stirred the disquietude of his friends. He despatched a note[124] to
Turkey, warning her that if the massacres of Armenians were not
discontinued he would withdraw the twelfth of his Fourteen Points, which
provides for the maintenance of Turkish sovereignty over undeniable
Turkish territories. The intention was excellent, but the necessary
effects of his action were contrary to what the President can have aimed
at. He had not consulted the Conference on the important change which he
was about to make respecting a point which was supposed to be part of
the groundwork of the new ordering. This from the Conference point of
view was a momentous decision, which could be taken only with the
consent of the Supreme Council. Even as a mere threat it was worthless
if it did not stand for the deliberate will of that body which the
President had deemed it superfluous to consult. As it happened, the
British authorities were just then organizing a body of gendarmes to
police the Turkish territories in question, and they were engaged in
this work with the knowledge and approval of the Supreme Council. Mr.
Wilson's announcement could therefore only be construed--and was
construed--as the act of an authority superior to that of the
Council.[125] The Turks, who are shrewd observers, must have drawn the
obvious conclusion from these divergent measures as to the degree of
harmony prevailing among the Allied and Associated Powers.
M. Clemenceau had a conversation on the subject with Mr. Polk, who
explained that the note was informal and given verbally, and conveyed
the idea only of one nation in connection with the Armenian situation.
This explanation, accepted by the French government, did not commend
itself to public opinion, either in France or elsewhere. Moreover, the
French were struck by another aspect of this arbitrary exercise of
supreme power. "President Wilson," wrote an eminent French publicist,
"throws himself into the attitude of a man who can bind and loose the
Turkish Empire at the very moment when the Senate appears opposed to
accepting any mandate, European or Asiatic, at the moment when Mr.
Lansing declares to the Congress that the government of which he is a
member does not desire to accept any mandate. But is it not obvious that
if Mr. Wilson sovereignly determines the lot of Turkey he can be held in
consequence to the performance of certain duties? We have often had to
deplore the absence of policy common to the Allies. But has each one of
them, considered separately, at least a policy of its own? Does it take
action otherwise than at haphazard, yielding to the impulse of a
general, a consul, or a missionary?"[126]
It soon became manifest even to the most obtuse that whenever the
Supreme Council, following its leaders and working on such lines as
these, terminated its labors, the ties between the political communities
of Europe would be just as flimsy as in the unregenerate days of secret
diplomacy, secret alliances, and secret intrigues, unless in the
meanwhile the peoples themselves intervened to render them stronger and
more enduring. It would, however, be the height of unfairness to make
Mr. Wilson alone answerable for this untoward ending to a far resonant
beginning. He had been accused by the press of most countries of
enwrapping personal ambition in the attractive covering of
disinterestedness and altruism, just as many of his foreign colleagues
were said to go in fear of the "malady of lost power." But charges of
this nature overstep the bounds of legitimate criticism. Motive is
hardly ever visible, nor is it often deducible from deliberate action.
If, for example, one were to infer from the vast territorial
readjustments and the still vaster demands of the various belligerents
at the Conference, the motives that had determined them to enter the
war, the conclusion--except in the case of the American people, whose
disinterestedness is beyond the reach of cavil--would indeed be
distressing. The President of the United States merited well of all
nations by holding up to them an ideal for realization, and the mere
announcement of his resolve to work for it imparted an appreciable if
inadequate incentive to men of good-will. The task, however, was so
gigantic that he cannot have gaged its magnitude, discerned the defects
of the instruments, nor estimated aright the force of the hindrances
before taking the world to witness that he would achieve it. Even with
the hearty co-operation of ardent colleagues and the adoption of a sound
method he could hardly have hoped to do more than clear the
ground--perhaps lay the foundation-stone--of the structure he dreamt of.
But with the partners whom circumstance allotted him, and the gainsayers
whom he had raised up and irritated in his own country, failure was a
foregone conclusion from the first. The aims after which most of the
European governments strove were sheer incompatible with his own.
Doubtless they all were solicitous about the general good, but their
love for it was so general and so diluted with attachment to others'
goods as to be hardly discernible. The reproach that can hardly be
spared to Mr. Wilson, however, is that of pusillanimity. If his faith in
the principles he had laid down for the guidance of nations were as
intense as his eloquent words suggested, he would have spurned the offer
of a sequence of high-sounding phrases in lieu of a resettlement of the
world. And his appeal to the peoples would most probably have been
heard. The beacon once lighted in Paris would have been answered in
almost every capital of the world. One promise he kept religiously: he
did not return to Washington without a paper covenant. Is it more? Is it
merely a paradox to assert that as war was waged in order to make war
impossible, so a peace was made that will render peace impossible?
