles of A. Tardieu in _L’Illustration_ since February 1920. The
official German criticisms of the Treaty of Versailles were published
in various languages and have been freely reproduced by pro-German
writers in other countries. A _Kommentar_ in six volumes has been
prepared by one of the German delegates, Walter Schücking.
So far the printed accounts of the Conference are the work of
journalists, who from the nature of the proceedings cannot be fully
informed. The most direct information was perhaps possessed by Ray
Stannard Baker, chief of the American service of publicity, but his
volume, _What Wilson did at Paris_ (New York, 1919), is _ex parte_
and very brief. E. J. Dillon, _The Inside History of the Peace
Conference_ (New York, 1920), is a diffuse composite of hearsay
and newspaper clippings; it is anti-French but in general friendly
to small nations. H. Wilson Harris, _The Peace in the Making_ (New
York, 1920), is an intelligent account by a fair-minded British
Liberal. Sisley Huddleston, _Peace-Making at Paris_ (London, 1919),
is more impressionistic. J. M. Keynes, _The Economic Consequences
of the Peace_ (London and New York, 1919), is the brilliant but
untrustworthy work of a British financial expert who finally repented
of the treaty. Influenced by German propaganda, it is in general
anti-French, anti-Belgian, and anti-Polish, and disparages political
self-determination in favor of economic frontiers. Of the various
critiques which the book has called out, the most searching is that of
David Hunter Miller, in the New York _Evening Post_, February 6 and
10, 1920, and in separate pamphlets.
A volume on the Conference, with an elaborate atlas, is announced by
an American territorial expert, Isaiah Bowman; a fuller work is in
preparation by British and American experts under the editorship of
Harold W. V. Temperley, of Peterhouse, Cambridge.
Of the material collected in France for the Conference, the only
systematic publication is the _Travaux du Comité d’Etudes_, in two
volumes with an atlas (Paris, 1919). Most of the British material was
printed but not published, a useful exception being C. K. Webster,
_The Congress of Vienna_ (Oxford, 1918). The Foreign Office series
of _Handbooks_ has now been made public (London, 1920). The most
important American publication of the sort is the _Atlas of Mineral
Resources_ to be issued by the United States Geological Survey
(Washington, 1920).
* * * * *
There is no entirely satisfactory discussion of the general problem of
frontiers. T. L. Holdich, _Political Frontiers and Boundary Making_
(London, 1916), is concerned chiefly with ‘natural’ frontiers outside
of Europe. For the facts of race, see W. Z. Ripley, _The Races of
Europe_ (New York, 1899). Leon Dominian, _Frontiers of Language
and Nationality in Europe_ (New York, 1917), is convenient. A more
authoritative work on the linguistic side is A. Meillet, _Les langues
dans l’Europe nouvelle_ (Paris, 1918). Experience with plebiscites
is brought together in Miss Sarah Wambaugh’s elaborate _Monograph on
Plebiscites_ (New York, 1920). A. Toynbee, _Nationality and the War_
(London, 1915), is an attempt to state the territorial problems in
the early months of the war; L. Stoddard and G. Frank, _Stakes of the
War_ (New York, 1918), seeks to sum them up at its close. The relation
of certain of these problems to a league of nations is discussed in
_The League of Nations_, edited by Stephen P. Duggan, with references
(Boston, 1919); and by Lord Eustace Percy, _The Responsibilities of
Peace_ (London and New York, 1920).
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Webster, _The Congress of Vienna_, p. 93.
[3] _Was von der Entente übrig bliebe wenn sie Ernst machte mit dem
“Selbstbestimmungsrecht”_ (Berlin, D. Reimer).
[4] _Atlantic Monthly_, xc, pp. 728, 731 (1902).
[5] Keynes, _Economic Consequences of the Peace_, p. 265.
[6] Dillon, _The Inside History of the Peace Conference_, p. 151.
[7] Keynes, _The Economic Consequences of the Peace_, pp. 30-32. M.
Mantoux asserts that Mr. Keynes never attended a regular session of the
Council of Four. _London Times_, February 14, 1920.
II
BELGIUM AND DENMARK
Our examination of the specific territorial problems of the Conference
may most conveniently begin with the simplest, the frontier between
Germany and Denmark. This had been established by force of arms when
Schleswig was taken from Denmark in 1864, while a promise made in
1866 to consult the population had never been fulfilled. Only at the
close of the World War did an opportunity come to fix the boundary in
accordance with the will of the inhabitants. The duty of the Conference
was to provide the means of giving effect to their desires.
