should be subordinated to the general good, and that the present time
and its aspirations should be considered in strict relation to the
future of the whole community of nations. They further contended that
while Germany deserved to suffer condignly for the heinous crimes of
unchaining the war and waging it ruthlessly, as many of her own people
confessed, she should not be wholly crippled or enthralled in the hope
that she would be rendered thereby impotent forever. Such hope was vain.
With her waxing strength her desire of vengeance would grow, and
together with it the means of wreaking it. She might yet knead Russia
into such a shape as would make that Slav people a serviceable
instrument of revenge, and her endeavors might conceivably extend
farther than Russia. The one-sided resettlement of Europe charged with
explosives of such incalculable force would frustrate the most elaborate
attempts to create not only a real league of nations, but even such a
rough approximation toward one as might in time and under favorable
circumstances develop into a trustworthy war preventive. They concluded
that a league of nations would be worse than useless if transformed into
a weapon to be wielded by one group of nations against another, or as an
artificial makeshift for dispensing peoples from the observance of
natural laws.
At the same time all the governments of the Allies were sincere and
unanimous in their desire to do everything possible to show their
appreciation of France's heroism, to recognize the vastness of her
sacrifices, and to pay their debt of gratitude for her services to
humanity. All were actuated by a resolve to contribute in the measure of
the possible to compensate her for such losses as were still reparable
and to safeguard her against the recurrence of the ordeal from which she
had escaped terribly scathed. The only limits they admitted to this
work of reparation were furnished by the aim itself and by the means of
attaining it. Thus Messrs. Wilson and Lloyd George held that to
incorporate in renovated France millions or even hundreds of thousands
of Germans would be to introduce into the political organism the germs
of fell disease, and on this ground they firmly refused to sanction the
Rhine frontier, which the French were thus obliged to relinquish. The
French delegates themselves admitted that if granted it could not be
held without a powerful body of international troops ever at the beck
and call of the Republic, vigilantly keeping watch and ward on the banks
of the Rhine and with no reasonable prospect of a term to this
servitude. For the real ground of this dependence upon foreign forces is
the disproportion between the populations of Germany and France and
between the resources of the two nations. The ratio of the former is at
present about six to four and it is growing perceptibly toward seven to
four. The organizing capacity in commerce and industry is said to be
even greater. If, therefore, France cannot stand alone to-day, still
less could she stand alone in ten or fifteen years, and the necessity of
protecting her against aggression, assuming that the German people does
not become reconciled to its status of forced inferiority, would be more
urgent and less practicable with the lapse of time. For, as we saw, it
is largely a question of the birth-rate. And as neither the British nor
the American people, deeply though they are attached to their gallant
comrades in arms, would consent to this arrangement, which to them would
be a burden and to the Germans a standing provocation, their
representatives were forced to the conclusion that it would be the
height of folly to do aught that would give the Teutons a convenient
handle for a war of revenge. Let there be no annexation of territory,
they said, no incorporation of unwilling German citizens. The Americans
further argued that an indefinite occupation of German territory by a
large body of international troops would be a direct encouragement to
militarism.
The indemnities for which the French yearned, and on which their
responsible financiers counted, were large. The figures employed were
astronomical. Hundreds of milliards of francs were operated with by
eminent publicists in an offhand manner that astonished the survivor of
the expiring budgetary epoch and rejoiced the hearts of the Western
taxpayers. For it was not only journalists who wrote as though a stream
of wealth were to be turned into these countries to fertilize industry
and commerce there and enable them to keep well ahead of their pushing
competitors. Responsible Ministers likewise hall-marked these forecasts
with their approval. Before the fortune of war had decided for the
Allies, the finances of France had sorely embarrassed the Minister, M.
Klotz, of whom his chief, M. Clemenceau, is reported to have said: "He
is the only Israelite I have ever known who is out of his element when
dealing with money matters." Before the armistice, M. Klotz, when
talking of the complex problem and sketching the outlook, exclaimed: "If
we win the war, I undertake to make both ends meet, far though they now
seem apart. For I will make the Germans pay the entire cost of the war."
After the armistice he repeated his promise and undertook not to levy
fresh taxation.
Thus, despite fitful gleams of idealism, the atmosphere of the Paris
Conclave grew heavy with interests, passions, and ambitions. Only people
in blinkers could miss the fact that the elastic formulas launched and
interpreted by President Wilson were being stretched to the
snapping-point so as to cover two mutually incompatible policies. The
chasm between his original prospects and those of his foreign associates
they both conscientiously endeavored to ignore, and after a time they
hit upon a _tertium quid_ between territorial equilibrium and a
sterilized league tempered by the Monroe Doctrine and a military
compact. This composite resultant carried with it the concentrated evils
of one of these systems and was deprived of its redeeming features by
the other. At a conjuncture in the world's affairs which postulated
internationalism of the loftiest kind, the delegates increased and
multiplied nations and states which they deprived of sovereignty and
yoked to the first-class races. National ambitions took precedence of
larger interests; racial hatred was raised to its highest power. In a
word, the world's state system was so oddly pieced together that only
economic exhaustion followed by a speedy return to militarism could
insure for it a moderate duration.
