the border of chaos. Every one felt its effects, but none so severely as
the men who had won the war. The work of demobilization, which began
soon after the armistice, but was early interrupted, proceeded at
snail-pace. The homecoming soldiers sent hundreds of letters to the
newspapers, complaining of the wearisome delays on the journey and the
sharp privations which they were needlessly forced to endure. Thus,
whereas they took but twenty-eight hours to travel from Hanover to
Cologne--the lines being German, and therefore relatively well
organized--they were no less than a fortnight on the way between Cologne
and Marseilles.[27] During the German section of the journey they were
kept warm, supplied with hot soup and coffee twice daily; but during the
second half, which lasted fourteen days, they received no beverage, hot
or cold. "The men were cared for much less than horses." That these
poilus turned against the government and the class responsible for this
gross neglect was hardly surprising. One of them wrote: "They [the
authorities] are frightened of Bolshevism. But we who have not got home,
we all await its coming. I don't, of course, mean the real Bolshevism,
but even that kind which they paint in such repellent hues."[28] The
conditions of telegraphic and postal communications were on a par with
everything else. There was no guarantee that a message paid for would
even be sent by the telegraph-operators, or, if withheld, that the
sender would be apprised of its suppression. The war arrangements were
retained during the armistice. And they were superlatively bad. A
committee appointed by the Chamber of Deputies to inquire into the
matter officially, reported that,[29] at the Paris Telegraph Bureau
alone, 40,000 despatches were held back every day--40,000 a day, or
58,400,000 in four years! And from the capital alone. The majority of
them were never delivered, and the others were distributed after great
delay. The despatches which were retained were, in the main, thrown into
a basket, and, when the accumulation had become too great, were
destroyed. The Control Section never made any inquiry, and neither the
senders nor those to whom the despatches were addressed were ever
informed.[30] Even important messages of neutral ambassadors in Rome and
London fell under the ban. The recklessness of these censors, who ceased
even to read what they destroyed, was such that they held up and made
away with state orders transmitted by the great munitions factories, and
one of these was constrained to close down because it was unable to
obtain certain materials in time.
The French Ambassador in Switzerland reported that, owing to these
holocausts, important messages from that country, containing orders for
the French national loan, never reached their destination, in
consequence of which the French nation lost from ten to twenty million
francs. And even the letters and telegrams that were actually passed
were so carelessly handled that many of them were lost on the way or
delayed until they became meaningless to the addressee. So, for
instance, an official letter despatched by the Minister of Commerce to
the Minister of Finance in Paris was sent to Calcutta, where the French
Consul-General came across it, and had it directed back to Paris. The
correspondent of the _Echo de Paris_, who was sent to Switzerland by his
journal, was forbidden by law to carry more than one thousand francs
over the frontier, nor was the management of the journal permitted to
forward to him more than two hundred francs at a time. And when a
telegram was given up in Paris, crediting him with two hundred francs,
it was stopped by the censor. Eleven days were let go by without
informing the persons concerned. When the administrator of the journal
questioned the chief censor, he declined responsibility, having had
nothing to do with the matter, but he indicated the Central Telegraph
Control as the competent department. There, too, however, they were
innocent, having never heard of the suppression. It took another day to
elicit the fact that the economic section of the War Ministry was alone
answerable for the decision. The indefatigable manager of the _Echo de
Paris_ applied to the department in question, but only to learn that it,
too, was without any knowledge of what had happened, but it promised to
find out. Soon afterward it informed the zealous manager that the
department which had given the order could only be the Exchange
Commission of the Ministry of Finances. And during all the time the
correspondent was in Zurich without money to pay for telegrams or to
settle his hotel and restaurant bills.[31]
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself, in a report on the whole
subject, characterized the section of Telegraphic Control as "an organ
of confusion and disorder which has engendered extraordinary abuses, and
risked compromising the government seriously."[32] It did not merely
risk, it actually went far to compromise the government and the entire
governing class as well.