The territory of the former duchy of Schleswig comprises the portion
of the peninsula of Jutland lying between the Danish frontier on the
north and the River Eider and the Kiel Canal on the south. Called by
the Danes South Jutland (Sönderjylland), it is similar in most respects
to Denmark, being chiefly agricultural, with a fishing population on
the Frisian islands to the west and a considerable shipping industry
in its principal town, Flensburg, a town of 63,000 at the head of the
Flensburg fiord. The region has an area of 3385 square miles, and
474,355 inhabitants, not far from twice the extent and population of
the state of Delaware. About one-third of the people speak Danish;
these are chiefly in the northern portion of the province. The rest,
save for an isolated group of Frisians on the west coast, speak German.
The earlier history of Schleswig would take us into the tangled history
of the Schleswig-Holstein question, which is for present purposes
unnecessary. Suffice it to say that, whatever the previous rights of
the king of Denmark may have been, the attempt to unite the duchy of
Schleswig fully to the kingdom of Denmark by the constitution of 1863
led in the following year to war with Austria and Prussia and to the
defeat of Denmark, whose king, by the treaty of Vienna, renounced
all rights over Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg. In 1866, at the
conclusion of the war between Austria and Prussia, the treaty of Prague
transferred the rights of Austria to the king of Prussia, with the
reservation that the “inhabitants of North Schleswig shall be again
reunited with Denmark if they should express such a desire in a vote
freely given.” Nothing could be clearer, and nothing more ineffective,
for the article was contained in a treaty between two powers neither of
which had the slightest interest in the performance of the obligation.
As a matter of fact, the provision had been suggested by Napoleon
III, but the interested parties, Denmark and the inhabitants of the
district, were not put in a position to secure its execution. Bismarck,
who seems at first to have expected a referendum, maintained in 1867
that the people as Prussian subjects had no right to demand it, the
only right to such a demand resting with the emperor of Austria.
Prussia made no effort to put the article into effect, and in 1878 it
was abrogated by agreement with Austria.
So, since 1864, Schleswig has been under Prussian rule, and since
1867 an integral part of the kingdom of Prussia. Once probably
wholly Danish, it had been subject for centuries to penetration from
the south, and by this time possessed a large German element which
henceforth had the active support of the Prussian government. The
history of the attempt to Germanize Schleswig is, on a smaller scale,
much the same as the history of the Germanization of Prussian Poland.
Efforts at replacement of the population by Germans had little success,
but the spread of German culture and the suppression of Danish culture
were everywhere steadily pushed. German was made compulsory in the
schools, the courts, and the churches; Danish was put under the ban
in public meetings and theatres; and the Danish press and Danish
societies were subjected to various forms of persecution. Intercourse
with Denmark was in various ways restricted or made difficult. Constant
war was waged against the Danish flag, and even against dresses which
displayed the red and white colors of Denmark. It was even said that
the owner of a white dog was obliged to repaint his red kennel! The
regular agents of Prussian policy were omnipresent: the police, the
pastor, and the schoolmaster. The officers’ duty was chiefly negative,
the suppression of Danish tendencies; the schoolmaster’s was more
positive, to instil Germanism into the rising generation, partly
by teaching only in the German language save for a small amount of
religious instruction, partly by the well known propagandist methods of
German history and patriotic songs. Thus all were compelled to sing,
“Ich bin ein Preusse, will ein Preusse sein”; and if a little girl
should say, “Ich bin kein Preusse, will kein Preusse sein,” she was
whipped and sent home.
Inevitably the zone of German speech crept gradually northward. In some
villages of central Schleswig which spoke only Danish half a century
ago, it is said that the language has disappeared save among the very
old. Still the process of Germanization was slow, and as time went on
active resistance was organized in the three great societies of the
Language Union, the School Union, and the Voters’ Union. Leaders found
in Denmark the Danish education which was forbidden them at home, and
kept alive a strong tradition of Danish speech and Danish sympathies.
A local political party was maintained, and the Danish vote increased
after 1886, although under the German gerrymander of 1867 it was still
allowed to return only one member of the Reichstag, and that in the
extreme north. Treasonable acts were in general avoided, but the hope
of reunion with Denmark was never entirely lost.