Territorial self-sufficiency, military strength, and advantageous
alliances were accordingly looked to as the mainstays of the new
ordering, even by those who paid lip tribute to the Wilsonian ideal. The
ideal itself underwent a disfiguring change in the process of
incarnation. The Italians asked how the Monroe Doctrine could be
reconciled with the charter of the League of Nations, seeing that the
League would be authorized to intervene in the domestic affairs of other
member-states, and if necessary to despatch troops to keep Germany,
Italy, and Poland in order; whereas if the United States were guilty of
tyrannical aggression against Brazil, the Argentine Republic, or Mexico,
the League, paralyzed by that Doctrine, must look on inactive. The
Germans, alleging capital defects in the Wilsonian Covenant, which was
adjusted primarily to the Allies' designs, went to Paris prepared with a
substitute which, it must in fairness be admitted, was considerably
superior to that of their adversaries, and incidentally fraught with
greater promise to themselves.
It is superfluous to add that the continental view prevailed, but Mr.
Wilson imagined that, while abandoning his principles in favor of
Britain, France, and Bulgaria, he could readjust the balance by applying
them with rigor to Italy and exaggerating them when dealing with Greece.
He afterward communicated his reasons for this belief in a message
published in Washington.[299] The alliance--he was understood to have
been opposed to all partial alliances on principle--which guarantees
military succor to France, he had signed, he said, in gratitude to that
country, for he seriously doubted whether the American Republic could
have won its freedom against Britain's opposition without the gallant
and friendly aid of France. "We recently had the privilege of assisting
in driving enemies, who also were enemies of the world, from her soil,
but that does not pay our debt to her. Nothing can pay such a debt." His
critics retorted that that is a sentimental reason which might with
equal force have been urged by France and Britain in justification of
their promises to Italy and Rumania, yet was rejected as irrelevant by
Mr. Wilson in the name of a higher principle.
The President of the United States, it was further urged, is a
historian, and history tells him that the help given to his country
against England neither came from the French people nor was actuated by
sympathy for the American cause. It was the vindictive act of one of
those kings whose functions Mr. Wilson is endeavoring to abolish. The
monarch who helped the Americans was merely utilizing a favorable
opportunity for depriving with a minimum of effort his adversary of
lucrative possessions. Moreover, the debt which nothing can pay was
already due when in the years 1914-16 France was in imminent danger of
being crushed by a ruthless enemy. But at that time Mr. Wilson owed his
re-election largely to his refusal to extricate her from that peril.
Instead of calling to mind the debt that can never be repaid he merely
announced that he could not understand what the belligerents were
fighting for and that in any case France's grateful debtor was too proud
to fight. The motive which finally brought the United States into the
World War may be the noblest that ever yet actuated any state, but no
student of history will allow that Mr. Wilson has correctly described
it.
The fact is that the French delegates and their supporters were
consistent and, except in their demand for the Rhine frontier,
unbending. They drew up a program and saw that it was substantially
carried out. They declared themselves quite ready to accept Mr. Wilson's
project, but only on condition that their own was also realized,
heedless of the incompatibility of the two. And Mr. Wilson felt
constrained to make their position his own, otherwise he could not have
obtained the Covenant he yearned for. And yet he must have known that
acquiescence in the demands put forward by M. Clemenceau would lower the
practical value of his Covenant to that of a sheet of paper.
A blunt American journal, commenting on the handiwork of the Conference,
gave utterance to views which while making no pretense to courtly
phraseology are symptomatic of the way in which the average man thought
and spoke of the Covenant which emanated from the Supreme Council. "We
are convinced," it said, "that the elder statesmen of Europe, typified
by Clemenceau, consider it a hoax. Clemenceau never before was so
extremely bored by anything in his life as he was by the necessity of
making a pious pretense in the Covenant when what he wanted was the
assurance of the Triple Alliance. He got that assurance, which, along
with the French watch on the Rhine, the French in the Saar Valley and
in Africa, with German money going into French coffers, makes him
tolerably indulgent of the altruistic rhetoricians.