FOOTNOTES:
[91] In March.
[92] Quoted by _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 10, 1919.
[93] Delivered at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York on March 4,
1919.
[94] _The New York Herald_, March 19, 1919 (Paris edition).
[95] Cf. _The New York Herald_, July 8, 1919.
[96] The semi-official journals manifested a steady tendency to lean
toward the Republican opposition in the United States, down to the month
of August, when the amendments proposed by various Senators bade fair to
jeopardize the Treaties and render the promised military succor
doubtful.
[97] _Journal de Genève_, May 18, 1919.
[98] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), August 14, 1919.
[99] Cf. Paris papers of February 2, 1919, and _The Public Ledger_
(Philadelphia), February 4, 1919.
[100] Cf. _L'Echo de Paris_, April 19, 1919.
[101] In April, 1919.
[102] About April 10,1919.
[103] On March 19, 1919.
[104] Cf. my cablegram published in _The Public Ledger_ (Philadelphia),
January 12, 1919.
[105] Cf. _The Public Ledger_ (Philadelphia), February 5, 1919.
[106] Doctor Bunke, Councilor at the court of Dantzig, endeavors in _The
Dantzig Neueste Nachrichten_ to prove that the problem of Dantzig was
solved exclusively in the interests of the Naval Powers, America and
Britain, who need it as a basis for their commerce with Poland, Russia,
and Germany. Cf. also _Le Temps_, August 23, 1919
[107] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), March 1, 1919.
[108] Lysis, author of _Demain_, and many other remarkable studies of
economic problems, and editor of _Le Démocratie Nouvelle_, May 30, 1919.
[109] For an account of analogous bargainings with Bela Kuhn, see the
Chapter on Rumania.
[110] Bearing the number 3882.
[111] On October 12, 1918, and February 1, 1919
[112] On February 4, 1919.
[113] _La Démocratie Nouvelle_, May 30, 1919
[114] See his admirable article in _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition)
of May 21, 1919, from which the following extract is worth quoting: "I
have said that certain great forces have steadily and occultly worked
for a German peace. But I mean, in fact, one force--an international
finance to which all other forces hostile to the freedom of nations and
of the individual soul are contributory. The influence of this finance
had permeated the Conference, delaying the decisions as long as
possible, increasing divisions between people and people, between class
and class, between peace-makers and peace-makers, in order to achieve
two definite ends, which two ends are one and the same.
"The first end was so to manipulate the minds of the peace-makers, of
their hordes of retainers and 'experts,' as to bring about, if possible,
a peace that would not be destructive to industrial Germany. The second
end was so to delay the Russian question, so to complicate and thwart
every proposed solution, that, at last, either during or after the Peace
Conference, a recognition of the Bolshevist power as the _de facto_
government of Russia would be the only possible solution."
[115] "What confidence can be commanded by men who, asserting one week
that the ultimate of human wisdom has been attained in a document,
confess the next week that the document is frail? When are we to believe
that their confessions are at an end?"--_The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris
edition), August 23, 1919.
[116] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), July 31, 1919.
[117] M. Affonso Costa, who shortly before had succeeded the Minister of
Foreign Affairs, M. Monas Egiz.
[118] Dedeagatch.
[119] See _Rapports et Enquêtes de la Commission Interalliée sur les
Violations du droit des gens commises en Macédoine Orientale par les
armées bulgares_. The conclusion of the report is one of the most
terrible indictments ever drawn up by impartial investigators against
what is practically a whole people.
[120] _Zora_, August 11th. Cf. _Le Temps_, August 28, 1919.
[121] Mr. Charles House published a statement in the press of Saloniki
to the effect that the Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
forbids missionaries to take an active part in politics. He added that
if this injunction was transgressed--and in Paris the current belief was
that it had been--it would not be tolerated by the Missionary Board, nor
recognized by the American government.
[122] _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), March 31, 1919.
[123] _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), April 6, 1919.
[124] Somewhere between August 17 and 20, 1919. It was transmitted by
Admiral Bristol, American member of the Inter-Allied Inquiry Mission at
Smyrna.
[125] Cf. _L'Echo de Paris_, August 28, 1919. Article by Pertinax.
[126] _L'Echo de Paris_, August 28, 1919. Article by Pertinax.