It looked as though the rulers of France were still unconsciously guided
by the maxim of Richelieu, who wrote in his testament, "If the peoples
were too comfortable there would be no keeping them to the rules of
duty." The more urgent the need of resourcefulness and guidance, the
greater were the listlessness and confusion. "There is neither unity of
conduct," wrote a press organ of the masses, "nor co-ordination of the
Departments of War, Public Works, Revictualing, Transports. All these
services commingle, overlap, clash, and paralyze one another. There is
no method. Thus, whereas France has coffee enough to last her a
twelvemonth, she has not sufficient fuel for a week. Scruples, too, are
wanting, as are punishments; everywhere there is a speculator who offers
his purse, and an official, a station-master, or a subaltern to stretch
out his hand.... Shortsightedness, disorder, waste, the frittering away
of public moneys and irresponsibility: that is the balance...."[33]
That the spectacle of the country sinking in this administrative
quagmire was not conducive to the maintenance of confidence in its
ruling classes can well be imagined. On all sides voices were uplifted,
not merely against the Cabinet, whose members were assumed to be
actuated by patriotic motives and guided by their own lights, but
against the whole class from which they sprang, and not in France only,
but throughout Europe. Nothing, it was argued, could be worse than what
these leaders had brought upon the country, and a change from the
bourgeoisie to the proletariat could not well be inaugurated at a more
favorable conjuncture.
In truth the bourgeoisie were often as impatient of the restraints and
abuses as the homecoming poilu. The middle class during the armistice
was subjected to some of the most galling restraints that only the war
could justify. They were practically bereft of communications. To use
the telegraph, the post, the cable, or the telephone was for the most
part an exhibition of childish faith, which generally ended in the loss
of time and money.
This state of affairs called for an immediate and drastic remedy, for,
so long as it persisted, it irritated those whom it condemned to
avoidable hardship, and their name was legion. It was also part of an
almost imperceptible revolutionary process similar to that which was
going on in several other countries for transferring wealth and
competency from one class to another and for goading into rebellion
those who had nothing to lose by "violent change in the politico-social
ordering." The government, whose powers were concentrated in the hands
of M. Clemenceau, had little time to attend to these grievances. For its
main business was the re-establishment of peace. What it did not fully
realize was the gravity of the risks involved. For it was on the cards
that the utmost it could achieve at the Conference toward the
restoration of peace might be outweighed and nullified by the
consequences of what it was leaving undone and unattempted at home. At
no time during the armistice was any constructive policy elaborated in
any of the Allied countries. Rhetorical exhortations to keep down
expenditure marked the high-water level of ministerial endeavor there.
The strikes called by the revolutionary organizations whose aim was the
subversion of the regime under which those monstrosities flourished at
last produced an effect on the parliament. One day in July the French
Chamber left the Cabinet in a minority by proposing the following
resolution: "The Chamber, noting that the cost of living in Belgium has
diminished by a half and in England by a fourth since the armistice,
while it has continually increased in France since that date, judges the
government's economic policy by the results obtained and passes to the
order of the day."[34]
Shortly afterward the same Chamber recanted and gave the Cabinet a
majority. In Great Britain, too, the House of Commons put pressure on
the government, which at last was forced to act.
On the other hand, extravagance was systematically encouraged everywhere
by the shortsighted measures which the authorities adopted and
maintained as well as by the wanton waste promoted or tolerated by the
incapacity of their representatives. In France the moratorium and
immunity from taxation gave a fillip to recklessness. People who had
hoarded their earnings before the war, now that they were dispensed from
paying rent and relieved of fair taxes, paid out money ungrudgingly for
luxuries and then struck for higher salaries and wages.
Even the Deputies of the Chamber, which did nothing to mitigate the evil
complained of, manifested a desire to have their own salaries--six
hundred pounds a year--augmented proportionately to the increased cost
of living; but in view of the headstrong current of popular opinion
against parliamentarism the government deemed it impolitic to raise the
point at that conjuncture.
Most of the working-men's demands in France as in Britain were granted,
but the relief they promised was illusory, for prices still went up,
leaving the recipients of the relief no better off. And as the wages
payable for labor are limited, whereas prices may ascend to any height,
the embittered laborer fancied he could better his lot by an appeal to
the force which his organization wielded. The only complete solution of
the problem, he was assured, was to be found in the supersession of the
governing classes and the complete reconstruction of the social fabric
on wholly new foundations.[35] And some of the leaders rashly declared
that they were unable to discern the elements of any other.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Cf. _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), March 12,1919.