The fortunes of the World War gave at first but little hope to
the pro-Danish Schleswigers. They served in the German army up to
their full capacity; probably, as is stated, their losses were
proportionately greater than those among purely German troops. If
they were not fighting their own kin and friends, like the soldiers
of Alsace-Lorraine, they were at least fighting in another’s cause.
Denmark, too, walked warily during the war, with the fate of other
small nations ever before her eyes and the profits of German friendship
dangled in front of her. It was no time for Schleswig to look for help
in this quarter. With the armistice, matters took on a new aspect.
Foreseeing that the Schleswig question would be raised at the peace
table, Germany proposed a separate arrangement with Denmark, and it
was some time before Denmark readjusted her policy to correspond to a
world in which the victorious Allies were able to impose terms on a
defeated Germany. Even then the readjustment was incomplete. Germany
might become powerful again, and Denmark must beware, so many thought,
of laying up vengeance for the future by acquiring territory which
Germany might demand back. In many quarters there seemed to be genuine
terror lest the Allies might impose territory and obligations upon an
unwilling Denmark. A natural hesitation over absorbing alien elements
was accompanied by a fear lest many new voters might upset the party
balance in a small country. In determining the future of Schleswig,
it appeared that the timidity of Denmark was to have its weight,
as well as the hopes of the population. The Radical party, then in
power, wished only limited accessions of population in the region of
North Schleswig; while the Conservatives favored a more decided policy
extending into southern Schleswig, though few went so far as to demand
outright the ancient frontier of the Eider or even the old rampart of
the Dannevirke.
No mention had been made of Schleswig in President Wilson’s Fourteen
Points, but a just determination of the question was promised by him in
a letter to certain Danish-Americans just after the armistice (November
21). Diplomatic conversations had indeed already begun, and February
21 the Danish government formally placed the matter before the Peace
Conference in an exposé made to the Council of Ten by its minister
in Paris, Chamberlain Bernhoft. It asked for a plebiscite as soon as
possible in the region of unquestioned Danish speech north of a line
stretching west from the head of the Flensburg fiord to the north of
the island of Sylt in the North Sea, a line which had been demanded,
November 17, 1918, by the North Schleswig Voters’ Union at Aabenraa.
By February sentiment was ready to ask for a plebiscite also in a zone
to the south, which included Flensburg and certain adjacent territory.
In order that all possibilities of pressure might be removed, the
evacuation of German troops and German higher officials was requested
in a considerable strip of territory farther south.
The commission to which the Conference referred the Schleswig problem
heard delegates from the different parts of the territory, as well
as reports of the various points of view in Denmark. The commission
saw no reason why the right of voting should be refused to any part
of the region to be evacuated, though it was plain that some judgment
would need to be used in drawing a frontier upon the basis of the
voting, so as to avoid enclaves and inconvenient meanderings. Definite
evidence was before it of a desire to vote on the part of many persons
in south Schleswig. Accordingly its report, incorporated in the draft
treaty submitted to the Germans in May, provided for a plebiscite by
three zones, so that the frontier between Germany and Denmark might be
fixed in conformity with the wishes of the population. In the first
or northernmost zone, where the voting was supposed to be largely a
matter of form, the plebiscite was to take place for the whole district
within three weeks of the German evacuation. In the second zone of
mixed speech in middle Schleswig, where opinion was likely to vary in
different districts and to be affected somewhat by the result in the
first zone, the voting was to occur not more than five weeks later and
to be taken commune by commune. The same method was to be applied two
weeks thereafter in the third zone, which comprised the remainder of
the evacuated territory extending to the Eider and the Schlei, a region
of predominantly German speech, where the Danish tradition had been
greatly weakened in course of time and where the people would likewise
want to know the result in the neighboring zone to the northward.
Within ten days of the coming into force of the treaty German troops
and higher officials were to evacuate the whole territory north of
the Eider and the Schlei, and the administration was to be carried
on by an International Commission of five, one appointed by Norway,
one by Sweden, and three by the Allied and Associated Powers. This
commission was to hold the plebiscites in accordance with provisions
which had been suggested by the Danish government; and upon the result
of the voting, with due regard to geographic and economic conditions,
recommend a permanent boundary to the Allied and Associated Powers. The
whole plan was carefully drawn to secure as full and free an expression
as possible of the desires of the population.