VI
THE LESSER STATES
Before the Anglo-Saxon statesmen thus set themselves to rearrange the
complex of interests, forces, policies, nationalities, rights, and
claims which constituted the politico-social world of 1919, they were
expected to deal with all the Allied and Associated nations, without
favor or prejudice, as members of one family. This expectation was not
fulfilled. It may not have been warranted. From the various discussions
and decisions of which we have knowledge, a number of delegates drew the
inference that France was destined for obvious reasons to occupy the
leading position in continental Europe, under the protection of
Anglo-Saxondom; and that a privileged status was to be conferred on the
Jews in eastern Europe and in Palestine, while the other states were to
be in the leading-strings of the Four. This view was not lightly
expressed, however inadequately it may prove to have been then supported
by facts. As to the desirability of forming this rude hierarchy of
states, the principal plenipotentiaries were said to have been in
general agreement, although responding to different motives. There was
but one discordant voice--that of France--who was opposed to the various
limitations set to Poland's aggrandizement, and also to the clause
placing the Jews under the direct protection of the League of Nations,
and investing them with privileges in which the races among whom they
reside are not allowed to participate. Bulgaria had a position unique
in her class, for she was luckier than most of her peers in having
enlisted on her side the American delegation and Mr. Wilson as leading
counsel and special pleader for her claim to an outlet to the Ægean Sea.
At the Conference each state was dealt with according to its class.
Entirely above the new law, as we saw, stood its creators, the
Anglo-Saxons. To all the others, including the French, the Wilsonian
doctrine was applied as fully as was compatible with its author's main
object, the elaboration of an instrument which he could take back with
him to the United States as the great world settlement. Within these
limits the President was evidently most anxious to apply his Fourteen
Points, but he kept well within these. Thus he would, perhaps, have been
quite ready to insist on the abandonment by Britain of her supremacy on
the seas, on a radical change in the international status of Egypt and
Ireland, and much else, had these innovations been compatible with his
own special object. But they were not. He was apparently minded to test
the matter by announcing his resolve to moot the problem of the freedom
of the seas, but when admonished by the British government that it would
not even brook its mention, he at once gave it up and, presumably
drawing the obvious inference from this downright refusal, applied it to
the Irish, Egyptian, and other issues, which were forthwith eliminated
from the category of open or international problems. But France's
insistent demand, on the other hand, for the Rhine frontier met with an
emphatic refusal.[127]
The social reformer is disheartened by the one-sided and inexorable way
in which maxims proclaimed to be of universal application were
restricted to the second-class nations.
Russia's case abounds in illustrations of this arbitrary, unjust, and
impolitic pressure. The Russians had been our allies. They had fought
heroically at the time when the people of the United States were,
according to their President, "too proud to fight." They were essential
factors in the Allies' victory, and consequently entitled to the
advantages and immunities enjoyed by the Western Powers. In no case
ought they to have been placed on the same level as our enemies, and in
lieu of recompense condemned to punishment. And yet this latter
conception of their deserts was not wholly new. Soon after their
defection, and when the Allies were plunged in the depths of
despondency, a current of opinion made itself felt among certain
sections of the Allied peoples tending to the conclusion of peace on the
basis of compensations to Germany, to be supplied by the cession of
Russian territory. This expedient was advocated by more than one
statesman, and was making headway when fresh factors arose which bade
fair to render it needless.
At the Paris Conference the spirit of this conception may still have
survived and prompted much that was done and much that was left
unattempted. Russia was under a cloud. If she was not classed as an
enemy she was denied the consideration reserved for the Allies and the
neutrals. Her integrity was a matter of indifference to her former
friends; almost every people and nationality in the Russian state which
asked for independence found a ready hearing at the Supreme Council. And
some of them before they had lodged any such claim were encouraged to
lose no time in asking for separation. In one case a large sum of money
and a mission were sent to "create the independent state of the
Ukraine," so impatient were peoples in the West to obtain a substitute
for the Russian ally whom they had lost in the East, and great was their
consternation when their protégés misspent the funds and made common
cause with the Teutons.
Disorganized Russia was in some ways a godsend to the world's
administrators in Paris. To the advocate of alliances, territorial
equilibrium, and the old order of things it offered a facile means of
acquiring new helpmates in the East by emancipating its various peoples
in the name of right and justice. It held out to the capitalists who
deplored the loss of their milliards a potential source whence part of
that loss might be made good.[128] To the zealots of the League of
Nations it offered an unresisting body on which all the requisite
operations from amputation to trepanning might be performed without the
use of anesthetics.