[2] On December 18, 1918.
[3] "With what little wisdom the world is governed."
[4] "Mr. Bernard Richards, Secretary of the delegation from the American
Jewish Congress to the Peace Conference, expressed much satisfaction
with the work done in Paris for the protection of Jewish rights and the
furtherance of the interests of other minorities involved in the peace
settlement." (_The New York Herald_, July 20, 1919.) How successful was
the influence of the Jewish community at the Peace Conference may be
inferred from the following: "Mr. Henry H. Rosenfelt, Director of the
American Jewish Relief Committee, announces that all New York agencies
engaged in Jewish relief work will join in a united drive in New York in
December to raise $7,500,000 (£1,500,000) to provide clothing, food, and
medicines for the six million Jews throughout Eastern Europe _as well as
to make possible a comprehensive programme for their complete
rehabilitation_.--American Radio News Service." Cf. _The Daily Mail_,
August 19, 1919.
[5] Countess Lulu von Thurheim, _My Life_, 1788-1852. German edition,
Munich, 1913-14.
[6] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), February 23, 1919.
[7] Grafen von Montgelas, _Denwürdigkeiten des bayrischen
Staatsministers Maximilian._ See also Dr. Karl Soll, _Der Wiener
Kongress_.
[8] Varnhagen von Ense.
[9] Friedrich von Gentz.
[10] Dr. Karl Soll, _Count Carl von Nostitz_.
[11] Cf. Dr. Karl Soll, _Der Wiener Kongress_.
[12] Dr. Karl Soll, _Friedrich von Gentz_.
[13] Dr. Karl Soll, _Count Carl von Nostitz_, p. 109.
[14] Jean Gabriel Eynard--the representative of Geneva.
[15] _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), March 22, 1919.
[16] Count de la Garde.
[17] Cf. _Le Matin_, May 31, 1919. A noteworthy example of the
negligence of the authorities was narrated by this journal on the same
day. To a wooden cross with an inscription recording that the grave was
tenanted by "an unknown Frenchman" was hung a disk containing his name
and regiment! And here and there the skulls of heroes protruded from the
grass, but the German tombs were piously looked after by Boche
prisoners.
[18] _The Daily Mail_ (Continental edition), March 12, 1919.
[19] _Ibid._, April 23, 1919.
[20] Cf. _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), June 8, 1919.
[21] Cf. _The New York Herald_, June 2, 1919.
[22] Cf. _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), April 20, 1919.
[23] _Le Figaro_, June 8, 1919.
[24] _L'Humanité_, July 10, 1919.
[25] _La Democratie Nouvelle_, June 14, 1919.
[26] _Le Figaro_, March 6, 1919.
[27] _L'Humanité_, May 23, 1919.
[28] _3 Ibid._
[29] _Le Gaulois_, March 23, 1919. _The New York Herald_ (Paris
edition), March 22, 1919. _L'Echo de Paris_, June 12, 1919.
[30] _The New York Herald_, March 22, 1919.
[31] _L'Echo de Paris_, June 12, 1919.
[32] _The New York Herald_, March 22, 1919.
[33] _L'Humanité_, May 23, 1919.
[34] on July 18, 1919. Cf. _Matin, Echo de Paris, Figaro_, July 10,
1919.
[35] Cf. _L'Humanité_ (French Syndicalist organ), July 11, 1919.
II
SIGNS OF THEIR TIMES
Society during the transitional stage through which it has for some
years been passing underwent an unprecedented change the extent and
intensity of which are as yet but imperfectly realized. Its more
striking characteristics were determined by the gradual decomposition of
empires and kingdoms, the twilight of their gods, the drying up of their
sources of spiritual energy, and the psychic derangement of communities
and individuals by a long and fearful war. Political principles, respect
for authority and tradition, esteem for high moral worth, to say nothing
of altruism and public spirit, either vanished or shrank to shadowy
simulacra. In contemporary history currents and cross-currents, eddies
and whirlpools, became so numerous and bewildering that it is not easy
to determine the direction of the main stream. Unsocial tendencies
coexisted with collectivity of effort, both being used as weapons
against the larger community and each being set down as a manifestation
of democracy. Against every kind of authority the world, or some of its
influential sections, was up in revolt, and the emergence of the
passions and aims of classes and individuals had freer play than ever
before.