"The English, the intelligent English, we know have their tongues in
their cheeks. The Italians are petulant imperialists, and Japan doesn't
care what happens to the League so long as Japan says what shall happen
in Asia."[300]
Peace was at last signed, not on the basis of the Fourteen Points nor
yet entirely on the lines of territorial equilibrium, but on those of a
compromise which, missing the advantages of each, combined many of the
evils of both and of others which were generated by their conjunction,
and laid the foundations of the new state fabric on quick-sands. That
was at bottom the view to which Italy, Rumania, and Greece gave
utterance when complaining that their claims were being dealt with on
the principle of self-denial, whereas those of France had been settled
on the traditional basis of territorial guaranties and military
alliances. Further, the Treaty failed to lay an ax to the roots of war,
did, in fact, increase their number while purporting to destroy them.
Far from that: germs of future conflicts not only between the late
belligerents, but also between the recent Allies, were plentifully
scattered and may sprout up in the fullness of time.
The Paris press expressed its satisfaction with France's share of the
fruits of victory. For the provisions of the Treaty went as far as any
merely political arrangement could go to check the natural inequality,
numerical, economical, industrial, and financial, between the Teuton and
French peoples. To many this problem seemed wholly insoluble, because
its solution involved a suspension or a corrective of a law of nature.
Take the birth-rate in France, for example. Before the war it had long
been declining at a rate which alarmed thoughtful French patriots. And,
according to official statistics, it is falling off still more rapidly
to-day, whereas the increase in other countries is greater than ever
before.[301] Thus, whereas in the year 1911 there were 73,599 births in
the Seine Department, there were only 47,480 in 1918. Wet nurses, too,
are disappearing. Of these, in the year 1911, in the same territory
there were 1,363, but in 1918 only 65. The mortality among foundlings
rose from 5 per cent. before the war to 40 per cent. in the year
1918.[302] M. Bertillon calculates that for France to increase merely at
the same rate as other nations--not to recover the place among them
which she has already lost, but only to keep her present one--she needs
five hundred thousand more births than are registered at present. A
statistical table which he drew up of the birth-rate of four European
nations during five decades, beginning with the year 1861, is unpleasant
reading[303] for the friends of that heroic and artistic people. France,
containing in round numbers 40,000,000 inhabitants, ought to increase
annually by 500,000. Before the war the total number of births in
Germany was computed at one million nine hundred and fifty thousand, but
hardly more than one million of the children born were viable.[304] The
general conclusion to be drawn from these figures and from the
circumstances that the falling off in the French population still goes
on unchecked, is disquieting for those who desire to see the French
race continue to play the leading part in continental Europe. One of the
shrewdest observers in contemporary Germany--himself a distinguished
Semite--commented on this decisive fact as follows:[305] "Within ten
years Germany will contain seventy million inhabitants, and in the
torrent of her fecundity will drown anemic and exhausted France.... The
French nation is dying of exhaustion. There is no reason, however, for
the world to get alarmed ... for before the French will have vanished
from the earth, other races, virile and healthy, will have come to their
country to take their place." That is what is actually happening, and it
is impressively borne in upon the visitor to various French cities by
the vast number of exotic names over houses of business and in other
ways.
With this formidable obstacle, then, the three members of the Supreme
Council strenuously coped by exercising to the fullest extent the power
conferred on the victors over the vanquished. And the result of their
combinations challenged and received the unstinted approval of all those
numerous enemies of Teutondom who believe the Germans to be incapable of
contributing materially to human progress, unless they are kept in
leading-strings by one of the superior races. The Treaty represents the
potential realization of France's dream, achieved semi-miraculously by
the very statesmen on whom the Teutons were relying to dispel it.
Defeated, disarmed, incapable of military resistance, and devoid of
friends, Germany thought she could discern her sheet-anchor of salvation
in the Wilsonian gospel, and it was the preacher of this gospel himself
who implicitly characterized her salvation as more difficult than the
passage of a camel through the eye of a needle. The crimes perpetrated
by the Teutons were unquestionably heinous beyond words, and no
punishment permitted by the human conscience is too drastic to atone for
them. How long this punishment should endure, whether it should be
inflicted on the entire people as well as on their leaders, and what
form should be given to it, were among the questions confronting the
Secret Council, and they implicitly answered them in the way we have
seen.
People who consider the answer adequate and justified give as their
reason that it presupposes and attains a single object--the efficacious
protection of France as the sentinel of civilization against an
incorrigible arch-enemy. And in this they may be right. But if you
enlarge the problem till it covers the moral fellowship of nations, and
if you postulate that as a safeguard of future peace and neighborliness
in the world, then the outcome of the Treaty takes on a different
coloring. Between France and Germany it creates a sea of bitterness
which no rapturous exultation over the new ethical ordering can sweeten.
The latter nation is assumed to be smitten with a fell moral disease, to
which, however, the physicians of the Conference have applied no moral
remedy, but only measures of coercion, mostly powerful irritants. The
reformed state of Europe is consequently a state of latent war between
two groups of nations, of which one is temporarily prostrate and both
are naïvely exhorted to join hands and play a helpful part in an idyllic
society of nations. This expectation is the delight of cynics and the
despair of those serious reformers who are not interested politicians.