The various border states of Russia were thus quietly lopped off without
even the foreknowledge, much less the assent, of the patient, and
without any pretense at plebiscites. Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Georgia
were severed from the chaotic Slav state offhandedly, and the warrant
was the doctrine propounded by President Wilson--that every people shall
be free to choose its own mode of living and working. Every people?
Surely not, remarked unbiased onlookers. The Egyptians, the Irish, the
Austrians, the Persians, to name but four among many, are disqualified
for the exercise of these indefeasible rights. Perhaps with good reason?
Then modify the doctrine. Why this difference of treatment? they
queried. Is it not because the supreme judge knows full well that Great
Britain would not brook the discussion of the Egyptian or the Irish
problem, and that France, in order to feel quite secure, must hinder the
Austrian-Germans from coalescing with their brethren of the Reich? But
if Britain and France have the right to veto every self-denying measure
that smacks of disruption or may involve a sacrifice, why is Russia
bereft of it? If the principle involved be of any value at all, its
application must be universal. To an equal all-round distribution of
sacrifice the only alternative is the supremacy of force in the service
of arbitrary rule. And to this force, accordingly, the Supreme Council
had recourse. The only cases in which it seriously vindicated the rights
of oppressed or dissatisfied peoples to self-determination against the
will of the ruling race or nation were those in which that race or
nation was powerless to resist. Whenever Britain or France's interests
were deemed to be imperiled by the putting in force of any of the
Fourteen Points, Mr. Wilson desisted from its application. Thus it came
about that Russia was put on the same plane with Germany and received
similar, in some respects, indeed, sterner, treatment. The Germans were
at least permitted to file objections to the conditions imposed and to
point out flaws in the arrangements drafted, and their representations
sometimes achieved their end. It was otherwise with the Russians. They
were never consulted. And when their representatives in Paris
respectfully suggested that all such changes as might be decided upon by
the Great Powers during their country's political disablement should be
taken to be provisional and be referred for definite settlement to the
future constituent assembly, the request was ignored.
Of psychological rather than political interest was Mr. Wilson's
conscientious hesitation as to whether the nationalities which he was
preparing to liberate were sufficiently advanced to be intrusted with
self-government. As stated elsewhere, his first impulse would seem to
have been to appoint mandatories to administer the territories severed
from Russia. The mandatory arrangement under the ubiquitous League is
said to have been his own. Presumably he afterward acquired the belief
that the system might be wisely dispensed with in the case of some of
Russia's border states, for they soon afterward received promises of
independence and implicitly of protection against future encroachments
by a resuscitated Russia.
In this connection a scene is worth reproducing which was enacted at the
Peace Table before the system of administering certain territories by
proxy was fully elaborated. At one of the sittings the delegates set
themselves to determine what countries should be thus governed,[129] and
it was understood that the mandatory system was to be reserved for the
German colonies and certain provinces of the Turkish Empire. But in the
course of the conversation Mr. Wilson casually made use of the
expression, "The German colonies, the territories of the Turkish Empire
and other territories." One of the delegates promptly put the question,
"What other territories?" to which the President replied,
unhesitatingly, "Those of the late Russian Empire." Then he added by way
of explanation: "We are constantly receiving petitions from peoples who
lived hitherto under the scepter of the Tsars--Caucasians, Central
Asiatic peoples, and others--who refuse to be ruled any longer by the
Russians and yet are incapable of organizing viable independent states
of their own. It is meet that the desires of these nations should be
considered." At this the Czech delegate, Doctor Kramarcz, flared up and
exclaimed: "Russia? Cut up Russia? But what about her integrity? Is that
to be sacrificed?" But his words died away without evoking a response.
"Was there no one," a Russian afterward asked, "to remind those
representatives of the Great Powers of their righteous wrath with
Germany when the Brest-Litovsk treaty was promulgated?"
Toward Italy, who, unlike Russia, was not treated as an enemy, but as
relegated to the category of lesser states, the attitude of President
Wilson was exceptionally firm and uncompromising. On the subject of
Fiume and Dalmatia he refused to yield an inch. In vain the Italian
delegation argued, appealed, and lowered its claims. Mr. Wilson was
adamant. It is fair to admit that in no other way could he have
contrived to get even a simulacrum of a League. Unless the weak states
were awed into submitting to sacrifices for the great aim which he had
made his own, he must return to Washington as the champion of a
manifestly lost cause. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that his
thesis was not destitute of arguments to support it. Accordingly the
deadlock went on for months, until the Italian Cabinet fell and people
wearied of the Adriatic problems.