To this consummation conservative governments, and later on their chiefs
at the Peace Conference, systematically contributed with excellent
intentions and efficacious measures. They implicitly denied, and acted
on the denial, that a nation or a race, like an individual, has
something distinctive, inherent, and enduring that may aptly be termed
soul or character. They ignored the fact that all nations and races are
not of the same age nor endowed with like faculties, some being young
and helpless, others robust and virile, and a third category senescent
and decrepit, and that there are some races which Nature has wholly and
permanently unfitted for service among the pioneers of progress. In
consequence of these views, which I venture to think erroneous, they
applied the same treatment to all states. Just as President Wilson, by
striving to impose his pinched conception of democracy and his lofty
ideas of political morality on Mexico, had thrown that country into
anarchy, the two Anglo-Saxon governments by enforcing their theories
about the protection of minorities and other political conceptions in
various states of Europe helped to loosen the cement of the
politico-social structure there.
Through these as well as other channels virulent poison penetrated to
the marrow of the social organism. Language itself, on which all human
intercourse hinges, was twisted to suit unwholesome ambitions, further
selfish interests, and obscure the vision of all those who wanted real
reforms and unvarnished truth. During the war the armies were never told
plainly what they were struggling for; officially they were said to be
combating for justice, right, self-determination, the sacredness of
treaties, and other abstract nouns to which the heroic soldiers never
gave a thought and which a section of the civil population
misinterpreted. Indeed, so little were these shibboleths understood even
by the most intelligent among the politicians who launched them that one
half of the world still more or less conscientiously labors to establish
their contraries and is anathematizing the other half for championing
injustice, might, and unveracity--under various misnomers.
Anglo-Saxondom, taking the lead of humanity, imitated the Catholic
states of by-past days, and began to impose on other peoples its own
ideas, as well as its practices and institutions, as the best fitted to
awaken their dormant energies and contribute to the social
reconstruction of the world. In the interval, language, whether applied
to history, journalism, or diplomacy, was perverted and words lost their
former relations to the things connoted, and solemn promises were
solemnly broken in the name of truth, right, or equity. For the new era
of good faith, justice and morality was inaugurated, oddly enough, by a
general tearing up of obligatory treaties and an ethical violation of
the most binding compacts known to social man. This happened
coincidently to be in keeping with the general insurgence against all
checks and restraints, moral and social, for which the war is mainly
answerable, and to be also in harmony with the regular supersession of
right by might which characterizes the present epoch and with the
disappearance of the sense of law. In a word, under the auspices of the
amateur world-reformers, the tendency of Bolshevism throve and
spread--an instructive case of people serving the devil at the bidding
of God's best friends.
As in the days of the Italian despots, every individual has the chance
of rising to the highest position in many of the states, irrespective of
his antecedents and no matter what blots may have tarnished his
'scutcheon. Neither aristocratic descent, nor public spirit nor even a
blameless past is now an indispensable condition of advancement. In
Germany the head of the Republic is an honest saddler. In Austria the
chief of the government until recently was the assassin of a prime
minister. The chief of the Ukraine state was an ex-inmate of an asylum.
Trotzky, one of the Russian duumvirs, is said to have a record which
might of itself have justified his change of name from Braunstein. Bela
Kuhn, the Semitic Dictator of Hungary, had the reputation of a thief
before rising to the height of ruler of the Magyars.... In a word,
Napoleon's ideal is at last realized, "La carrière est ouverte aux
talents."