Opposition came from two sources. The German criticisms, as handed in
to the Conference in May, had little weight. They proposed to limit the
voting, and hence any possible loss of German territory, to a portion
of the first zone, on the ground that only there did more than half of
the population speak Danish. Apart from the fact that this affirmation
was based on the official language statistics of the Prussian census,
which was notoriously unfavorable to non-German elements, the proposal
started from two inadmissible assumptions: one that language is the
sole test of political sympathy; the other that no region where
Germans were in a majority should be allowed self-determination, for,
it was implicitly believed, no German could possibly want to leave the
Fatherland. Germany thus sought to prevent free expression of opinion
where it might turn to Germany’s disadvantage, at the very moment she
clamored for it in Upper Silesia, where it might possibly turn out in
her favor. How Germany hoped to control the plebiscite appeared from
another proposal, namely that, all German officials still remaining in
the country, the administration and the voting should be in charge of a
commission of Germans and Danes, with a Swedish chairman!
The Danish objection, as voiced by the majority Radicals, was against
the inclusion of the third zone in the voting. The reason most
generally given was that districts in this zone might vote for Denmark
from purely economic motives, especially the desire to escape German
war taxes and war indemnities, and thus form an irredentist minority in
a country with which they were not really in sympathy. Probably also
there was still the lurking fear of the powerful neighbor of the past
and the future, as well as some measure of friendliness for the new
regime in Germany.
To such arguments the Conference yielded, cutting out of the final
treaty the plebiscite in the third zone and its evacuation as well.
The change was made at the last moment, without readjustment of the
other provisions, so that this section of the treaty shows certain
signs of haste. The effect was to take away all opportunity for
self-determination in the third zone and to leave the German troops and
administration here in a position to exert pressure on the region to
the northward.[8]
The vote in the first zone, held February 10, 1920, resulted in a
decisive Danish majority of three to one, and led to occupation by
Denmark, as the treaty had provided. Feeling ran high in the second
zone, where the German government sought to influence the decision
by threats in the Reichstag; the struggle centred around Flensburg,
certain in either event to be a frontier town now that the third zone
had been eliminated. The plebiscite, held March 14, resulted decisively
for Germany, the vote in Flensburg being overwhelming and only a few
scattered villages on the islands voting for Denmark. The result failed
to satisfy either party entirely, a large Danish group still wanting
Flensburg, while in the first zone the Germans wished to recover
Tönder, where the voting had favored Germany. Indeed it remains to be
seen whether German hopes of recovery will be limited to Tönder.
One question of which Denmark and the Schleswigers showed great desire
to keep clear was the Kiel Canal. Even the widest limit of evacuation
proposed carefully left a belt of Schleswig territory between its
southern border and the canal, lest what was fundamentally a question
of popular rights might become complicated with a wholly distinct
international problem. Only in case of the internationalization of the
canal would its fate have reacted on the Schleswig problem by leaving
an isolated strip of German territory to the north which might then
have been separated from Germany and attached to the adjacent Danish
territory. Whatever might have been said for the internationalization
of this great waterway, the question was not seriously considered at
the Conference. The parallel to Suez and Panama was too close! The
treaty leaves the canal under German control, but provides that it
shall be open on terms of entire equality to the vessels of commerce
and of war of all nations at peace with Germany.[9]
The island of Heligoland, which England had seized from Denmark in
1807 and ceded to Germany in exchange for Zanzibar in 1890, is not
restored to either of its former owners. Instead it is stipulated
that all fortifications and harbor works there shall be destroyed by
German labor and at Germany’s expense, and that no similar works shall
be constructed in the future.[10] Immunity for the future might do
something to offset the great price which England had paid for Zanzibar
throughout the World War.
The case of Belgium at the Peace Conference was widely different from
that of Denmark. Denmark had remained neutral; her neutrality had
been respected by others, and had even been a source of commercial
profit; and at the end of the war, without the slightest effort on
her part, she saw all her desires gratified in Schleswig. Indeed, her
only fear was lest she should receive more territory than she wanted.
The neutrality of Belgium, specially guaranteed by an international
treaty, and thus far more binding on her neighbors than that of
Denmark, had been violated by Germany at the very outbreak of the
war. Belgium had suffered more than four years of German occupation,
including the systematic spoliation of her farms, her factories, and
her railroads, and the deliberate attempt to divide her people into two
separate Walloon and Flemish states; she had barely escaped permanent
incorporation with Germany. Yet all this time she had fought as best
she could beside the Allies; she had made heavy sacrifices; she had
stood for international right. Belgium expected much from the peace,
and Belgium was in large measure disappointed.