Heretofore the most inveterate optimists in politics were the
revolutionaries. But they have since been outdone by the Paris
world-reformers, who tempt Providence by calling on it to accomplish by
a miracle an object which they have striven hard and successfully to
render impossible by the ordinary operation of cause and effect. Thus
the Covenant mars the Treaty, and the Treaty the Covenant.
In Weimar and Berlin the Treaty was termed the death-sentence of
Germany, not only as an empire, but as an independent political
community. Henceforward her economic efforts, beyond a certain limit,
will be struck with barrenness, her industry will be hindered from
outstripping or overtaking that of the neighboring countries, and her
population will be indirectly kept within definite bounds. For, instead
of exporting manufactures, she will be obliged to export human beings,
whose intellect and skill will be utilized by such rivals of her own
race as vouchsafe to admit them. Already before the Conference was over
they began to emigrate eastward. And those who remain at home will not
be masters in their own house, for the doors will be open to various
foreign commissions.
The assumption upon which the Treaty-framers proceeded is that the
abominations committed by the German military and civil authorities were
constructively the work of the entire nation, for whose reformation
within a measurable period hope is vain. This view predominated among
the ruling classes of the Entente peoples with few exceptions. If it be
correct, it seems superfluous to constrain the enemy to enter the league
of law-abiding nations, which is to be cemented only by voluntary
adherence and by genuine attachment to liberty, right, and justice.
Hence the Covenant, by being inserted in the Peace Treaty, necessarily
lost its value as an eirenicon, and became subsequent to that
instrument, and seems likely to be used as an anti-German safeguard. But
even then its efficacy is doubtful, and manifestly so; otherwise the
reformers, who at the start set out to abolish alliances as recognized
causes of war, would not have ended by setting up a new Triple
Alliance, which involves military, naval, and aerial establishments, and
the corresponding financial burdens inseparable from these. An alliance
of this character, whatever one may think of its economic and financial
aspects, runs counter to the spirit of the Covenant, but was an obvious
corollary of the Allies' attitude as mirrored in the Treaty. And the
spirit of the Treaty destroys the letter of the Covenant. For the world
is there implicitly divided into two camps--the friends and the enemies
of liberty, right, and justice; and the main functions of the League as
narrowed by the Treaty will be to hinder or defeat the machinations of
the enemies. Moreover, the deliberate concessions made by the Conference
to such agencies of the old ordering as the grouping of two or three
Powers into defensive alliances bids fair to be extended in time. For
the stress of circumstance is stronger than the will of man. At this
rate the last state may be worse than the first.
The world situation, thus formally modified, remained essentially
unchanged, and will so endure until other forces are released. The
League of Nations forfeited its ideal character under the pressure of
national interests, and became a coalition of victors against the
vanquished. By the insertion of the Covenant in the Treaty the former
became a means for the execution of the latter. For even Mr. Wilson,
faced with realities and called to practical counsel, affectionately
dismissed the high-souled speculative projects in which he delighted
during his hours of contemplation. Although the German delegates signed
the Treaty, no one can honestly say that he expects them to observe it
longer than constraint presses, however solemn the obligations imposed.
In the press organ of the most numerous and powerful political party in
Germany one might read in an article on the Germans in Bohemia annexed
by Czechoslovakia: "Assuredly their destiny will not be determined for
all time by the Versailles peace of violence. It behooves the German
nation to cherish its affection for its oppressed brethren, even though
it be powerless to succor them immediately. What then can it do? Italy
has given it a marvelous lesson in the policy of irredentism, which she
pursued in respect of the Trentino and Trieste."[306]
With the Treaty as it stands, nationalist France of this generation has
reason to be satisfied. One of its framers, himself a shrewd business
man and politician, publicly set forth the grounds for this
satisfaction.[307] Alsace and Lorraine reunited to the metropolis, he
explained, will assist France materially with an industrious population
and enormous resources in the shape of mineral wealth and a fruitful
soil. Germany's former colonies, Kamerun and Togoland, are become
French, and will doubtless offer a vast and attractive field for the
expansion and prosperity of the French population. Morocco, freed from
German enterprise, can henceforth be developed by the French population
alone and without let or hindrance, for the benefit of the natives and
in the true sense of Mr. Wilson's humanitarian ordinances. The potash
deposits, to which German agriculture largely owed its prosperity, will
henceforward be utilized in the service of French agriculture. "In iron
ore the wealth of France is doubled, and her productive capacity as
regards pig-iron and steel immensely increased. Her production of
textiles is greater than before the war by about a third."[308] In a
word, a vast area of the planet inhabited by various peoples will look
to the French people for everything that makes their collective life
worth living.