Among the peculiar traits of this evanescent epoch may be mentioned
inaccessibility to the teaching of facts which run counter to cherished
prejudices, aims, and interests. People draw from facts which they
cannot dispute only the inferences which they desire. An amusing
instance of this occurred in Paris, where a Syndicalist organ[36]
published an interesting and on the whole truthful account of the
chaotic confusion, misery, and discontent prevailing in Russia and of
the brutal violence and foxy wiles of Lenin. The dreary picture included
the cost of living; the disorganization of transports; the terrible
mortality caused by the after-effects of the war; the crowding of
prisons, theaters, cinemas, and dancing-saloons; the eagerness of
employers to keep their war prisoners employed while thousands of
demobilized soldiers were roaming about the cities and villages vainly
looking for work; the absence of personal liberty; the numerous arrests,
and the relative popularity withal of the Dictator. This popularity, it
was explained, the press contributed to keep alive, especially since the
abortive attempt made on his life, when the journals declared that he
was indispensable for the time being to his country.
He himself was described as a hard despot, ruthless as a tiger who
strikes his fellow-workers numb and dumb with fear. "But he is under no
illusions as to the real sentiments of the members of the Soviet who
back him, nor does he deign to conceal those which he entertains toward
them.... Whenever Lenin himself is concerned justice is expeditious.
Some men will be delivered from prison after many years of preventive
confinement without having been brought to trial, others who fired on
Kerensky will be kept untried for an indefinite period, whereas the
brave Russian patriot who aimed his revolver at Lenin, and whom the
French press so justly applauded, had only three weeks to wait for his
condemnation to death."
This article appearing in a Syndicalist organ seemed an event. Some
journals summarized and commented it approvingly, until it was
discovered to be a skit on the transient conditions in France, whereupon
the "admirable _exposé_ based upon convincing evidence" and the
"forcible arguments" became worthless.[37]
An object-lesson in the difficulty of legislating in Anglo-Saxon fashion
for foreign countries and comprehending their psychology was furnished
by two political trials which, taking place in Paris during the
Conference, enabled the delegates to estimate the distance that
separates the Anglo-Saxon from the Continental mode of thought and
action in such a fundamental problem as the administration of justice.
Raoul Villain, the murderer of Jean Jaurès--France's most eminent
statesman--was kept in prison for nearly five years without a trial. He
had assassinated his victim in cold blood. He had confessed and
justified the act. The eye-witnesses all agreed as to the facts. Before
the court, however, a long procession of ministers of state,
politicians, historians, and professors defiled, narrating in detail the
life-story, opinions, and strivings of the victim, who, in the eyes of a
stranger, unacquainted with its methods, might have seemed to be the
real culprit. The jury acquitted the prisoner.
The other accused man was a flighty youth who had fired on the French
Premier and wounded him. He, however, had not long to wait for his
trial. He was taken before the tribunal within three weeks of his arrest
and was promptly condemned to die.[38] Thus the assassin was justified
by the jury and the would-be assassin condemned to be shot. "Suppose
these trials had taken place in my country," remarked a delegate of an
Eastern state, "and that of the two condemned men one had been a member
of the privileged minority, what an uproar the incident would have
created in the United States and England! As it happened in western
Europe, it passed muster."
How far removed some continental nations are from the Anglo-Saxons in
their mode of contemplating and treating another momentous category of
social problems may be seen from the circumstance that the Great Council
in Basel adopted a bill brought in by the Socialist Welti, authorizing
the practice of abortion down to the third month, provided that the
husband and wife are agreed, and in cases where there is no marriage
provided it is the desire of the woman and that the operation is
performed by a regular physician.[39]
Another striking instance of the difference of conceptions between the
Anglo-Saxon and continental peoples is contained in the following
unsavory document, which the historian, whose business it is to flash
the light of criticism upon the dark nooks of civilization, can neither
ignore nor render into English. It embodies a significant decision taken
by the General Staff of the 256th Brigade of the Army of Occupation[40]
and was issued on June 21, 1919.[41]
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
EXPLOITATION ET POLICE DE LA MAISON PUBLIQUE DE MÜNCHEN-GLADBACH
(1.) Les deux femmes composant l'unique personnel de la maison
publique de Gladbach (2, Gasthausstrasse), sont venues en
délégation déclarer qu'elles ne pouvaient suffire à la nombreuse
clientèle, qui envahit leur maison, devant laquelle stationneraient
en permanence de nombreux groupes de clients affamés.